YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THEODORE PARKER.
Cojiy qf IK IF. Stoty's Bust, carved at Rome, i860.

THE

LIFE AND TEACHINGS

rHEODORE PARKER

BY
PETER DEAN

ATTaAattTTor ev \6ytp eA«€iv,
fiaXanit uev <Ppove<av ccAotC,
" Resistless in the War of Eloquence, Gentle in Thought to Men of Worth, but to the
istinate a Rugged Foe."— Pindar, Fourth Nemean Ode.

Williams and norgate,
14, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London ;
and 20, South Frederick Street, Edinburgh.
1877.

" I am heartily glad you are undertaking the good work of making Parker
better known as a living man as well as a writer. As the years pass on, and ,
we travel with them into other regions of thought than those we once crossed
with him, my sense of the loss we have sustained by his early death grows
greater rather than less. I never fight a battle for what I deem to be truth
or right but I think how his voice would have rung out to cheer and guide
us, and his sympathy have followed every fortune of the war." — Frances
Power Cobbe, to the Author.

J. OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C

TO
FRANCES POWER COBBE,
Mary Sqmerville's
" Best and Cleverest Woman I ever Met,"
THE FRIEND OF THEODORE PARKER,
And the Editress of the English Edition of his Works,
Whose Friendship has been one of the Honours of the Author's Life,
As her Writings have been one of its Inspirations,
^kig Mzmoxx
Of Him whom she has fitly termed
"The Prophet of the Absolute Goodness of God,"
[s respectfully and gratefully
DEDICATED.

P REFA CE.

This book is the offspring of gratitude and duty. Personally I have re
ceived greater spiritual good from acquaintance with the life and doctrines of
its subject than from those of any other teacher or exemplar. Indeed, that
I have been enabled for years past to have the highest of all blessings —
religious faith and life, I owe, under God, to Theodore Parker.
Naturally I am unwilling to receive and enjoy such blessings and not be
anxious to disseminate them. I believe the probability is that there are
thousands in the wilderness of religious doubt and despair in which first
acquaintance with the religious ideas of the grand American found me, and
I see no reason why, if his life and teachings are allowed the opportunity,
he may not enable them — as he has me — "to lie down in green pastures,"
and to dwell "beside the still waters." Be this, however, as it may, my
own load of indebtedness and consequent responsibility calls upon me to do
all I can to offer opportunities for bringing about what to me is "a consum
mation devoutly to be wished." It is simply mine to sow the seed which
has been handed to me, and this no matter what may be the result — its
lodgment either "by the way-side,'' "upon stony places," "among
thorns," or "into good ground" to bring forth fruit manifold, must be left
to Providence and the working of human hearts. So, following the
promptings of this conviction, I send forth this book.
It appears to me that when a great man " rests from his laboiars," those
who enter into the blessings of the "works which follow him," have it
largely in their power to either check or spread the influence of his life and
doctrines, no matter how intrinsically grand. That "Truth is great and will
prevail " is only true when there is added, "Yes, if given, a chance, or made
to prevail." Verity, when kept hidden from men's minds, is just as powerless
to " prevail " as is fallacy. In like manner the influence and blessing which
follow the career of a great and good man must be what those who feel his
greatness and goodness make it. Theodore Parker is, undoubtedly, a great

PREFACE.

influence in the world now, and that he has not become a greater is simply
owing to the remissness of those who readily acknowledge the grandeur of
the man and his teachings. And as of the past sixteen years, so of the
future : whether his influence shall wax or wane must altogether depend
upon the faithfulness of those who are brought under personal obligation to
his doctrines and example. But in this life faithfulness — as does the soul
itself — needs material working tools. The accomplishment of ends involves
the use of means. And it is with a fervent hope that this book may afford
another working means given into the hands of those who, like myself, are
anxious to make Parker and his ideas known to mankind at large, that it
has been prepared.
In connection with its projection and preparation, my acknowledgments
of obligations are due : first of all, to Messrs. Ogden & Co. — for the
generous manner in which they have undertaken to issue this book ; next .
to W. P. Greenway, Esq., jun., of Dudley — a subsidy from whom first
emboldened me to enter on its preparation ; then to Mr. John Weiss — for
the service his Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker has been to me,
and to the Rev. O. B. Frothingham — for the still larger use I have made of
his Theodore Parker: A Biography — a work which well deserves to be
called an American classic ; and to Dr. Martineau, Mr. W. A. Abram, the
Rev. P. H. Wicksteed, M.A., and others — for kindly literary helps and
contributions. Before long I hope to have to feel under similar obligations
to many other admirers of Theodore Parker, for help rendered me in the
dissemination of the book amongst the reading public.
Walsall, April, 1877.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE
I. Ancestry, Birthplace, and Parentage . . . . i
II. Birth and Boyhood  . 4
III. The Schoolmaster and Student  16
IV. The Collegian  . . 23
V. The Candidate  • ¦ ¦ 3S
VI. The Lover and the Husband  40
VII. The First Pastorate — West Roxbury '  47
VIII. The Controversy with the American Unitarians . 61
IX. Ditto Ditto [Continued)  73
X. Twelve Months in Europe  91
XI. The Unitarian Controversy Renewed .... 106
XII. The Second Pastorate— Boston  109
XIII. The Preacher  r3S
XIV. The Preacher and Theologian  149
XV. The Lecturer  163
XVI. The Litterateur  170
XVII. The Champion of Conscience and Liberty. . . . 177
XVIII. Ditto Ditto (Continued)  193
XIX. The Reformer  205
XX. The Saint  219
XXI. The Self-Immolator  229
XXII. "Through the Valley of the Shadow" . . . 243
Appendix. — Tributes to Parker's Work and Worth . . . 260
Note on the English Genealogy of Parker, by W. A. Abram,
F.R.H.S   284

Already Published.
In crown 8vo, cloth, price is. 6d.; or fine toned paper, bevelled
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A DISCOURSE OF MATTERS
PERTAINING TO RELIGION.
By THEODORE PARKER.

May be had of J. Ogden & Co., 172, St. John Street, London, E.C.

The Homestead : Parker's Birthplace.

LIFE OF
THEODORE PARKER

CHAPTER I.

Ancestry, Birthplace, and Parentage.
" Long galleries of ancestors, and all
The follies which ill grace a country-hall,
Challenge no wonder or esteem from me, —
Virtue alone is true nobility.
Convince the world that you're devout and true ;
he just in all you say, and all you do ;
Whatever be your birth, you're sure to be
A peer of the first magnitude to me." — Stepny.

THE English ancestry of Theodore
Parker " came in with the Con
quest." He traced his descent to
Johannes Le Parkerre, a Norman who
followed William, and who was made
keeper of the royal parks. The for
tunes of the family are traceable in
English history. Evidently a house of
independent spirit, its members were
often in antagonism with the powers
Ecclesiastical, and they were much
scattered at the Reformation. Sub^
sequently, some became martyrs under
the bloody intolerance of Queen Mary,
and others Puritans serving the Lord
Protector. Others of them remained
Royalists ; and, in consequence, lost
their lands during the Commonwealth,
but regained them at the Restoration.
At the commencement of the seven
teenth century the remnants of the
family were still more widely divided.
The Nonconformist blood, Puritan
and Quaker, found its way to America j
the " blue blood "¦ — the Churchmen
and Tories generally of the stock —
remained on the ancestral possessions
in Lancashire and Yorkshire. These
are in the district in which the writer
of this sketch happened to be born

and reared, and some of his earliest
recollections are of electioneering and
other public proceedings on the ^part
of a present-day English descend
ant of "John, the Parker."
The member of the family who
transplanted an offshoot thereof to
America was named Thomas. He
went to the New World in 1635 in a
vessel fitted out by Sir Richard Salton
stall, with whose family he was con
nected by marriage. He settled at
Reading, U. S. About 1710, his
grandson, and Theodore Parker's
grandfather's grandfather, John Par
ker, with a family of grown up
children, came from Reading to Cam
bridge Farms, since called Lexing
ton. He had bought a considerable
quantity of land, and the next year
he built himself thereon a large and
commodious house, which he furnished
with the usual outbuildings necessary
for a farmer's business. It was in this
homestead, after it had stood for a
hundred years, that Theodore Parker
first saw the light, and lived and studied
during the first twenty years of his life.
The old house, like Parker, has since
passed away. B

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

The Massachusetts village of Lex
ington is situated ten miles north-west
of Boston. It has another celebrity
besides that of being the birthplace
of Theodore Parker. It was here, on
April 18, 1/75, that the first conflict
between the American Colonists and
the British troops in the War of Inde
pendence took place. Both events may
well be remembered by descendants
of the Parker family with justifiable
pride. It was Theodore's grandfather,
Captain John Parker, who had the
distinguished honour of firing the first
shotatthe Battle of Lexington, the first
conflict in the war which resulted in
American Independence. Previously
he had been a sergeant in the French
and Indian War, and had been present
at the capture of Quebec. At Lexing
ton, on the occasion above referred to,
he commanded a troop of 70 men,
bade every man to load his piece with
powder and ball, ordered them not to
fire unless fired upon, but added, " If
they mean to have a war, let it begin
here." Some of his soldiers, when they
saw the flash of British guns, turned
to run, whereupon he drew his sword
and said, " I will order the first man
shut that offers to run. " Nobody did
run until he himself subsequently
ordered a retreat. The gun from
which he fired the first shot upon the
British troops was afterwards one of
the most cherished ornaments of his
grandson's study while the latter lived,
and, by his will, now hangs in the
Massachusetts Senate Chamber. Cap
tain Parker died five months after the
Battle of Lexington, and subsequently
his relict, through an indiscreet second
mttrriage, wasted, the respectable
property he left, saving only " the
widow's thirds." In consequence,
Parker's father, who acted as her farm
bailiff, had to struggle wiih strait
ened circumstances, and was never
able to do as much for either the farm
or his family as more fortunate circum
stances would have allowed.
John Parker, Theodore's father,

was a good specimen of the New
England yeoman. Says one of his
grandsons: "He was a quiet,
thoughtful, silent, reading man, of
strong sense, of great moral worth,
reliable, honourable ; worked every
day and all day ; kept good discipline
in his family, governed easily ; taught
his children to speak the truth; always
hadabookinhishandin the evening. "
Theodore himself has recorded of him
that he was a stout, able»bodied man,
plain and solid, of great powers of
physical endurance, and one of the
most skilful farmers and mechanics
in th'e district. The work of the small
farm he left mostly to his boys, while
he pursued his own occupation of mill
wright and pump-maker in the shop.
Intelleptually he appears to have been
a long way superior to the ordinary
men of his class. Not only had he
strong natural faculties, but, for a
man who had to depend chiefly upon
self-education, he had given them
considerable cultivation. He had
much mind, but little sentiment. He
was rationalistic and independent in
his thinking, and though averse to
controversy, and naturally silent,
could talk well, and argue well, on
oecasion. His diligent study of the
Bible, and of metaphysical authors
like Edwards and Paley (upon all
of whom he exercised independent
thinking), made him formidable in
theological debate. He was a religious,
man, of the grave, earnest sort, with
out much emotion. He went to church,
but listened to the preacher and read
the Bible with his understanding. He-
was an avowed Unitarian before
Unitarianism was preached as
a system in New England, and a
Federalist when there were but four
besides himself in the whole town.
That he bore a high character among
his neighbours is evidenced by the
fact that they were in the habit of say
ing of him : "John Parker has all
the manners of the neighbourhood;"
for everyone who has had much to

ANCESTRY, BIRTHPLACE, AND PARENTAGE.

do with the labouring classes knows
what a comprehensive virtue the term
" manners " describes with them. He
never sullied his lips with profanity.
He was peaceable, of agreeable man
ners, and companionable ; and though
loving fun, he never permitted its
indulgence to pass beyond the bounds
of propriety. He was just, humane,
fearless, often called upon to arbitrate
in disputes, administer estates, and
assume guardianship of orphans. In
a word, he was an upright man, and
in him we may undoubtedly trace the
roots of much of that thoughtfulness,
practicality, intense application, en
durance, will, helpfulness, integrity,
and justice which bore fruit to such
perfection in his gifted son. A grand
effect must somewhere have an ade
quate cause : in germs must be con
tained all subsequent potentialities.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
But if, like the ancients, we honour
the father who has given us a great
man, still more in modern times has
experience taught us to look for the
source of his highest qualities in a
good mother. As Parker himsel f said
of that of Daniel Webster, " When
virtue leaps high in the public foun
tain, you seek for the lofty spring of
nobleness, and find it far off in the
dear breast of some mother, who
melted the snows of winter, and con
densed the summer's dew into fair,
sweet humanity, which now gladdens
the face of man in all the city streets."
So it-may be said of his own. She
was the spring of many of his highest
qualities. It is to her that we chiefly
trace his intense piety, sentimentalism,
almost mysticism. He got from his
father the manliness of the man, from
his mother the womanliness of the
woman, and this explains, perhaps,
how it is that one-sided natures,
whether all intellect or all feeling,
cannot permanently find satisfaction
in his teachings. It is-the most com
plete men who can most do so. Of the
sevtral depictures of Parker's mother

which have been given us, Mr. Froth-
ingham's is the most finely apprecia
tive and the most beautifully written.
She was, says he, " the daughter of
a well-to-do farmer, and as remarkable
in her way as the father was in his.
Hermaiden name wasHannah Stearns.
Her son describes her as a handsome
woman, of slight form, flaxen hair,
blue eyes, and a singularly fresh and
delicate complexion ; more nervous
than muscular. She had a family
tendency to consumption, which in
creased the mildness and amiability of
her disposition. Her education was in
ferior to her husband's ; her mind less
positive and independent. She lived
more in her feeling and imagination,
which kept their freshness amid the
homely routine of domestic life, and
through the cares belonging to a large
family. Her temperament was poeti
cal, though rather fanciful than
imaginative. Her favourite reading
was the Bible and Hymn Book ; but
ballad poetry gave her great delight,
and her mind was stored with
passages of beauty from English
literature. She was fond of romantic
stories of adventures among the
Indians, some of which were printed
in books, while many others floated
about in the form of legend. A fine
memory enabled her to repeat these
wild tales, and to carry about with her
such literary stores as she had. The
duties of a large and exacting house
hold — many children and no servants
— afforded little leisure for mental
cultivation, but what she had was
improved. Her husband's habit of
reading aloud in the evening kept her
supplied with food for thought. She
was of a loving disposition towards
those about her, tenderly watchful of
her children, thoughtful of the aged,
kind, and, as far as her means allowed,
generous to the poor. Her rigid
economy helped her in this. She was
religious with the natural religion of a
good heart. Her beliefs came to her
through feeling rather than through

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

reflection ; they were not so much
opinions .as sentiments. She was
no theologian ; -the doctrines of the
Calvinistic .creed, which her strong-
minded husband rejected as irrational,
she. rejected as monstrous, having no
reasons to give for her aversion that
were so cogent as the aversion itself.
The heart was its own witness ; con
science was the oracle of God in the
breast ; gratitude and trust were
interpreters to her of the ways of
Providence. With the simple feelings
of a .gentle spirit that comprehends
more than it apprehends, and .dings
where definition is impossible, she
knew .the Deity as an Omnipresent
Kather, <the joyous and loving soul of
all things, animating nature and en
lightening mind, filling the world with
tides of energy that were as vast as
the ocean and bright as the rivulets.
She, too, appears to have been silent ;
a woman of few words either of con
versation .or devotion : her prayers
were secret. In the moral culture of
her children she took great interest,
which she expressed not in doctrinal
teaching or incessant precept, but in
wise counsel and sympathy, as occa
sion came up." In short, Parker's
mother realises for one the true saint,
as contradistinguished from the
abnormal ones which the Roman
Church delights to honour. After
having had such a mother, one can
w«Jl understand Parker seeing in the
Dfiity a Divine Mother as well as

Father. If he were to speak of the
Soul of the Universe by the highest
and dearest name he knew, how could
he pray else than to "Our Father,
yea, our Mother not the less '' ?
" Religion," said he, in the sermon
preached by him on leaving West
Roxbury, "was the inheritance my
mother gave — gave me in my birth —
gave me in her teachings. Many sons
have been better bom than 1 ; few
have had so good a mother. My
head is not more natural to my body,
has not more grown with it, than my
religion out of my soul and with it.
With me religion was not carpentry,
something built up of dry wood from
without ; but it was growth — growth
of a germ in my soul. "
One thinks in this connection ot
the great modern Englishman who
wrote an Autobiography in which he
never once mentions that he had a
mother, and declares that he never
knew what it was to have a religion.
How different it would have been with
him had he had such a mother, and
such a mother's influence, as Parker
had } Be this, however, as it may, it
is clear that he) was above measure
blessed in his "environment."
Through his birth and parental
training, God indeed conveyed to him
"large powers" — to quote his own
term used on his death-bed. And it :';
will be the work of this little history as
it proceeds to record how faithfully
and nobly he himself used them.

CHAPTER IL
Birth and Boyhood.
. "Jbfi n*>'e"al ^d humjn circumstances about a man in his early life have a strong
and abiding influence upon all especially on those of a sensitive disposition, who are both
^£t£&£vS£S?'- and rather obstinate " retaining *• in">ressi0" made "
my cradle was rocked by a grand
mother [the relict of Captain Parker]
who had more than four score years
at my birth, and nearly a hundred
when she ceased to be mortal." He

" T WAS born," says Parker, in his
1 Sermon of Old Age, ' ' into the
arms of a father then one-and. fifty
years old, who lived to add another
quarter of a century thereunto, and

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD.

was bom on the 24th of August,
1810. Previously his mother had
borne ten children, all of whom had
lived, except one who died in infancy.
Of those then remaining, three were
boys and seven girls. Theodore — as
he himself puts it — "came into the
world lagging a little more than five
years after his youngest, and afterwards
favourite, sister. " So little expected
was he that one of his sisters had
some time before made a sampler of
the family tree, finishing with the tenth
child. But a place was soon found
for the new-comer both in the needle
work and in the hearts of the house
hold. Naturally some of the brothers
and sisters were much older than him \
and, before his birth, had already
gone to seek their fortunes in the
various trades and callings of the
time. There was, however, still a
houseful left at home. All of them
but three had a decided fondness for
literature ; they read all the good
books they could lay their hands on,
and copied th,e better parts. At
school they were always among the
best scholars. But, though all Theo
dore's brothers and sisters lived to
be useful and honourable men and
women, none of them attained to
more than ordinary distinction. Being
the youngest, Theodore was treated
with uncommon indulgence, and had
more than his share of affection. He
remembered often to have heard the
neighbours say, " Why, Mrs. Parker,
you're sp'ilin' your boy! He never can
take care of himself when he grows
up." To which the fond mother re
plied, "I hope not," and kissed her
boy's flaxen curls anew.
Among the earliest things he re
membered was the longing he used
to feel to have the winter gone, and
to see the high snow-banks about the
house melt away. The little child's
dislike of the snow, however, did not
prevent him from enjoying a run in it
barefoot, and with only his night-shirt
on, for a few minutes at a time. After

the snow, the peculiar smell of the
ground seemed to him delicious. The
first warm days of spring, which
brought the blue-birds to their north
ern home, and tempted the bees to
try short flights, in which they pre
sently dropped on th'e straw his pro
vidential father had strewn for them
about their hives, filled him with the
deepest delight. In the winter he
was limited to the kitchen, where
he amused himself, child-like, with
building cob-houses, or forming little
bits of wood into fantastic shapes.
Sometimes his father or one of his
brothers would take him to the mill
wright's shop, and there allow him ,
to play and wonder ; or to the barn,
where the horse, the oxen, and the
cows were a perpetual pleasure. But
when the snow was gone and the
ground dry he had free range. He
used to sit or lie on the ground in a
dry and sheltered spot, and watch
the great yellow clouds of April that
rolled their huge shapes far above his
head, fillinghis eyes with their strange,
fantastic, beautiful, and ever-changing
forms, and his mind with wonder at
what they were and how they came
there. But the winter itself was not
without its pleasures for the little
fellow in brown homespun petti
coats. There were the great events,
to a child, of the visits of uncles and
aunts, with the presents of sweet
meats and halfpence for " Mrs.
Parker's baby" — as the boy was
called long after he had ceased to
literally merit the name ; and the fire
in "the other room," as the humble
parlour was modestly named. Some
times the father and mother would
return these visits, and frequently on
.such occasions the "baby" accom
panied them, and was not the least
delighted of the party.
The beauty which his mother ap
pears to have seen in him at this time
was rather in her own eye than in the
object it transfigured. Those who re
member him as a child describe him

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

as rather under the usual size, clumsily
made, ungainly, and inactive, but
arch and roguish in disposition. As
Lowell's poetry of him in the Fable
for Critics indicates, the ungainliness
of movement remained with him
always. But, if " handsome is that
handsome does " — if grace of soul is
more than grace of body — he was
both as boy and man one of the most
handsome and graceful beings the
world has seen.
The child showed himself wonder
fully precofcious in intellect, but still
earlier he manifested a surprising
moral consciousness. What he him
self terms ' ' the earliest fact of con
sciousness I ever felt pained at," oc
curred to him in his fourth year. It
was thus induced. His father had a
neighbour, Deacon Stearns, come to
kill a calf ; for he would not do it
himself, as other farmers did. Theo
dore was not allowed to see the
butchery, but after it was all over,
the deacon, who had lost all his
Children, asked him who he loved
best. " Papa," replied Theodore.
VWhat ! better than yourself?"
'•Yes, sir," said the child. "But,"
here interposed his father, "if one
of us must take a whipping, which
would you rather should have the
blows?" To this searching query
Theodore replied nothing, but won
dered and wondered why he should
prefer that his father should have the
blows, and not him. The fact was
plain, and plainly selfish, and, it
seemed to him, wicked. Yet he
could not help the feeling, and it
tormented his little head for weeks.
¦ This early moral consciousness is
still more strikingly shown in that
anecdote so frequently quoted for its
effective illustration and beauty, and
which he himself relates at the end
of the scrap of autobiography.
"When a little boy in petticoats, in
my fourth year, one fine day in spring
niy father led me by the hand to a
distant part of the farm, but soon

sent me home alone. On the way I
had to pass a little pond-hole then
spreading its waters wide. A rho-
dora in full bloom — a rare plant in
my neighbourhood, and which grew
only in that locality — attracted my
attention and drew me to the spot.
I saw a little spotted tortoise sunning
himself in the shallow water at the
root of the flaming shrub. I lifted
the stick I had in my hand to strike
the harmless reptile; for though I
had never killed any creature, yet I
had seen other boys out of sport di-
stray birds, squirrels, and the like ;
and I felt a disposition to follow their
wicked example. But all at once
something checked my little arm, and
a voice within me said clear and loud,
' It is wrong.' I held my uplifted
stick in wonder at the new emotion—*
the consciousness of an involuntary
but inward check upon my actions-
till the tortoise and the rhodora both -
vanished from my sight. I hastened
home and told the tale to my mother,
and asked what it was that told me
it was wrong. She wiped a tear from
her eye with her apron, and, taking
me in her arms, said, ' Some men
call it conscience ; but I prefer to call
it the voice of God in the soul of
man. If you listen and obey it, then
it will speak clearer and clearer, and
always guide you right ; but if you
tum a deaf ear, or disobey, then it
will fade out little by little, and leave
you all in the dark and without- a
guide. Your life depends on your
heeding this little voice.' She went
her way, careful and troubled about,
many things, but doubtless pondered
them in her motherly heart ; while I
went off to wonder and to think it
over in my poor childish way. But
I am sure no event in my life has
made so deep and lasting an impres
sion on me." '
This beautiful anecdote shows that
which Parker quoted it to illustrate,
namely, the nice and delicate care
his mother took of his moral culture,

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD.

and also two other things. It proves
— what Parker ever contended for —
the inherent trustworthiness, cer
tainty for the individual, of con
science ; and shows how deep was
Parker's moral sensibility even in his
fourth year. But, as Mr. Frothing
ham remarks, that the feeling (which
no doubt comes to most children)
should have become reflection, and
deepened into character, as it did
in Parker, is the really remarkable
thing. The promise of high-toned morality
thus given by the child was continued
in the boy. He has recorded how his
parents taught him to speak the truth
without evasion or concealment, to
love justice and conform to it, to re
verence merit in all men, and that
without regard to their rank or repu
tation. The testimonies to his moral
character during his boyhood are all
favourable. " He was modest, pure,
single-minded, frank, and true. If
Theodore Parker said a thing, it was
believed by young and by old. A
quick, eager temper would have led
him astray into acts of violence, if he
did not have it under habitual con
trol : but it could not have betrayed
him into vicious indulgence ; for
there was no taint of sensuality in
him. His thoughts were busy with
literature ; his appetite was for know
ledge ; his warmth of feeling came to
re-enforce the steadfastness of his con
science, not to weaken it. He was
open and unselfish. The bent of his
nature was towards nobleness." [ Vide
Frothingham' s Biography.]
We have already seen how Parker
felt that " religion was the inheritance
which his mother gave him in his
birth and in her teachings." This
sentiment germinated in him as early
as the moral, and the reader will
readily perceive that it had the most
favourable conditions. His father, in
addition to living religion before his
children, also taught them the Ten
Commandments, encouraged their

learning hymns, and would have
them say their prayers when they
went to bed. From the sweet, fresh,
instinctive devoutness of the mother
the children received religious de
velopment of a still higher kind.
" Above all things," writes Theodore
of himself, " I was taught to love
and trust the dear God. He was not
presented to me as a great King, with
force for his chief quality, but rather
as a Father eminent for perfect jus
tice and complete and perfect love,
alike the parent of Jew and Gentile,
Christian and non-Christian, dealing
with all, not aQcording to the acci
dent of their name and situation, but
to the real use eaqh should make of
his talents and opportunities, how
ever little or great. I have met none
with whom more judicious attempts
were made to produce a natural un
folding of the religious and moral
faculties : I do not speak of results,
only of aim and process. I have
often been praised for virtues which
really belonged to my father and
mother," His mother was a member of " the
Church," and, in turn, had had all
her previous children duly christened
in the presence of the neighbours.
Theodore's turn came when he was
two years and a half old. The name
selected for him means ' ' God's
gift.'' Parker used to say of it sub
sequently that the "orthodox" dif
fered from his parents and thought
him rather a "devil's gift." He
being the last and pet child, the
occasion, celebrated at home, was
made more of than usual ; and great
was the gathering of friends and
neighbours. As the water fell in his
face he entered his first protest against
"artificial sacraments," by fighting
off the clergyman, and saying, " Oh,
don't." It is possible this may have
come from finding the operation un-
enjoyable, but it may also have re
vealed a touch of character, and been
the first manifestation of the spirit

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

which afterwards protested against
many a so-called "sacred" thing:
"a rattle" or "a straw" which has
"pleased" or "tickled" human
weakness "by nature's kindly law."
For Parker subsequently taught that
such things as Baptism, the Lord's
Supper, and the like, "in comparison
with a religious life and character,
are no more than the rattles and
straws of a child, compared with
the attainments of an accomplished
man." This boy was not as other boys,
and the reader must therefore not be
surprised to be told incidents of him
which scarcely ever happen to other
children. Instead of delighting to be
with boys, as boys naturally do, he
seems to have found his chief society
in the companionship of his mother
and books. Hence, perhaps, the ex
planation that he was having religious
experiences at an age when other
children are still delighting in ' ' Cin
derella," and "Jack and Jill."
" When a very small boy," he says,
"there was no character in history
that I knew so well as Jesus." This,
no doubt, Was the result of the
mother's teaching. A little over six
years old he came across a copy of the
Westminster Catechism, and "re
membered with horror and a quiver
ing of the flesh " the torment he
underwent when he read, for the
first time, the doctrine of eternal
damnation and a wrathful God.
" How many, many hours have I
wept with terror as I laid on my bed
and prayed, till, between praying and
Weeping, sleep gave me repose. But
before I was nine years old this fear
went away, and I saw clearer light in
the goodness of God." His strong
mental constitution, and the healthy
spiritual influences which surrounded
him, prevented his childhood from
long being morbid, notwithstanding
the danger there was of his inherited
predisposition to consumption, and
the hardness of his lot, making him

so. He used to say later in life, in
view of his own childhood's experi
ences, " However it be with the
natural man, the natural boy has no
fear of God. From my seventh
year, I had no fear of God, only an
ever greatening love and trust." In
1858, when preaching to the Pro
gressive Friends, he declared, "I
have swam in clear, sweet waters
all my days; and if sometimes they,
were a little cold, and the stream ran
adverse and a little rough, it was
never too strong to be breasted and
swam through. From the days of
earliest boyhood, when I went stum
bling through the grass ' as merry as
a May bee,' up to the grey-bearded
manhood of this time, there is none
but has left me honey in the hive of
memory that I now feed on for pre
sent delight. When I recall the
years of boyhood, youth, early man
hood, I am filled with a sense of
sweetness and wonder that such little
things can make a mortal so exceed
ingly rich ! But I must confess that
the chiefest of all my delights is still
the religious." He tells us that the
doctrine of the Trinity was given up
by him while a youth. In the same
period he seems to have had troubles
on the subject of immortality, for in
a letter to Miss Frances Power Cobbe,
written May 5, 1848, he writes : —
" When I was a large boy, and had
felt more than I had reflected, I heard
a minister preach on the immortal
life. He told the arguments for it;
said they were all of no value;
guesses, but hardly at truth, only
ajter it : the only sufficient proof
was the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Boy as I was, I saw the folly of that
as an argument to prove an universal
propositibn ; but, boy as I was, I
could not reason the matter out, and,
in default of understanding, prove my
immortality ; so I felt constrained to
doubt — almost to deny it. Some
weeks passed over, weeks of tor
ment ; at last, spontaneous Nature

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD.

came to my help, and I settled the
question, not intellectually and by
philosophy, but sentimentally — in the
child's way, not the man's. It was
not till years after that I found a
philosophy that satisfied the intel
lectual demands, and helped me to
prove it to myself." Summing up
the spiritual experiences of Parker's
boyhood, Mr. Frothingham thinks
that, though there was then, as
throughout life, a tendency to melan
choly — a great capacity for sorrow —
his humour and spiritual healthiness
saved it from ever becoming unwhole
some. Reverting again to that which St.
Paul terms " first," and which King
James' translators, for want of a
better term, have rendered "natural,"
we find that in due time the little
Theodore was promoted from the
petticoats of the child to the frock
and trousers of the boy. This pro
cess, so welcome to most little fellows,
was distasteful to him. " I remem
ber that I cried, and struggled most
bitterly against the new dress ; and,
when my legs were squeezed into
their new envelopes, I was so ashamed
that I went into the fields to hide
myself." The poverty of his parents
demanded that he should become a
working member of the family as
soon as he could steady himself upon
two stout legs. The problem ever to
be worked out in the homestead was
the familiar one — how to make ends
meet. The land was exhausted and
produced little, the chief income
having to come from the millwright's
shop ; and this, too, was small.
Parker's father's portion of the farm
had been sold to pay the debt in
curred through him becoming surety
for a brother who had failed. There
was much sickness — principally here
ditary disease, aggravated by an un
wholesome situation — in the family ;
and it was rare that the homestead
was free from the visits of the doctor.
The means of living were accordingly

very scanty, and left no margin for
even the commonest luxury. Though
Theodore's boyhood was generally
healthy, he had, as a child, a dan
gerous attack of typhoid fever which
threatened his life ; and, at another
time, a severe attack of dysentery.
In such circumstances all who could
must work; for "he that will not,
neither shall he eat," was a law en
forcing itself. " My first Christian
ministry was attending on old age,"
says Parker in his Sermon of Old Age.
In other words, his first work was to
carry the drink upstairs to his vener
able grandmother twice a day — at
II a.m. and 4 p.m. Then, soon he
had all the chips to gather up, the
wood for the fire to carry in, and,
when a little older, to drive the cows
to pasture and carry grain to the
horse and oxen. In the workshop
he learned to hold the chalk-line, to
know the different tools, and fetch
them. He loved "tackling," and
became an expert worker in wood.
When a mere child he had, along
with a companion little more com
petent, to take the peach crop the
ten miles to Boston market. Long
before his strength was adequate to
such tasks, he was employed in the
laying ,of a stone wall, the strain of
which, he used to say afterwards, was
a permanent injury to his constitu
tion. ' And no doubt much of the
ill-health which weakened and de
pressed his manhood had its source
in the excessive labours of his child
hood. During the last two years he re
mained at home — from seventeen to
nineteen — he filled the place of a full
field-hand on the farm, digging,
ploughing, haying, walling, working
in the millwright's shop, doing miscel
laneous jobs in carpentry, and putting
his conscience into all that he did. He
appears to have been doing more work
than an ordinary workman does, and
more study than an ordinary student
does —to have been two men at least—

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

in one man's time. " He worked as
if toil was his whole occupation ; he
studied as if study was his whole
delight." He himself thus relates
his first experiences of manual toil : —
"As my relatives and neighbours
were all hard-working people, living
in one of the most laborious com
munities in the world, I did not fail
to learn the great lesson of personal
industry, and to acquire power of
work — to begin early, to continue
long, with strong and rapid stroke.
The discipline and habit of bodily
toil were quite easily transferred to
thought, and I learned early to apply
my mind with exact, active, and long-
continued attention, which outward
things did not disturb ; so, while work
ing skilfully with my hands, I could
yet think on what I would. "
As , to the story of his school
ing : when barely six years old
he began to attend the little brown
schoolhouse of the district. It was
nearly a mile from his home by the
cart-path ; but, by crossing the fields,
and putting stepping-stones across the
brook, he made the distance con
siderably shorter. For two years he
was sent, both winter and summer ;
but from eight to sixteen he only
went for twelve weeks each winter.
One day, as the little boy was trudg
ing along alone across the fields, an
incident occurred to him which im
pressed him deeply. He was over
taken by an old man with a grey
beard, and of patriarchal aspect, who
talked with him on the way, telling
him what a bright boy might be and
do — what he might be and do— and
then disappeared as unaccountably as
he came. Who he was Parker never
knew, and in after life he used to refer
to the little adventure in a way that
betrayed a half-superstitious belief in
the visitation. It made the boy, as
he afterwards records, "begin to
think he might be somebody." But
the probability is it was this feeling
being in his breast already which

made the incident to so deeply influ-.
ence him ; for, all through, . Parke?
believed in the righteousness of the
longing for fame and distinction.!
This comes out in his Journalin 1844, ''¦
where he gives an account of how
gratified he once was at an examina
tion of the district school. "A spec
tator, one of the general committee of
the town, asked my father, who
was that fine boy who spoke up so
smart. My father said, ' Oh, that
is one of my boys — the youngest.'
When my father told it at home that
John Murray had asked so, I felt a
deep joy ; not so much for my own
sake as for the satisfaction it seemed
to give my father. I like this ap
plause that comes up in the deep
ground-tones of humanity — all other
I care little for." And at one of
his Saturday afternoon Conversations
with his members, five years later, he'
said, " We love to measure ourselves,
that we may know our power ; and
approbation is welcome, as assuring
us of success ; but the true test of the
purity of our feeling is whether we
are also rejoiced to see another re
ceive greater approbation for a better
thing. A desire of future fame is
only better than that of present ap
plause as it is an appeal to mankind
in its sanity and wisdom. To a great
soul the presence of a superior is
the greatest of blessings."
His first school-teacher was a wo
man — Mary Smith, familiarly known
as "Aunt Pattie." It was about
this time that he had, towards a
little girl of the neighbourhood, one
of those infantine inclinations which
most bright children somehow experi
ence, and which generally leave life
long and fragrant impressions behind
them. " I was about seven years
old," wrote he to Mr. George Ripley
one time, " when a very pretty little
girl made her appearance at our hum
ble village school. She was from
seven to eight years of age. She
fascinated me to such a degree that I

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD.

could no longer look at my books, and
I was scolded for not having got my
lessons : a thing that had never hap
pened to me before, and thatnever hap
pened to me again after the departure
of the little fairy. She remained only
a week with us, and I wept bitterly
when she went away. She was so
pretty ! I dared not speak to her ;
but I liked to walk round her, like a
butterfly round a flower in the fields.
She was called Narcissa. She fell
into the ocean of time, and dis
appeared, before I had attained my
eighth year."
About a year after, a man named
John Hastings became his teacher.
This pedagogue has not left a good
character, either as a scholar, teacher,
or disciplinarian, nor had he any
vivid recollection in after life of his
distinguished pupil. During Hastings'
reign, Theodore, then eight years old,
appears to have dearly loved play,
and was never left out of any game.
Base-ball, bows and arrows, and pop
guns were successively the fashionable
juvenile games of the period. Most
male readers will remember that the
pop-guns are usually, made of quills,
and loaded with pieces of potato, and
that the pushing in of a rammer com
presses the air, and sends out the
vegetable with a loud "pop." Theo
dore got his elder brother to make
him one of the largest calibre, which
he took next day to school. In the
midst of tuition, when all was quiet,
a loud and sudden "pop" startled
the master and all the scholars— but
one. "Who fired that gun?" said
the master, looking round with in
quisitive eyes. But, at that moment,
no boy was working so hard as
Parker — his lips were spelling words
with prodigious abandonment, and
for this time the master had to remain
" at fault." The complete success of
the first experiment did not fail to
tempt the boy to a second. But this
time Hastings looked up a second too
soon. Theodore was caught in the

act. He was reprimanded, and, most
unwillingly, had to consign his dar
ling instrument to the flames with his
own hand. This anecdote was told
by Parker one night at Brooklyn,
after a lecture there at which he met
his old schoolmaster, but the latter
had quite forgotten the occurrence.
Hastings left when Theodore was
about ten, and his place was taken by
a much superior master. This was
William Hoar White, then a student
at Brown University, and afterwards
a Unitarian Minister. He taught
Theodore for two winters, taking
great interest in him, and leading
him on past the prescribed line of
study to Latin and Greek. He felt
Mr. White's loss greatly ; but his
place was soon taken by another ex
cellent master, also a student of Brown
University — Mr. George Fiske, whd
taught for three winters. Both these
young men were procured for the
school by Mr. Parker's father, who
always took a great interest in getting
the best possible education for the
children of the district. Readers of
Parker's Atheism, Theism, and the
Popular Theology will remember that
it is to these two early instructors
that the author gratefully dedicated
the volume. His gratitude to Mr.
White is known to have extended
still further than this ; for he also be
friended his family, and for years paid
the cost of a generous education for
his daughter. Twenty-five years after
receiving Mr. White's instruction,
Parker is found thus genially writing
to him : — "Dear friend, I found your
letter in the Boston Post Office yes
terday, and thank you most heartily
for remembering an old scholar who
has never thought of you but with gra
titude and affection. I supposed you
had forgotten me, or I should have
sent you my little publications before.
I did not know that you would take
an interest in one whom you so much
befriended twenty-five years ago.
But, trust me, I have inquired all

12

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

about you with the greatest interest.
If the boy, Theodore, was affectionate,
I think you will find the man is the
same old sixpence. I may be
'proud' and very ' wicked' for
aught I know ; I will not say I am
not — you shall come and see— But,
at least, I do not forget my old
teacher." But, if Messrs. White and
Fiske were good teachers to him, he
was an apt and distinguished scholar
to them. He was always studying,
in school and out. He showed
Oliver Twist's desire even in connec
tion with home lessons — a very rare
occurrence, we should think. And
though he had "more" given him,
he still was not satisfied. In the
summer noons, when the other hands
indulged in a nap under the trees,
the winter evenings, and the summer
mornings, the time was diligently im
proved. Both in quantity and quality
of scholarship he was over all the
boys in the school. The only pupil
that at all approached him was a girl
— Marianne Smith by name. This,
perhaps, may in part explain his high
appreciation of woman all through
his subsequent life, and the conviction
he ever held that there is no such
thing as sex in mind.
He was little less popular with his
schoolmates than with his masters.
It is true that in this his great quan
tity of character, his gravity, his keen
ness for the ridiculous, and his great
powers of mimicking the gait, gesture,
tone of voice, and pet phrases of
other boys, to say nothing of his out-
rivalling them in scholarship, stood
somewhat in his way ; but his kind
ness and love of fun disarmed the
jealousy his superiority might have
excited, and overcame the awe his
gravity would naturally inspire. He
was apt to be rough at play, and to
tumble his comrades about in a
shaggy fashion, as if with great hu
morous paws. But if he was un
couth, he was never tyrannical. He
never himself bullied, and, more, he

would not stand by and see bullying
on the part of others. But though
generally liked, he appears to have
had no particular favourites or com
panions. This, no doubt, came from
none of the boys being sufficiently
his equal ; for true companionship,
like true marriage, can only be of
equivalents. He had great influence
among the boys, and was much re
spected by them, more especially the
last year or two he was at school.
They then not only asked his aid in
the accomplishment of difficult tasks,
but also made" him the arbiter of
their disputes. Wonderfully clever
as he showed himself, his schooling
was not as extensive as that boys
ordinarily receive. The whole he
received, up to the age of sixteen,
was only equivalent to about three
years of continuous instruction ; and,
being broken, was by no means so
effective. But this, with a single
quarter at Mr. Huntington's better-
class school, dignified with the name
of " The Academy," at Lexington,
where he mastered Colburn's Algebra
in twenty days, was all the schooling !
Parker had. The costly indulgence "
of the quarter at the Academy was
had at an expense of eighteen shil
lings, which was afforded by the boy's
self-denial in foregoing the accom
plishment of dancing, which most of
the young folks of his own age were
learning to enjoy about that lime.
Certainly, it augured well for She
young man's future that he could
bring himself to sacrifice the figures
of the dance for the figures of Al
gebra. All through his boyhood Parker
was a most assiduous reader. He
read every book he could lay his
hands upon. Even those books which
the cautious father thought unfit for
one so young, and which were put
away on the highest shelf, were dis-
covered by the young bookworm,
and examined when his father was
away at the shop. AU the books '¦

BIRTH AND BO YHOOD.

'3

his father got from the village library,
all his schoolmaster could lend him.
all lying about the house, were eagerly
devoured. " Homer and Plutarch I
read before I was eight ; Rollin's
Ancient History about the same time ;
and lots of histories, with all the
poetry I could find, before ten. I
took to metaphysics about eleven or
twelve. Father and mother always
read the books first, and examined
me in every book I read. If I could
not give a good account of it, I must
not have another until I could satisfy
the rigorous demands of father. At
ten I began to study Latin. I began
Greek at eleven. Natural Philosophy,
Astronomy, Chemistry, and Rhetoric
I studied by myself." His father
being too poor to buy many books,
Theodore had to devise the means of
doing so for himself. He hit upon
the idea of going into the fields and
gathering whortleberries, and then
selling them at Boston ; and it was
thus that the purchase-money of
the first book of the library which,
before his death, reached 11,000
volumes, and which he bequeathed to
the City of Boston, was raised. All
this time the boy was also taking a
deep interest in the political matters
recorded in the bi-weekly Columbian
Sentinel, which found its way into
the homestead. He had all the
political events of the country at his
tongue's end, and talked so sensibly
about them that the old people of
the village used to pretend to oppose
him for the purpose of hearing him
argue ; for the power of giving out
came to him along with the capacity
of taking in. So early as eight he
began to make verses, and his first
school-composition, in verse, on "The
Starry Heavens," disappointed his
master only in being too short.
Then, too, additional to the real world
outside him, he found an ideal world
to study within him. " When I was
a boy," he subsequently wrote to his
sweetheart, "I had always a world

of my own ; an ideal creation, where
I could roam and luxuriate at ran
dom. Many a time have I strayed
from the right path, and gone far
beyond my stopping-place, while I
was brooding over some scheme not
yet accomplished. How often has
my plough run upon a rock while I
was expounding law, making speeches
in the senate, or astounding men with
a display of intellectual power, fitly
put forth in my imaginary Utopia."
At ten he made a catalogue of all
the vegetable productions, trees, and
shrubs which grew upon the farm ;
and for many he could not find the
names of, he invented fanciful ones
himself. In other researches also
he studied the great book of nature,
while reading those of print and
paper. The rare specimens of trees,
plants, and shrubs, in the garden of a
neighbouring gentleman, the foreign
fruits which he saw in Boston market,
the tropical husks and leaves which
came wrapped around bales of mer
chandise, tea-chests, and other boxes,
roused his admiration and further
stimulated his love of nature. He
was also interested in the conforma
tion of the hills of his own and other
districts ; wanting to know why those
about his home had all their steep
sides towards the south and east,
and asking strangers he met if the
hills were so in other districts, but
generally geiting the answer, " I den
know." When he was fourteen a
| neighbour brought him a bit of brown
oxide of manganese, which he said
abounded on his son's farm in Ver
mont, and wanted to knowwhat it was.
Theodore could not tell him at first ;
but, after weeks of experimenting
with the rude chemical apparatus
he had constructed, he was enabled
to do so. Like many other poor
boys, he had ".the pursuit of know
ledge under difficulties." But diffi
culties with him were matters to be
overcome, and he assimilated the
knowledge all the more thoroughly

'4

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

through having to get at it through
the difficulties.
When a. boy, as all through life,
he had a. prodigious memory. This
he in part inherited from his mother ;
but he enlarged its power by keeping
it bright and in constant service. At
ten he could repeat a poem of 500 or
1000 lines after a single reading, or a
song from hearing it once. He used
to commit the hymn to memory as
the minister gave it out, and knew it
when the choir rose to sing. When
ever walking with a companion, at a
later period, it was his custom to
recite from poems, like Wordsworth's
"Excursion," almost by the hour.
One time, when at Harvard, a fellow-
student found him standing in the
Hall opposite a large chart filled with
statistics and historical data, from
Adam downwards : he was commit
ting it to memory ! " Was there,"
asks Mr. Frothingham, " ever such
a memory ? It never lost a fact." In
1857, thirteen years after his visit to
Europe, he wrote to a friend in
Venice, "Please look at the Viaggi
da Giovanni Gabota (or Gaboti, or
Gabbotti), in the Ducal Library, and
give me the exact title. It used to
be the comer book, in the corner of
the library next the Canale Grande,
on the lowest shelf. The book is in
no catalogue in America ; and men
say there is no such. " One day he
recited, without hesitancy, a comic
song of more than a dozen verses ;
and said, when asked where he had
learned it, "I never read it in my
life ; but when I was twelve years
old my brother brought me to Boston
to the Museum, and a man sang it
there. "1 He was then forty years of
age. Dr. Nathan Lord, of Dart
mouth, an apologist for slavery in the
days when slavery had apologists
amongst divines, stated, in a lecture,
as a fact, that the black Africans
were largely descended from the
Canaanifes, whose name was derived
from Cain, the first murderer ; whence

he assumed it to be quite probable
that the blackness was a brand set on
them ; a mark of reprobation. A
friend, being in Parker's study, asked_
him where Dr. Lord could have found
the fact that the black Africans
were descended from the Canaanites.
"He got it," said Parker, "from
Grotius' De Veritate;" and went to
the shelf to verify the statement.
The book was not there, but a
narrow, empty space where it usually
stood. " Miss Stevenson must have
lent the book : I have not. The
statement you refer to occurs in that
volume. " Then he proceeded to say
how far along in the book it was,
how far down the page, and on which
page it was printed. "Have you
read the book lately?" asked the
friend. "No ; not for many years :
I never read it but once." " Is the
passage v associated with any incident
in your experience, that you recall it
so readily?" "No; I recollect it
simply as a part of the contents of
the book." The passage was after
wards found where Parker's memory
indicated. As a boy he was an impassioned
declaimer, and one time at a public
entertainment he was loudly ap
plauded for the excellent way in
which he recited an extract from
Scott's "Marmion," and showed his
wonderful powers of mimicry — which,
in afterlife, so often "set the table
in a roar," at his house at West
Roxbury and Boston — by playing the
part bf a Catholic priest in some
juvenile theatricals.
He was an affectionate, grateful,
and revering son. He ever loved
to speak of his parents ; the anni
versaries of their births or deaths
were generally recorded and tenderly
remarked upon in his private diary,
His advent and absence from the
home of his boyhood made it grow
dearer to him every year, while the
memory of his father and mother was
precious with him to the last. But not

BIRTH- AND BOYHOOD.

IS

only to father and mother was he a
favourite ; he was a light and a joy to
the whole household. He had plenty
of entertaining talk, was a most amus- '
ing joker, and brimful of fun. He
loved the animals on the farm almost
as if they had been human beings.
He had a name for each, made them
to bold imaginary conversations, and
rendered their habits into parables.
Grand as are his published Prayers to
even one who knows nothing of their
author, how much more beauty is
seen in them when interpreted by the
circumstances of his homestead life?
And it is not surprising that one who
showed such love for dumb creatures
should have contended — as he does in
his Sermon of Providence— -for their
probable immortality.
It ought to be recorded, too, as an
evidence of the nice sense he had of
filial duty, that, whenever he left
home for any purpose of his own
during the busy season on the farm,
he always hired a labourer to do his
work ; and when, at nineteen, he left
home for good to become a teacher,
he continued until he was twenty-one
to pay a labourer — his cousin — to do
his work on his father's farm. His
father objected, but he insisted that
it would be unjust to use him better
than the other boys before him.
At seventeen he ,became a militia
man. To the English reader, knowing
only of present-day English militia
men, this will appear strange. But
the militia of New England, which
Parker joined, was a much different
organisation — more like our English
yeomanry. It was to this militia that
his heroic grandfather belonged, and
the grandson never lacked the warlike
spirit. Later on we shall have to re
cord how he had at one time to write
his sermon, with two loaded pistols on
his desk lying ready for the defence
of his house and its inmates. Like
Dr. Channing, he could never sub
scribe to the doctrine of " non-resist
ance." He believed in the militia,

and, as already remarked, he trained
in it. Into this, also, he entered most
thoroughly. He was made clerk of
the company ; some say he rose to be
lieutenant, others as high as ensign ;
but of his exact promotion there ap
pears to be now no certain informa
tion. Let this chapter be concluded with
Theodore's own comments upon the
main matters which occupy it. "Few
men have ever been more fortunate
than I in having pains taken with
their intellectual culture. My early
education Was not costly, as men
count expense by dollars ; it was ex
ceedingly precious, as they might
reckon outlay by the fitness of the
process to secure a development of
natural powers. By father and mo
ther, yes, even by brothers and
sisters, great and unceasing care was
taken to secure powers of observation,
that the senses might grasp their
natural objects ; of voluntary atten
tion, fixed, continuous, and exact,
which, despite of appearances, sees
the fact as it is — no more, no less ; of
memory, that holds all things firm as
gravitation, and yet, Uke that, keeps
them unmixed, not confusing the
most delicate outline, and reproduces
them at will, complete as a whole,
and perfect in each part ; much stress
was laid also on judgment and in
ventive imagination. It was a great
game they set me to play ; it was also
an advantage that the counters cost
little money, but were common things,
picked up daily on a farm, in a
kitchen, or a thoughtful mechanic's
shop. I was taught self-reliance,
intellectual, and of many another
form ; to investigate all things with
my own eyes ; carefully to form
opinions for myself, and while I be
lieved them reasonable and just, to
hold and defend them with modest
firmness. Inquiry was encouraged in
all directions.
" Of course, I took in many of the
absurd theological opinions of the

i6

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

time ; but I think few New-Eng-
landers born of religious families in
the first ten years of this century

were formally taught so little super^
stition."

CHAPTER III.
The Schoolmaster and Student.
" For all the trials of my earlier day,
I thank Thee. Father, that they all have been ;
That darkness lay about the rugged way
Which I must tread alon.e. For all I've seen
Of disappointment, sorrow, pain, and loss,
I thank Thee for them all. And did I sin,
I grieve not I've been tried ; for e'en the cross
Of penitence has taught me how to win.
Yet, of the ills as child or man I've borne, —
My hopes laid waste, or friends sent off by death,
Remorse has most of all my bosom torn
For time misspent, ill deeds, or evil breath.
But yet for every grief my heart has worn.
Father, I thank Thee, still trusting with hearty faith." Theodore Parker.

AT the age of seventeen Parker be
came what may be termed a win
ter schoolmaster ; that is, he became
a school teacher during the winter,
when there was little work to be done
on the farm ; but continued a farm
labourer at home during the summer,
when there was much. This arrange
ment he pursued for four winters.
The first, that of 1827, he took charge
of the district school in Quincy ; the
second, in North Lexington ; the
third, in Concord ; and the fourth, in
Waltham. When offering himself for
the school at one of the places, an
amusing incident is recorded to have
happened. The old Chairman of the
committee, an up-country specimen,
more fitted to be receiving instruction
in a school than the governor and
director of one, when Theodore ap
peared before the board, asked gruffly
— " What's your name?" "Theo
dore Parker." " Where do you
belong?" "Lexington." "Be you
the son of Captn. Parker who fit the
Battle of Lexington? " " No, I am
his grandson." " What ! be you
Captn. Parker's grandson, who fit
that battle?" "Yes, sir." . "Well,
then, I guess you'll do to keep our
school. " Of course, the reader will

perceive the lack of- logic in the
reasoning which led the chairman to
conclude that the grandson of a good
"fi'ter" must necessarily make a
good teacher. But those were days
when schoolmasters sometimes needed
to be able to fight their boys, or they
would have had no chance of teaching
them. Even though this had not
been so, the old Chairman's logic was
just as good as that which has ruled
in the appointment made to many a
much higher office, when it has been
given a man simply because he hapJ
pened to have been the son of his
father. Into his teaching, as into every
thing he undertook, Parker threw his
whole soul, and any leisure it left him
he devoted to his own studies. A
young woman, who came to him at
Waltham, desired to be taught French.
Theodore knew nothing of the lan
guage, but he at once procured the
necessary elemental books, and taught
the young woman it as he learned it
himself. Out of the twenty- five shil
lings per week, or so, he received for
school-teaching, he paid his substitute
at the farm, his own board, for such
poor clothing as he had, and bought
second-hand books. Pecuniarily he

THE SCHOOLMASTER AND STUDENT.

17

had thus all he could do. There was
a complaint of him at Waltham, that
he required too much of his pupils —
insisted upon too strict discipline, and
gave them too many lessons. The
probability is that he was led into this
by judging other boys anent himself;
anyhow, it was a failing which " leant
to virtue's side. "
At twenty years old he became
an out-door student of Harvard Col
lege, under circumstances which will-
be detailed in' the next chapter.
It is to somewhere about this
period that the following reminis
cences, written near the close of
life, would seem to belong : " After
my general preliminary education
was pretty well advanced, the hour
came when I must decide on my
profession for life. In my early boy-
boyhood I felt I was to be a minister,
and looked forward with eager long
ings for the work to which I still
think my nature itself an ' effectual
call,' certainly a deep one, and a
continuous. All about me there were
ministers who had sufficient talents ;
now and then one admirably endowed
with learning ; devout and humane
men, also, with no stain on their
personal character. But I did not see
much in the clerical profession to
attract me thither : the notorious
dulness of the Sunday services, their
mechanical character, the poverty and
insignificance of the sermons, the un-
naturalness and uncertainty of the
doctrines preached on the authority
of a 'divine and infallible revela
tion,' the lifelessness of the public
prayers, and the consequent heedless
ness of the congregation, all tended
to turn a young man off from becom
ing a minister. Besides, it did not
appear that the New England clergy
were leaders in the inteUectual, moral,
or religious progress of the people ;
if they tried to seem so, it was only
the appearance which was kept up.
' Do you think our minister would
dare tell his audience of their actual

faults?' — so a rough blacksmith once
asked me in my youth. ' Certainly
I do ! ' was the boyish answer.
' Humph ! ' rejoined the smith, ' I
should like to have him begin, then!'
The genius of Emerson soon moved
from the clerical constellation ahd
stood forth alone, a fixed and solitary
star. Dr. Channing was the only
man in the New England pulpit who
to me seemed great. All my friends
advised me against the ministry — it
was 'a narrow place, affording no
opportunity to do much !' I thought
it a -wide place. The legal profession
seemed to have many attractions. There
were eminent men in its ranks, rising
to public honours, judicial or pblitical ;
they seemed to have more freedom
and individuality than the ministers.
For some time I hesitated, inclined
that way, and made preliminary
studies in the law. But at length the
perils of that profession seemed
greater than I cared to rush upon.
I could not make up my mind to
defend a cause I knew to be wrong,
using all my efforts to lead judge or
jury to a decision I thought unjust.
Though I hesitated some time, soon as
I got clearness of sight I returned to
my first love, for that seemed free
from guile. I -then asked myself
these three questions: — 1. 'Can you
seek for what is eternally true, and
not be blinded by the opinions of any
sect, or of the Christian Church ; and
can you tell the truth you learn, even
when it is unpopular and hated ? '
I answered, ' I can ! ' Rash youth
is ever confident. 2. ' Can you seek
the eternal right, and not be blinded
by the statutes and customs of men,
ecclesiastical, political, and social ;
and can you declare that eternal right
you discover, applying it to the actual
life of man, individual and associated,
though it bring you into painful rela
tions of men?' Again I swiftly
answered, ' I can.' 3. ' Can you.
represent in your life that truth of the
intellect and that right of the con-
c

i8

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

science, and so not disgrace with your
character what you preach with your
lips ? ' I doubted of this more than
the others ; the temptation to personal
wickedness seemed stronger than to
professional deceit — at least it was
then better known ; but I answered,
' I CAN. TRY, AND WILL 1' Alas !
I little knew all that was involved
in these three questions and their
prompt, youthful answers. I under
stand it better now. So I determined
to become a minister, hoping to help
mankind in the most important of all
human concerns, the development of
-man's highest powers. "
When Parker left the homestead
permanently, which he did in March,
183 1, it was to commence an engage
ment he had made to be an assistant
teacher in a private school at Boston.
At first the salary he received was
his board and about thirteen shillings
per week ; but he soon gave so much
satisfaction that this was increased to
board and fifteen shillings per week,
and the increase antedated from the
commencement of the engagement.
When he left home, the whole of his
worldly possessions — less than a score
of books, his scant stock of clothing,
and a few other things — were contained
in a large wooden box, covered with
painted cloth. But, considering what
he was conveying away in his head
and his heart, the paucity of his
material possessions was a matter of
little moment. For, it is with what
men have in themselves, not with
what they have in their trunks, that
they fight a good fight in the world.
Parker afterwards thus described his
going forth — "A raw boy, with
clothes made by country tailors,
coarse shoes, great hands, red lips,
and blue eyes, I went to serve in a
private school, where I taught Latin,
Greek, subsequently French and Span
ish — both of which I could read and
write, though not speak — the mathe
matics, and all sorts of philosophy.
I taught in the school six hours a day,

and from May to September, seveni
but I always- had from ten to twelv|
hours a day for my own private*
studies out of school. Judge if I did
not work : it makes my flesh creep
to think how I used to work, and
how much I learned that year and
the four next. Had not I a constitif
tion for a scholar? Oh, that I had
known the art of life, or followefi
some book, or some man to tell me
how to live, to study, to take ex
ercise, &c. But I found none, and so
here I am." Parker wrote thus to
his friend Dr. S. G. Howe, the well-
known Boston philanthropist, about
two months before his death. His
constitution was then completely worn
out, and he was paying the penalty,
as he had had to do through all his
intervening life, for having enlarged
his mind at the sacrifice of his body.
He had left home with a powerful
constitution, undoubtedly; but ten or
twelve hours a day of study, in addi
tion to teaching six or seven, soon
made inroads upon it. In three
months he lost twenty-eight pounds
in weight ; and how could so much
close confinement, insufficient food,
little sleep, and extreme tension ol
all the powers result otherwise ? Men
can overdraw their health account as
they can overdraw their banker's;
and by pursuing unnatural courses they
may make themselves the servants
thereof. Parker did both during tffll
time he was a teacher. His insolvency
of health, and his continuance in
courses which he yet knew were in
juring him, were the after penalties.
For even at this time incidental symp»
toms of paralysis, in the form of pricjll
ing sensations and numbness of thf
limbs and sides had begun to give him
unheeded and unapprehended warn
ings of the unwisdom of his course,
Twenty-seven years afterwards he
himself had fully come to this con
clusion, for he then writes — " If I
could be well, well enough to -work,
and do a man's duty, I should be

THE SCHOOLMASTER AND STUDENT.

19

glad ; yet that is not a thing I ever
mention in my prayers. I am con
tent to pay the price of violating the
laws of the body in struggling for an
education, though I knew not what I
did." But not only was he sacrificing
his health at the shrine of knowledge
in the Boston school ; he was sacri
ficing his affectional nature too. He
would not spare time for either ac
quaintanceship or friendship; and this
to a young man who had come from
a home so full of affection and society
was indeed a deprivation. No won
der that his unsatisfied heart at times
rebelled, and wrung from his pen such
confessions as this : — ", I want some
one always in the arms of my heart
to caress and comfort ; unless I have
this I mourn and weep."
He made matters still worse by
making his otherwise never-failing
supporter — religion — into an addi
tional mental study at the time ; and
this, too, in one of its most re
pulsive aspects, namely, as it appears
in Calvinism. " For a year, though
born and bred among Unitarians, I
had attended the preachings of Dr.
Lyman Beecher, the most powerful
orthodox minister in New England,
then in the full blaze of his talents
and reputation, and stirred also with
polemic zeal against Unitarians, Uni-
versalists, Papists, and Infidels. I
went through one of his ' protracted
meetings,' listening to the fiery words
of excited men, and hearing the most
frightful doctrines set forth in sermon,
song, and prayer. I greatly respected
the talents, the zeal, and the enter
prise of< the able man, who certainly
taught me much, but I came away
with no confidence in his theology ;
the better I understood it the more
self-contradictory, unnatural, and
hateful did it seem. A year of his
preaching about finished all my respect
for the Calvinistic scheme of theo
logy." It is worthy of remark that
this, too, was the effect which it had
upon Dr. Beecher's own sons and

daughters. His daughter, Harriet
Beecher, the authoress of Uncle Tom's
Cabin, is well known to be a. Uni
versalis! ; his son, Henry Ward
Beecher, has declared that if he had
to worship the God of the Calvinist
he would have to address Him as
" Our Fiend, "not as "Our Father ;"
and other members of the family
have taken'theological positions alike
liberal. Another thing which weighed Par
ker down was his inability to save
money towards paying for his intended
college course. Fifteen shillings a
week, and out of this for the first five
months to have to pay a substitute on
his father's farm, left little room for
saving — let the economy practised be
never so close. His prospects of
entering College thus appearing so
small, prevented him from feeling
even the hope which otherwise would
have been likely to have done so
much to sustain him. All things
considered, it was a fortunate thing
for him that his life in Boston only
lasted for one year.
When he removed, which he did in
April, 1832, it was to Watertown,
where he took the second story of a
building which had once been a
bakery, and opened a school of his
own. '(He had relatives living in the
town, and, probably, it was their
advice which led him to select it for
his venture. He lodged in the house,
of which the old bakery was one of
the outbuildings, with the renter
of the whole, Mr. Nathaniel Broad.
Parker had not only to exercise his
carpentry skill upon fitting up his
humble schoolroom at starting, but
he had all along to be his own atten
dant and porter : sawing, splitting,
and carrying the wood for the stove
in winter, and all the year round
sweeping, dusting, and arranging, in
preparation for the scholars. When
he first opened, these were only two
in number, and one of them a free
scholar — not a very hopeful beginning,.

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

certainly. But, by the end of the
first year, the two increased to thirty-
five, and before he left, at the end of
the second, to fifty-four. The fee was
one shilling and eightpence per week ;
but, much as he needed the money, it
was not with him a fixed rule that
no one-shilling-and-eightpence should
mean no tuition, for many a deserving
boy or girl who was too poor to pay
the fee received from him the best in
struction he could give. It is known
that in the case of one girl he gave
the value of his instructions to her for
a year and a half, and then begged
the schoolmaster who succeeded him
to continue her education on the same
generous conditions.
One thing he was led to do at this
time caused him mortification to the
end of his life. He took in a negro
girl as a scholar, and the parents of
the other children, with the prejudice
of Americans, strongly objecting, he,
in consequence, dismissed her. To
us this appears the most regretable
thing he ever did. But in judging
him let us remember that he had been
brought up where this prejudice ex
isted; that up to this time he had not
given the questions of slavery and
colour much thought; that after he
had, he himself always felt annoyed
at the remembrance, and that he
made ample amends in what he did
for the emancipation and elevation of
the coloured race subsequently.
In his scholars Parker found not
only pupils but society and compan
ionship also. He made himself a
boy with them, united with them in
their games, and gained their affection
and confidence. His own keen sense
of the ridiculous, and almost boyish
love of fun, sometimes made it a most
difficult thing for him to keep serious
when exercising his authority. When
he felt that he must either laugh or
burst, he used to make it a point to
dart into the entry outside, and there
have his "guffaw" out of sight of
the scholars. One day he noticed

two of the boys more intent on their
own play than on the lessons he-had
set them, when the following con
ference ensued between him and One
of them. " What are you doing,
Briggs ? " " Nuthin', sir." " Who
is helping you?" "Tom Barrett,
sir." "Both of you stand out bere,
and let me see how you do it." Ar
rived in the Space before the desk,
Briggs shows the master how he was
doing "nothing," by suddenly taking
his hands out of his pockets, with a
coin in one of them, and uttering the
sharp question — " heads or tans?:"
Forth* time being it was all over with
Theodore's authority : he had barely
time to reach his asylum in the entry.
Several of the boys lodged at Mr.
Broad's along with him, and over
these more especially he exercised a
wise and fatherly oversight. He
keenly felt the responsibility involved
in the direction of so many young
minds, and at times became unhappy
at the thought of his own unfitness
to fully discharge it. But if he was
touched to witness the confidence the
boys put in him, he was also stimu
lated by it to strive to be more and
more helpful to them. He always
opened his school with prayer, rever
ently said grace before meat at Mr.
Broad's table, and in manifold ways
led his young friends in the paths of
religion and reverence. He ever bote
in mind that the scholars came to him
for education, and his great aim was
to give them the most possible. Some
of the children, who had been accus
tomed to the easy tasks of the public
schools, were startled at what he
asked from them. But he felt posi
tive they could accomplish it if they
only had the mind to try, and he had
a most happy power of giving the
mind to them. He had great faith
in the Socratic mode of teaching
children : by making them answer
questions he made them think, and
he soon found the advantage that
arose from teaching boys and girls

THE SCHOOLMASTER AND STUDENT.

21

who thought. He strongly objected
to using manuals of Natural Theology,
declaring that they were attempts to
prove what no child ever thought of
doubting ; and he would often show
how worthless such works are by les
sons to the children, when he would
call forth from their intuitions the
very truths which these books are
purposed to put into their minds from
without. Object-teaching was also a
favourite process with him ; and that
he might more fully follow it, it was his
practice to frequently take his class
abroad in the fields, and give them
instruction as they went along ;¦ the
flora, fauna, geology, &c. , of the dis
trict — as we have already seen — being
well known to him. He thus showed
the scholars that they were not only
to ' ' read " in school and at home,
but also to " mark and learn " when
they went abroad. Above all, he
sought to bring out the religious sen
timent in the children ; his was the
teaching of the Wisdom of the Brah
min : —
' Devoutly look, and nought but wonders
will pass by thee ;
Devoutly read, and then all books will edify
thee;
Devoutly speak, and men devoutly listen to
thee;
Devoutly act, and then the strength of God
acts through thee."
He managed to exercise authority
over the children without their being
aware of it : he led them by love ; he
did not drive them by fear. Only in
one or two instances during his two
years' tuition at Watertown had he
need to speak harshly in reproof.
So strongly did his boys come to
love him, that when he was about to
leave in order to enter College they
clubbed their dollars and dimes to
gether and purchased for him a silver
cup. This procedure was kept secret
from Theodore until the time came
for him to close the school for the last
time. Then Master Briggs stepped
forward, and in what a newspaper re
port would have, no doubt, termed

" an appropriate address," presented
the cup on behalf of the school. The
unexpected token of affection — the
children weeping as the presentation
was made — proved too much for the
recipient. Before he could proceed
with the closing of the school he had
to go out and have " a good cry " by
himself in the entry ; for, intellec
tual as his nature was, it was not a
whit more so than emotional.
Altogether, Parker's lot in Water-
town was much more pleasant than
it had been at Boston. He was out
in the open, not only in the physical
world but in the world of affection,
and he could now take pleasant ex
cursions into both. In summer, es
pecially, he took long afternoon and
morning walks, communing with his
own mind and heart and from time
to time stopping to pursue his bo
tanical researches. Twice a week he
walked to Cambridge, to take lessons
in Hebrew of a member of the Theo
logical School ; and afterwards, he
walked as far as Charlestown, on
Saturdays, in order to have the in
struction from an ' ' Israelite indeed "
—Mr. Seixas, a Jew. Then he found
companionship, additional to that of
his boys. The couple with whom he
lodged were homely, but so kind that
he soon became attached to them ;
and, on the death of Mr. Broad,
which happened during Theodore's
stay at the house, the young teacher
showed "pure and undefiled reli
gion," by helping "the widow in her
affliction" — doing many little jobs
for her, indoors and out, which had
previously been attended to by her
departed husband. Leisure and dis
position for society came as his school
duties became less exacting. There
was the excellent society of his
" Uncle Peter " and his cousins, and
of eight or ten other families in
the place, some of them of wealth
and culture, always open to him ; and
his visits were not more pleasant to
him than to them. The fact that he

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

retained their friendship on to his
death, and that "through good re
port and evil report" they ever con
tinued their confidence in him, will
best relate what a favourable impres
sion he must have made upon them.
In 1873, when Mr. Frothingham issued
his Life, many of the members of
these families were still living, and
not only still holding respect for
Parker's memory but also were con
tinuing disciples of him in matters
pertaining to religion.
In addition to these, Theodore met
with three other persons in Water-
town with whom his life became
linked afterwards. These were Dr.
Francis, the Unitarian minister, Mrs.
Francis, and Miss Lydia D. Cabot.
In the first, Theodore found a learned,
liberal, truth-loving, and affectionate
friend, and that not only while he
stayed in.Watertown, but until death
parted them. In Watertown this
friendship gave to the young teacher
free access to a large and well-selected
library, with the judicious advice and
guidance of its well-read owner — a
patient oracle, who met him in the
library or walked out with him, ever
ready to answer his many questions ;
and on Sundays, a preacher who was
ever showing the adequacy of human
nature for its ends and the riches
and beauty everywhere shed abroad
in the world. Afterwards, it gave him
the advantages of valuable and fre
quent correspondence, and a friendly,
hospitable, and congenial house, at
all times open to his welcome visits.
Theodore ever felt how deeply he
was indebted to the free and scho
larly minister who had thus taken
up, and befriended a bashful young
student, and favoured the generous
unfolding of his mind. If the debt
could not be repaid, it was never for
gotten. As to Mrs. Francis, she ap
pears to have been a good, motherly
woman, kindness itself; graceful in
person and manners, and with a.
strong love of flowers, which the

young master warmly shared. Of
the other close friend mentioned^
Miss Lydia Cabot— we need say no
more here than that she will havefto
be referred to prominently in the
chapter we shall devote to "The
Lover and the Husband. " Of course,
the warm friendship of Theodore;
with the minister of the place soon
led him to take part in church and
school work. He became the super
intendent of the Sunday-school. He
formed a Bible-class, which he taught:
on the Socratic method ; but the un
usual method was used for the con-
veyance of the ordinary Unitarian'
views. Thus far Parker was little of
a religious innovator.
At Watertown, as at Boston, he
worked hard at his own private stu
dies. During the twelvemonth at
the latter place he not only pursued
his mathematical and school les
sons, but he also read the whole of
Homer, *. good deal of Xenophon
and Demosthenes, ^Eschylus, and
many books on metaphysics and phy
sics. The study of German was
added to French and Spanish, and
he learned to write as well as to
read these languages. True, at Mr.
Broad's, circumstances do not appear
to have been favourable to uninter
rupted study, but Theodore rose
above the circumstances, and studied
closely notwithstanding. He had
only a joint tenure of the chamber
he occupied ; a young man, named'
Amphion Sanger, being the other
occupant. Unfortunately for peace
and quietness, Amphion had a fond
ness for the flute ; and when, after tea,
Parker turned to his books, his chum
began to make his reed give forth its
melancholy wails. Expostulation was
in vain. Amphion reminded Theo
dore that he paid just as much rent as
he did, and blew on. But he gene
rally blew himself out by about nine
o'clock, and then Theodore would
keep closely at it till two in the
morning. For, however much oil

THE COLLEGIAN.

n

Mrs. Broad put in the lamp over
night, she mostly found it dry next
morning. With this great man as
with all —
" The heights by great men raised and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight ;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the night.
The achievements in scholarship
during his time at Watertown were
amazing. He gives us his word that,
in addition to his school-work, visit-
ings, courting, &c, he pursued the
study of Latin and Greek authors,
the most of Cicero, Herodotus, Thu-
cydides, Pindar, Theocritus,. Biou,
Moschus (the last four of which he
translated), and ^Eschylus. For his
Sunday-school class he wrote a his
tory of the Jews, which still exists in
manuscript; pushed his studies in

metaphysics, taking up Cousin and
the new school of French philo
sophers ; began the study of Hebrew,
and entered on the study of the
ology. Besides all this, the German
poets, Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock,
and the English Coleridge, occu
pied a portion of his time and
thought. While for custards and
tarts, to accompany the more solid
meat, he turned occasionally to novels
like Scott's, or the poems of Byron,
His examination of the latter, how
ever, led him to strongly condemn
them. " No philosopher ( ! ) who de
nied his God," writes he to Miss
Cabot, "no epicureari who struck at
the distinction of good and evil, has
done so much to corrupt the hearts of
youth, to stagger the minds of the
giddy, as this misanthropic Lord
Byron."

CHAPTER IV,
The Collegian,
"When in the darkness of my early youth,
Stumbling and groping for a better way,
Through riven clouds streamed down the light of Truth,
And made it morning with refulgent ray ;
Along the steep and weary path I trod.
With none to guide and few to comfort me,
I felt the presence of the eternal God ;
That in His hand 'twas blessedness to be.
Finding relief from woes in consciousness of Thee." Theodore Parker,

IN order to chronicle Parker's col
lege career, we shall have to re
vert back to the time when he was just
twenty, working on his father's farm in
summer and teaching in winter. One
day at that time, after getting leave of
absence from his father, he absented
himself from home from early morn
ing till near midnight, none of the
family knowing whither he had gone.
But, when he had returned, he made
his way to the bedside of his father and
himself declared the mystery. Said
he, " Father, I entered Harvard Col
lege to-day." He had spent the day
in walking to Cambridge, undergo

ing and passing the examination, and
walking home again ! If the old man
had been perplexed at his son's strange
absence, he was still more so when
he heard its cause, " But, Theodore,
you know I cannot support you
there," "Father, it shall cost you
nothing. I will stay at home, and
keep up with my class." This he
did for the year ensuing ; working on
the farm as usual, following his
studies; and only going over to Har
vard to undergo the examinations.
And these he underwent more suc-s
cessfully than some who did nothing
else but devote their time to preparar

24'

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

tion for them. But for him being
non-resident, and paying no tuition
fees, the manner he acquitted himself
would have then entitled him to a
degree. It was only the College
rules which stood in the way. Four
years later, on the representation of
his friend, Mr. Francis, he was offered
the usual degree of B.A., on condi
tion he would comply with the rules
by paying over the amount of the
four years' tuition fees. But this he
was too poor at the time to do, and
he continued unhonoured in this re
spect till 1840, when the degree of
M.A. was conferred upon him (hono
ris causd) at the instance of men of
mark, who thought it a disgrace that so
distinguished a son of Harvard should
go unreoognized by his alma mater.
No doubt, if he had been more in
clined to embalm his forefathers and
less inclined to feed their living
children, this University recognition
would have been less tardy in reach
ing him. But degrees mattered little
to Parker. He even objected to
being addressed by correspondents as
" Rev." He was ever contented to
subscribe himself plainly, ' ' Theodore
Parker," and to " Rev.," " Mr.," or
"Dr." him sounds as much out of
order in the ears of some of us as it
would for us to hear "Mr." Socrates
or "Dr." Shakespeare. The world
is powerless to give honour to the
really great, additional to that which
inheres in themselves.
Towards the end of his time at
Watertown, Theodore thus wrote to
Miss Cabot — " I consulted Mr.
Francis about going to Cambridge
soon and joining the present junior
class. He thought it a good plan,
and gave me letters of introduction to
Mr. Ware. I have walked to Cam
bridge this afternoon and seen all the
faculty. Have resolved to make the
attempt, so I shall finish school-keep
ing on the first of April, and remove
to Cambridge, take a room at the
Hall, and commence study. Dili

gent and patient application will en
able me to accomplish by next com
mencement all that the class will by
that time have completed. I shall
study alone all that the class has
yet attempted. Nothing is too much
for young ambition to hope, no emi
nence too lofty for his vision, no ob
stacle too difficult for his exertions,
and no excellence unattainable." His
savings hardly reached £ifi, but with
this amount he was determined to
fight his way at Divinity Hall. The
expenses were not heavy — fourteen
or fifteen pounds a year for tuition and
care of room, and between eight and
nine shillings per week for board in
"commons." At first he unwisely
tried to save the latter expense and in
stead live upon dry bread at a cost of
only two shillings and threepence a
week, but this experiment was soon
given up, and he went to reside at a
boarding-house at such a distance
from the hall that in going to and fro
he must perforce get exercise. Soon
after entering, he was fortunate in an
application he made for a grant from
a fund to assist poor students ; and ¦
this, and teaching a few boys and girls,
made his income — after the second
commencement — nearly as much
yearly as he had saved.
We have various interesting de
scriptions of him as he was at this
time, three of which we quote. Mr.
Frothingham speaks of his "unformed
appearance ; his long, thick hair ; his
dress, neat, but carelessly worn."
Mr. Weiss says—" The report of his
scholarly acquisitions had preceded
him, and the extent of his reading
excited admiration. ' His talk was full
of odd learning and scraps of curious
information. He was crammed from
books and observation, but every
thing lay about in undigested heaps.
All real or imaginary deficiencies
were attacked by him without loss of
time. Classmates have said that he
used to study fourteen hours a day."
" My first and unchanged feeling, ,;

THE COLLEGIAN.

25

says Dr. Bartol, " was of his exube
rant life, restless ambition to excel,
and of an honesty that knew not how
to lie. The ruddy face ; firm and
eager grasp ; the manner, nothing if
not natural ; the smile, frank as spring
and sweet as summer, or ready to
curl with .biting , scorn ; no maiden's
blushing cheek more ingenuously
modest, and no graduate's tongue for
the college, whose privilege was not
his, more ingeniously acute. I re
member him, in the theological de
bates, sitting still in his seat, and
tying noiseless knots in his handker
chief, every one of which, he told
me, meant some argument for which
he had a reply. Doubtless the knotted
silk, in the sham fight of abstract
questions, was practice preliminary to
the woven whip-lash he was to lay on
all the hypocrisies, iniquities, and
superstitions of Church and State."
So much, then, for the personnel of
our student ; we will now hear from
his own pen a description of the life
he led at the Divinity School. "We
have," says he in a letter to his
nephew, " about thirty scholars,
divided into three classes. Some one
of the senior class preaches each Sab
bath evening during the year ; all the
school and some few strangers attend.
Prayers are performed at morning of
every day by Professor Palfrey, and at
evening by one of the senior class.
The junior class to which I belong
recites in Hebrew every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday afternoon ;
attends a lecture upon the criticism
of the New Testament, Monday and
Friday, when we translate the origi
nal, ask questions, and engage in dis
cussion with the Professor. We recite
and discuss the Evidences of Chris
tianity with Dr. Ware every Wednes
day. Tuesday afternoon we have exer
cise in extemporaneous speaking with
Professor Ware, jun., one of the finest
inen I have ever known. Some sub
ject is proposed to the class at one
meeting and discussed at the next.

Saturday morning Mr. Ware delivers
a lecture upon composition of ser
mons, subjects to be treated, &c, to
the whole school. One-third of the
school declaims every Tuesday even
ing. Friday evening the whole
school meet for extemporaneous
speaking. Thursday evening is spent
in a religious meeting. A society for
the promotion of the interests of
humanity, and called the ' Philan
thropic Society,' meets once a fort
night on Wednesday evening. A
report is always read upon some in
teresting subject, such as ' Infidelity,'
' Temperance,' ' License Laws,' by
a committee previously appointed to
investigate the subject. All my
leisure is devoted to translating some
papers of La Fayette, which I am
doing for Mr. Sparks [the historian],
who is going to publish them. I
shall be constantly occupied upon
this translation during the whole of
vacation. Sunday I visit the States'
prison [at-Charlestown], where I have
an interesting class [of prisoners] in
the Sunday-school."
A priori we should expect that in
all this Theodore would find a con
genial sphere. But even the best
opportunities are worth little unless
used ; work alone, after all, availeth.
And our student did work — worked
as scarcely another student has been
known to do. This, as also one or
two interesting traits of character, is
shown in the following description of
him, given by Mr. C. P. Cranch, one
of his college mates. " We all
looked upon him as a prodigious
athlete in studies. He made daily
acquaintance with books which were
sealed books to many old Biblical
scholars, and to us youngsters of the
school were scarcely known even by
name. He would dive into the col
lege library, and fish up huge re
markable tomes in Latin and Greek,
and lug them up to his room, and go
into them as a boarding-school girl
would go into a novel. We soon

26

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

saw what his extraordinary capacities
were of reading and retention. He
literally devoured books. The ra
pidity of his reading was something
wonderful. Great things were pro
phesied of him, but it was thought he
would be little more than a scholar —
an extraordinary book-worm. None
guessed he was to be one of the most
remarkable men of the day in more
ways than one ; that the immense
fund of learning he was laying up was
but his arsenal of weapons with which
later he_ was to do battle for pure,
unadulterated Christianity. His tem
perament seemed one charged full of
electricity, so that he was literally
snapping at times with sparks of fun
and satire. Afterthe long hours of close
study in his library, his mind would
indulge itself in the most boyish and
playful rebounds. He had the keenest
appreciation of the humorous and
the ludicrous. In his sportive and
satiric veins he would throw off the
most amusing conceits and pasqui
nades. His satire was chiefly directed
against the theology and social shams
of the day. His sallies of wit loved
to take a pictorial shape. Had he
possessed a talent for drawing, he
would have been a Hogarth. This
Rabelaisian trait would twinkle con
tinually in his eyes, and lurk about
the corners of his mouth. It was,
however, always tempered and sub
dued by a becoming deference to his
office of teacher and clergyman. I
remember a whimsical and original
joke of his at the Divinity School.
It was a play of animal spirits, a
practical jest, a protest, and a satire
combined. Two or three of us di
vinity students were in full musical
blast at something — fluting or singing,
I forget which — in one of the rooms
of Divinity Hall. Immediately op
posite was Parker's room. He was
evidently engaged in much more
serious study, and more in the line
of his future profession, than we were.
iStill we were quite unaware of our

disturbing him, or we should have*
sunk our music to a pianissimo, >oi
adjourned it to another place or hour.
Theodore had, however, borne with
it some time without protesting.
Presently there was a peculiar ' move
ment ' in the entry, just outside our
door, executed upon a peculiar and
by no means musical instrument — a ¦¦¦
sort of obligato ad libitum bass —
thrown in as an accompaniment to
our strains. On opening the door to
ascertain the nature of these strange
sounds, there was Theodore, who had
left his folios of the Latin fathers, had
rushed into the cellar, and brought
up a wood-horse, saw, and log of
wood, on which he was exercising his
vigorous sinews — see-saw, see-saw —
to our^utter discomfiture and amuse
ment. As for Theodore, he barely
smiled." Experience soon taught him that
successful study called for not only
force and application, but also order
and self-discipline. To the end of
gaining these he made rules for him
self, which were entered in his
journal. The "Monti" rules we
shall refer to in another place, but we
give the "Physical" and "Intel
lectual " ones here. " I. Physical. —
I. Avoid excess in meat and drink.
2. Take exercise in the air at least
three hours a day. 3. Always get
six hours sleep. [To this is added, in
pencil, as an afterthought, "More is
better : seven hours certainly ; eight
hours very often, and always would be
more suitable and proper."] II. In
tellectual. — 1. Explore a subject when
curiosity is awake. Sometimes this
is impossible. Note the subject in a
book and examine as soon as possible
in this manner : — a. By finding out
what I really know upon the subject.
b. Obtaining clear and distinct no
tions in some way. <.. By stating in
words the result of my study, and
repeating till it has made a deep
impression. Sometimes write them
in this book. d. If historical, settle

THE COLLEGIAN.

2/

the time ; writers who related it ;
their character, e. The cause. /
The effect. 2. Keep the mind
obedient to the will, so as to be inde
pendent of external affairs. This
cannot be completely effected, but
may be in a great measure by the
use of certain intermedia, viz. , words
of the poets, &c." No doubt the
intellectual rules just given would be
pretty closely adhered to, but the
physical ones frequently proved like
rules often are — wise resolves made to
be broken. The feeling — "I should
like to finish this," or "This is inter
esting," often proved too much for
the ardent student's rules respecting
sleep and exercise in the open air.
This one gathers from his corre
spondence with his sweetheart. From
time to time we find such sentences as
" Now, don't hang that leaden collar
of 'don't do too much' about my
neck ; " "I more frequently over-eat
than over- work;" and "ten is as
bad for you as one for me.''
We have already seen that the
students had frequent opportunity of
manifesting their debating powers,
and how Parker knotted the "points"
on his handkerchief. He discussed
and knotted to good purpose, for he
soon had to be acknowledged the best
debater in the Hall. In his speeches
he manifested vigour, pointedness,
independent thought, enthusiasm, and
freshness. His first attempts at de
bating were much more promising
than his first attempts at preaching.
But this is likely to have, in part,
arisen from there being much more
reality in the debates than in preach
ing, for mere practice, before the pro
fessors and students. Shams and
shadows, of all things, were unfavour
able to the calling forth of Parker's
powers. Devoted to reading as he was, he
had too much human nature in him
to ever degenerate into a mere Domi
nie Sampson. Close study generally
has the effect of making men unsocial,

but it was not so with Parker. He
could leave the sage nonsense of Ter
tullian, wherein he read that the
soul is material and sky-blue in
colour, or that the deity of Jesus
must be true because it is impossible,
for a little bit of real nonsense, or a
chat in a classmate's room. This
feature saved him from getting cob
webs into his constitution. Still he
would be called a book-worm, as
readers go. The pages of his journal,
begun in 1835, give abundant evidence
of this, They are filled with lists of
books read, or to be read — analyses,
summaries, comments on writers of
every description and in every tongue.
There is Eichorn, Herder, Ammon,
De Wette, Paulo, Philo, the Greek
Historians, the Fathers of the Church,
the Greek and Latin poets, Plato,
Spinoza, the Wolfenbuttel Frag
ments, and a crushing number of
others. The journal not only records
that he read the books ; it also proves
it by the opinions and analyses of
them which its pages bear. He had
a way of going through a book, and
seizing hold of its information and
points, without reading all its words. In
two months, November and December,
1835, the names of sixty-five volumes
are given as having been read in Ger
man, English, Danish, Latin, Greek ;
reaching all the way from " Peter
Simple" to Bouterwek and Rosen-
rmiller. His reading was by no means
confined to theology and criticism.
Goethe, Dante, Tasso, are enjoyed ;
so are the ' ' sweet little wild witch
stories " of Tieck. He got over his
previous objection to novel reading,
and was so pleased with Fielding's
" Tom Jones " that he wrote a page
and a half of appreciative criticism
upon it in his journal, and wonders
'the work had escaped him so long.
" The Lin woods," another novel, he
thought likely to do good, and hoped
it would "in correcting the tone of
society, which I regard as villainous
just now." " Bubbles from the Brua-

28

LIFE Of THEODORE PARKER.

nen," " Gesta Romanorum," "The
Robin Hood Ballads," Ritson's
"Fairy Tales," Bowring's "Poetry
of the Magyars," Longfellow's "Pil
grimage beyond the Sea ; " Heine's
"Germany," Southey's "Doctor,"
"Memoirs of Oberlin," Toulmin's
"Life of Socinus," Bulwer's "Rienzi,"
"Pickwick," "Lalla Rookh," and
too many others to be chronicled,
are all to be found named and com
mented on in the journal.
He tried his hand at poetry ; what
literary young man does not? The
journal, kept during his college days,
contains pieces having for titles the
following :—" To L— a," "Moral
Beauty," "A Vision," "Midnight,"
"Gratitude," "Prayer," "Winter,"
"An Evening Hymn," "To Sad
ness," "Two Songs," "Eternity,"
"A Serenade," "Reflections at
Midnight," "Absence," "Midnight
Musings," "Spring," "The Com
plaint of a Lover," "The Stars,"
"To a Little Flower," "Morning
Hymn," "The Rising Moon," "The
Setting Star," "Stanzas," &c. Those
who have examined these effusions
speak of them as being flowing,
melodious, and sentimental, but
lacking the true poetic fire. But if
Parker had not this, he knew what
it was, as is witnessed by the follow
ing extract from one of his love-
letters : — "I would that I had that
dangerous gift as some call it, but
which Milton terms the 'divine gift,'
— the power of the true poet. He
possesses such a spring of ever-living
water in his own deep and noble
soul, that continually gushes up to his
breast and wells out in all his life.
Who can fail to admire that profound
enthusiasm with which the true poet
regards all nature? Nay, all that
lives and moves, or merely is, has
for him a deep and permanent charm-
ingness. Go where he will he sees
Beauty ; for she dwells in his own
breast, and diffuses her sweet in
fluence over all his eye rests upon,"

He had the perception, but not suffi
cient of the power. From one of
Parker's journal poems, Anf^ven"
ing Hymn," we transcribe the follow
ing :
"All nature cries, great God ! to Thee;
And I will raise my voice.
Uplift mjr feeble minstrelsy,
And bid my heart rejoice.
Thy sun sheds glory in his light,
Deep darkness praises Thee by night ;
But 'tis Thy Spirit makes delight
Great God ! accept the humble prase,
A heart sincere would bring :
My heart's own anthem 'tis I raise,
My soul's desire I sinE.
Glory to Thee, all gracious Lord !
For Thou dost every gift afford,
And gladd'st my spirit with Thy Word.'
Essentially religious himself, his
best poems are those which have
religion for their theme. The finest
he ever wrote — as most think — are
the sonnets addressed to the great
Soul for whom he had ever so much
love and admiration, and the follow
ing — the first — stanza of which was
written while he was at the Divinity
School :
"Jesus, there is no dearer name than thine,
Whieh time has written on his endless
scroll ;
Nor wreaths, or garlands, ever did entwine
So fair a temple of so vast a soul.
Ay, every angel set his glowing seal
Upon thy brow, and gave each human
grace,
In a sweet copy heaven to reveal,
And stamp perfection on a mortal face.
Once on the earth, before dull mortal eyes,
Which could not half thy sacred radiance
see,
E'en as the emmet cannot read the skies,
For our weak orbs reach not immensity,
Ones on the earth wert thou a living shrine,
Where dwelt the good, the lovely, the
divine."
During his college course he ever
kept in view his proposed future
career as a preacher, and the various
sentiments and apothegms to be found
entered up and down his journal and
common-place book show that he
was preserving seed-corns for future
sowing. Here are a few of them : —
" Faith is collective energy." " Love

THE COLLEGIAN.

29

is the perfect action of the whole
soul." "Egyptian bondage brings
Egyptian darkness. " '.' He that has
a principle is inspired." "Religion
is the highest form of love." "Wealth
injures talent more than poverty."
" Under gold hills and thrones per
haps many a spiritual giant lies
buried." "There is a Solomon in
every stupid man, a devil in every
saint." " If you dare not say what
you think, soon you will dare say
what you do not think." " Reason
acknowledges no useless or dangerous
truths." " A new truth can never do
as much harm as an old error."
Many others are found entered, of a
similar character.
The- reader will have discovered,
long ere this, that Parker, in addition
to his other gifts, had a wonderful
faculty for languages. In his devotion
to, and ability to acquire, tongues, he
more than emulated that famous
ancestor of his, of whom he himself
related the following excellent story :
— " A kinsman of mine, one Thomas
Parker, was such a master of the
Oriental tongues that once, when
some of his brother clergymen as
sembled to rebuke • him for some
heresy, he replied in Latin — they re
joined in Latin. He replied in Greek
— they continued in that tongue. He
answered in Hebrew — they questioned
in Hebrew. He then retreated to
the Arabic, where they could not
folldw him, when he bade them go
home and study their primers before
they undertook to school him." But
clever as was the said Thomas Parker,
he would have been worsted in a
battle linguistic with his descendant,
Theodore. He had a wonderful faculty of
finding the key of a language, and
therewith soon enabling himself to
unlock its mysteries. Before he was
twenty-six he had become such a
clever Hebraist that he was ap
pointed to teach that language to a
class of his fellow-collegians, and

when Dr. Palfrey was absent in New
Orleans, in 1836, he took the Princi
pal's place as professor of Hebrew
at the Divinity School. It is not
claimed for him that he thoroughly
mastered all the languages he took up
during his life-time, but he did the
most of them ; and of those he only
tasted, he got a good knowledge of
their quality. His journal and letters
show that he read and studied books
in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch,
Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, modern
Greek, Chaldee, Arabic, Persian,
Coptic, Ethiopic, Russian, Hebrew,
ancient Greek, Latin, English, Anglo-
Saxon, French, and some others.
Altogether, he is described as having
acquired twenty-four languages before
the end of his life, and most of these
he had acquired by the time he was
twenty-four. When he first attempted
Russian he had to give it up, because
of there being no one about him at
the time who could help him to
master the sounds of the alphabet.
Later on, when he again went to live
at Boston, he mastered it so far as to
become acquainted with the patois
that is used by the priests ; and
the Principal of Cornell University
found him as well versed in Rus
sian affairs as he was himself, who
had returned from a residence of
months in the country of the Czar,
Another American Professor — Mr.
Sidney Willard — is said to have
often consulted the young divinity
student upon nice points in linguistic
science. After he had become minister
at Boston, a friend one day stepped
into his study and found him conning
over the grammar of the Mpongwe
tongue, a dialect spoken in one part
of Africa. And when in Paris in
1843, he attended the lectures of the
Arabic Professor, and showed not
only full comprehension but also
capacity to criticise. Pre-eminently,
then, Parker had the advantage which
Niebuhr calls attention to: — "He
has but an imperfect knowledge of a

30

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

people who does not know their
language. "
What were his theological views
when he was a young man at Divinity
Hall? In view of his after-career
of greatest modern Heresiarch, this
question cannot but interest the
reader. We enjoy the advantage of
having it answered by himself. Be
fore he went to the Theological
School he declares that he had given
up "eternal damnation and a wrathful
God," as also the doctrine of the
Trinity. He thus further describes
the state of his mind at this time :
" I had found no evidence which to
me could authorise a belief in the
supernatural birth of Jesus of Naza
reth. The twofold Biblical testi
mony was all ; that was contradictory
and good for nothing ; we had not
the affidavit of the mother, the only
competent human witness, nor even
the declaration of the son ; there was
no circumstantial evidence to confirm
the statement in the Gospels of a
most improbable event. Many mira
cles related in the Old and New
Testaments seemed incredible to me ;
some were clearly impossible, others
ridiculous, and a few were wicked ;
such, of course, I rejected at once,
while I still arbitrarily admitted
• others. The general question of
miracles was one which gave me
much uneasiness, for I had not learned
carefully to examine evidence for
alleged historical events, and had
besides no clear conception of what
is involved in the notion that God ever
violates the else constant mode of the
operation of the universe. Of course
I had not then the philosophic idea
of God which makes a theological
miracle as impossible as a round
triangle, or any other self-evident
contradiction. I had no belief in
the plenary, infallible, verbal inspira
tion of the whole Bible, and strong
doubts as to the miraculous inspira
tion of any parts of it. Some things
were the opposite of divine ; I could

not put my finger upon any grea :
moral or religious truth taught by
revelation in the New Testament
which had not previously been set
forth by men for whom no miraculous
help was ever claimed. But, on the
whole matter of Inspiration i lacked
clear and definite ideas, and found
neither friend nor book to help me."
The foregoing extract was written
near the close of his life, and, through
looking at his youthful days with
his subsequent wide divergences from
the popular theology, he has made
himself more heretical at this time
than he really was. This is shown
by letters written at the time. When
at Watertown he wrote a letter to a
friend, makingmerrywithandsneering
at the sceptics and rationalists of the'
day, though still saying that, in his
judgment, doubtarising from the spirit
of free inquiry is preferable to faith
founded on prejudice: "Ignorance
is not devotion, or the mother of de
votion; and faith which is not founded
upon reason is not faith but folly."
When he had been at Divinity Hall
about a week, he wrote to his nephew : >
"You inquire about my belief? I
believe in the Bible. Does that
satisfy you ? No, you will say : all
Christians profess to do the same, and
how different they are. To com
mence then: I believe there is one
God, who has existed from all eter
nity, with whom the past, present, and
future are alike present ; that He is
almighty, good, and merciful ; will
reward the good and punish the
wicked, both in this world and the
next. This punishment may be eter- .
nal. Of course I believe that neither
the rewards nor punishments of a
future state are corporeal; bodily
pleasures soon satiate, and may God
preserve us from a worse punishment ¦
than one's own conscience. I believe .
the books of the Old and New Testa
ments to have been written by men •
inspired by God for certain purposes ;
but I do not think them inspired at.

THE COLLEGIAN.

3*

all times. I believe that Christ was
the Son of God, conceived and born
in a miraculous manner; that he
came to preach a better religion by
which men may be saved. This re
ligion, as I think, allows men the
very highest happiness in this life,
and promises eternal felicity in an
other world. I do not think our
sins will be forgiven because Christ
died. I believe God knows all that
we shall do, but does not cause us to
do anything. I do not believe in
total depravity, or that Adam's sin
-- will be imputed to us. I believe, if
a man leads a good and pure life, he
will be accepted with God. I believe
prayer to be an especial duty man
owes to himself. God is not to be
benefited by the paltry homage man
can give him ; but we — we are bene
fited by it. I think reading the
holy Bible, attending church, prayers,
professing religion, and pious con
versations, are all means of religion.
I think sins in the heart as bad as
sins of the hand. This will be, per
haps, sufficient to show the grand
leading features of my belief. " And
a year later, after a lecture at the
School by the Rev. Orville Dewey,
Parker thus notes in his journal :
"It was the best, perhaps, I have
ever heard, though upon the least
interesting part of the evidences of
revealed religion, viz., 'Miracles.'
He removed the presumption against
them. The objections were not only
met, but overturned."
i All this will show that when he
first entered the Divinity .School
he was not quite so far gone [from
"orthodoxy" as at the close of his
life he supposed. But it would
hardly be possible for a man to
write from memory, as Parker then
did, and be completely accurate as
to the exact time when certain views
were adopted. Change of views often
grows over us almost imperceptibly.
The extracts just given, coupled with
the articles he published in "The

Scriptural Interpreter," a small maga
zine which came under the charge of
himself and two of his classmates,
show that, during the first portion of
his career at the Hall, he held much
the ordinary prevailing Unitarian
views ; but, with a tendency to, now
and again, get a little out of the
usual rut. It was during his two
years and a quarter's stay at Divinity
Hall, and while his immense re
searches were throwing so much new
light into his soul, that his change ol
views became so rapid. This is his
own testimony, for he writes when
leaving it : "I am now ready to go
forth, but not without dread and fear.
What an immense change has taken
place in my opinions and feelings
upon all the main points of inquiry
since I entered this place."
We will allow him to describe
with his own pen "the immense
change " referred to, with something
of the process thereof.
"It is now easy to tell what I
then attempted without always being
conscious of my aim, and what re
sults I gradually reached before I
settled in the ministry.
"I. I studied The Bible with much
care. First, I wished to learn, What
is the Bible — what books and works
compose it ? This is the question of
criticism ; next, What does the Bible
mean — what sentiments and ideas
do its words contain? This is the
question of interpretation. I read
the Bible critically in its original
tongues, the most important parts of
it also in the early versions, and
sought for the meaning early attri
buted to its words, and so studied
the works of Jewish Rabbis on the
Old Testament, and of the early
Christian Fathers upon both New
and Old ; besides I studied carefully
the latest critics and interpreters,
especially the German. I soon found
that the Bible is a collection of quite
heterogeneous books, most of them
anonymous or bearing names of

32

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

doubtful authors, collected none
know how, or when, or by whom ;
united more by caprice than any
philosophic or historic -method, so
that it is not easy to see why one
ancient book is kept in the Canon
and another kept out. I found no
unity of doctrine in the several parts ;
the Old Testament 'reveals' one
form of religion, and the New Testa
ment one directly its opposite ; and
in the New Testament itself I found
each writer had his own individuality,
which appears not only in the style,
the form of thought, but quite as
much in the doctrines, the substance
of thought, where no two are well
agreed. "Connected with this Biblical study
came the question of inspiration and
miracles. I still inconsistently be
lieved, or half believed, in the direct
miraculous interposition of God, from
time to time, to set things right which
else went wrong ; though I found no
historic or philosophic reason for
limiting it to - the affairs of the Jews
and Christians, or the early ages of
the Church. The whole matter of
miracles was still a puzzle to me,
and for a long time a source of
anxiety ; for I had not studied the
principles of historic evidence, nor
learned to identify and scrutinise the
witnesses. " But the problem of inspiration got
sooner solved. I believed in the
immanence of God in man as well as
matter, his activity in both ; hence,
that all men are inspired in propor
tion to their actual powers and then-
normal use thereof ; that truth is the
test of intellectual inspiration, justice
of moral, and so on. I did not find
the Bible inspired, except in this
general way and in proportion to
the truth and justice therein. It
seemed to me that no part of the
Old Testament or the New could be
called the ' Word of God,' save in the
sense that all truth is God's word.
"II. I studied the historical de

velopment of religion and theology
among Jews and Christians, and saw
the gradual formation of the great ec
clesiastical doctrines which so domi
neered over the world. As I found
the Bible was the work of men, so
I also found that the Christian Church
was no more divine than the British
State, a Dutchman's ( shop, or an
Austrian's farm. The miraculous in
fallible Bible, and the miraculous
infallible Church, disappeared when
they were closely looked at ; and I
found the fact of history quite dif
ferent from the pretension of theo
logy. " III. I studied the historical de-
velopment of religion and theology
amongst the nations not Jewish or
Christian, and attended as well as I
then could to the four other great
religious sects — the Brahminic, the
Buddhistic, the Classic, and the
Mohammedan. As far as possible
at that time, I studied the sacred
books of mankind in their original
tongues, and with the help of the
most faithful interpreters. Here the
Greek and Roman poets and philo
sophers came in for their place, there
being no sacred books of the classic
nations. I attended pretty carefully
to the religion of savages and bar
barians, and was thereby helped to
me solution of many a difficult pro
blem. I found no tribe of men des-
titute of religion who had attained J
power of articulate speech.
" IV. I studied assiduously the me
taphysics and psychology of religion.
Religious consciousness was universal
in human history. Was it, then,
natural to man, inseparable from his
essence, and so from his development?
In my own consciousness I found it
automatic and indispensable ; was it
really so likewise in the human race?
The authority of Bibles and Churches
was no answer to the question. I
tried to make an analysis of humanity. ^
and see if by psychologic science I J
could detect the special element

THE COLLEGIAN.

33

which produced religious conscious
ness in me, and religious phenomena
in mankind — seeking a cause ade
quate to the facts of experience and
observation. The common books of
philosophy seemed quite insufficient ;
the sensational system so ably pre
sented by Locke in his masterly essay,
developed into various forms by
Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, Paley,
and the French Materialists, and
modified, but not much mended, by
Reid and Stewart, gave little help ;
it could not legitimate my own reli
gious instincts, nor explain the reli
gious history of mankind, or even of
the British people, to whom that
philosophy is still so manifold a hind
rance. Ecclesiastical writers, though
able as Clarke and Butler, and learned
also as Cud worth and Barrow, could
not solve the difficulty ; for the prin
ciple of authority, though more or
less concealed, yet lay there, and, like
buried iron, disturbed the free action
of their magnetic genius, affecting its
dip and inclination. The brilliant
mosaic which Cousin set before the
world was of great service, but not
satisfactory. I found most help in
the works of Immanuel Kant, one of
the profoundest thinkers in the world,
though one of the worst writers, even
of Germany ; if he did not always
furnish 'conclusions I could rest in,
he yet gave me the true method, and
put me on the right road.
" I found certain great primal in
tuitions of human nature, which de
pend on no logical process of demon
stration, but are rather facts of con
sciousness given by the instinctive
action of human nature itself. I will
mention only the three most important
which pertain to religion.
" I. The instinctive intuition of the
divine — the consciousness that there is
a God. "2. The instinctive intuition of the
just and right— a consciousness that*
there is a moral law, independent of
our will, which we ought to keep.

"3. The instinctive intuition of the
immortal — a consciousness that the
essential element of man, the prin
ciple of individuality, never dies.
"Here, then, was the foundation of
religion, laid in human nature itself,
which neither the atheist nor the
more pernicious bigot, with their
sophisms of denial or affirmation,
could move or even shake. I had
gone through the great spiritual trial
of my life, telling no one of its hopes
or fears ; and I thought it a triumph
that I had psychologically established
these three things to my own sat.s-
faction, and devised a scheme which,
to the scholar's mind, I thought, could
legitimate what was spontaneously
given to all by the great primal in
stincts of mankind,
"Then I proceeded to develop the
contents of these instinctive intui
tions of the divine, the just, and the
immortal, and see what God actually
is, what morality is, and what eter
nal ljfe has to offer. In each case I
pursued two methods — the inductive
and the deductive. First, from the
history of mankind — savage, barba
rous, civilized, enlightened — I ga
thered the most significant facts I
could find relating to men's opinions
about God, Morality, Heaven and
Hell, and thence made such general
isations as the facts would warrant,
which, however, were seldom satis
factory ; for they did not represent
facts of the universe, the actual God,
justice, and eternal life, but only what
men had thought or felt thereof ; yet
this comparative and inductive the
ology was of great value to me. Next,
from the primitive facts of conscious
ness, given by the power cf instinc
tive intuition, I endeavoured to deduce
the true notion of God, of justice,
and futurity. Here I could d?aw from
human nature, and not be hindered
by the limitations of human history ;
but I now know, better than it was
possible then, how difficult is this
work, and how often the inquirer D

£4

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

mistakes his own subjective imagina
tion for a fact of the universe. It is
for others to decide whether I have
sometimes mistaken a little grain of
brilliant dust in my telescope for a
fixed star in heaven. To learn what
I could about the spiritual faculties
of man, I not pnly studied the sacred
books of various nations, the poets
and the philosophers who professedly
treat thereof, but also such as deal
with sleep walking, dreams, visions,
prophecies, second-sight, oracles, ec
stasies, witchcraft, magic wonders, the
appearances of devils, ghosts, and the
like. Besides, I studied other works
which lie out from the regular high
way of theology, the spurious books
attributed to famous Jews or Chris
tians, Pseudepigraphy [false inscrip
tions] of the Old Testament, and the
Apocrypha of the New, with the
strange fantasies of the Neo-Platon-
ists and Gnostics. I did not neglect
the writings of the Mystics, though
at that time I could only make a
beginning with the more famous or
most tenderly religious ; I was much
attracted to this class of men, who
developed the element of piety, re
gardless of the theological ritualism
of the church, the philosophical dis
cipline of the schools, or the prac
tical morality of common life. By
this process I not only learned much
of the abnormal action of the human
spirit, and saw how often a mere
fancy passes for fact, and a dreamer's
subjective whim bestrides some great
harbour of the world for a thousand
years, obstructing all tall ships, until
an earthquake throws it down ; but

I also gleaned up many a precious
flower which bloomed unseen in those
waste places of literature, and was
unknown to the authorised flora of
the school or church. I left the
Theological School with reluctance, j
conscious of knowing so little of.;
what I must presently teach, and
wishing more years for research and
thought." ,
We have given this long extract, in
the expectation that the reader will
not only forgive but also thank us
for it. It is most valuable, for the
introduction and explanation it af
fords of Parker's method and system.
Even to those who read it when it
first appeared, years ago, a re-perusal
must have given gratification, as it has
to ourselves most certainly to copy it.
Parker went forth from college
with prayer in his heart. "Verily,"
writes he in his journal, " 'there's*!
Divinity that shapes our ends rough
— hew them how we will. ' I wonder
what the Almighty Parent designs for
me. Where wilt Thou, O Father!
cast my lot ? I would not seek with
prurient curiosity to invade the mys
terious cabinet of futurity, but I must
confess that I am by no means indif
ferent to the future which shall be
appointed to me. But I trust I shall
be resigned to the will of Omnipo
tence. At the worst, even, there will
be enough to do : this is some con
solation to one who loves activity,
and would fain be useful to his fel
lows." " I ask for Thy blessing, 0
most merciful Father ! upon all my
labours and studies. Keep me from
sin and from every harmful error."

THE CANDIDATE.

35

CHAPTER V.
The Candidate.
" Man must soar :
An obstinate activity within,
An insuppressive spring, will toss him up
In spite of fortune s loads.
And why?— because immortal as his Lord.
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great— the glitter or the gold —
The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.". — Anon.

UPON leaving Divinity Hall, Theo
dore spent an idle fortnight in the
home and society of his sweetheart.
But to a man of his conscience and
love of work this kind of life soon
became distasteful : "there is some
thing for man to do, something for
him to think." This kind of life,
however delightful, " does not allow
my soul to unfold its wings in this
fledging-place and trial-ground, and
prepare for the lofty and dangerous
flight when it must ' sail with uplift
wing ' against tempest and storm.
I have sterner deeds to do. Greater
dangers to dare. I must be about my
¦work. "
He accordingly went for four
Sundays to supply the vacant pulpit
at Barnstable, a seaport town on the
south side of Barnstable Bay, sup
ported mainly by fisheries, and a
coast trade. Soon he made the ac
quaintance of the most notable peo
ple ; and this, to Parker, meant mak
ing use of them to get from them
anything which they knew and he
did not. It was his custom during
life, whenever he came across a worthy
man — and to him a worthy man was
not so much a scholar as an artless
man of noble natural growth — to
add him to a list he kept of such
men living in given districts. In
this list of favourites — though includ
ing many men of eminence — "the
greater number are the names of
happy, unpretending, healthy people,
with an unspoiled sense of right and
wrong." Here, for instance, is ex

pressed his feeling for such a man,
given several years afterwards : " At
New Bedford I saw some interest
ing persons. Andrew Robeson I
admire, and love as I love few men.
I look at him with rapture. He is my
ideal almost of a rich man, a Chris
tian man. I speak not of his kind
ness to me, but of his character, his
life. I know not why, but I love
better the society of such than the
companionship of the most cultivated
men. They meet you, and don't
dodge." He was not favourably
impressed either with Barnstable
town or Barnstable people on his
first contact with them. The former
he thought unfavourable to the de
velopment of a taste for the beauti
ful, the latter were unwilling to talk
on religion ; and, in consequence, he
thought them spiritually dead. But,
after closer acquaintance, he found
this was rather because the people
were such as did not " wear their
heart upon their sleeves for daws to
peck at," than because they had no
religious feeling. Further intercourse
also showed him that they were agree
able and intelligent.
On one of the days, he went to a
place thirty miles away, called East-
ham, to attend a great Methodist
revival camp meeting — an institution
peculiar to America. It was his
first personal experience of such a
gathering ; and, of course, he was
deeply interested in all he saw. The
camp ground presented a striking
scene. There were sixteen large

36

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

tents arranged in a semicircle about
the pulpit, some of them containing
more than a hundred people. The
woods behind were all alive. " One
tent was full of negroes, who were
more vehement than their white
brethren. The women, I noticed,
were always the most noisy. Some
of them were in hysterics, I should
say, and should explain it on well-
known physiological principles. They
said it was the Spirit. How strangely
men mistake the flesh for the Spirit !
A twitching of the nerves is often
mistaken for inspiration, I was much
struck at the cold indifference of one
young woman, who sat very quietly
munching gingerbread while all the
process of ' bringing in ' was taking
place around her. I always noticed
that the least learned were the most
violent — had most of the ' Spirit of
the Lord,' Ss they said."
He thought his short stay at Barn
stable enabled him to make advance
in the art of things in general, and
the power of talking to men as if he
were also a man, and not a student
merely. It was here he began his
recondite work — the Translation of
De Wette's ' Introduction to the Old
Testament," which is thus quietly
noticed in his journal : " 1836, Aug.
n.— Began to translate " De Wette's
Introduction to the Old Testament,
I cannot tell what will be the result
of this. I shall leave that for another
time to determine. Meanwhile I will
go quietly on translating it gradually
as I wish, without interrupting im
portant studies." From time to time
he reported his Barnstable doings in
letters to Miss Cabot. In one he
tells her of how busy he keeps — he
has read almost the whole of the
dozen books he had brought with
him, and written two hew sermons.
"The air of the place braces one's
whole soul. I could devour a whole
library in a. week. I think I shall
write three sermons a week all the
time I am here, but I have only

enough of my favourite paper for
two more." On one Sunday he had
two funerals, a Sunday-school, two
services, a visit to the sick, and calls
in the evening, including in all the
offering of seven public prayers !
A letter written from here to his
friend, Mr. Francis, shows that he
is already beginning to have enough
of itinerancy. — "I am weary of
'candidating'; it is not only 'a
weariness to the flesh,' but unto the
spirit. Men go to church when a
youngster is to fold forth, not to
hear something good, but something
new; and talk of the services at
home, rather that he may be criti
cised than that themselves may be
edified. So one cannot comfort
himself with the knowledge that he
does any good. Besides, the frequent
change of place is bad to ' body,
mind, and estate.' One cannot pur
sue quiet studies ; he can scarcely
grow in mind or in spirit when he is
so frequently transplanted. I some-
times say with the melancholy prO<|
phet, 'Oh, that I had a lodging-;
place of wayfaring men in the wilder*!
ness, that I might turn in thither and
be refreshed. ' When and where I .
shall find it I know not."
His engagement ended, he left
Barnstable, though urgently pressed
to stay longer. But his books were
exhausted, he wanted to experience
something of life elsewhere, and — he
wanted to see his sweetheart. After
satisfying two of these requirements
he went to Northfield, Mass., for two
or three weeks, and received a ' ' call '.
to settle there, which he declined.
How he was working may be judged
from the diary he kept of his North-
field experiences. Here is the record
for one day — " Rose at seven ; shaved
and dressed ; looked at the news- (
paper ; read the books of Nehemiah, §
Esther, Solomon's Song, first twelve
chapters of Isaiah, in English ; wrote
part of a sermon ; finished a hundred
and fifty pages of Allan's ' Life of

THE CANDIDATE.

37

Scott,' two of Herder's 'Briefe.'
Dinner. Read in various books ;
walked two or three miles ; found a
queer plant ; gathered about a quart
of chestnuts ; noticed the peculiar
position of> some stratified rocks.
Dr. Hall dropped in, and asked me
to ride. Took tea. Mr. Nevers
called ; stayed two hours at least.
Called with Mr. Allen at Dr. Hall's ;
ascended Mr. Porrreroy's mountain."
After perusing this the ordinary men
tal worker draws a long breath.
He returned to Barnstable for three
Sundays, and this time with an abun
dant supply of books and literature.
He was most cordially received ; the
congregations were so large that chairs
had to be placed ire the aisles to
accommodatffthe overflow. Some were'
for giving him a " call " at once, others
shook their heads and doubted if his
views were quite sound. He himself
put a stop to the meeting arranged to
consider the matten If given, he
could not accept this " Call," for "it
would involve an entire exclusion from
books and literary society. Never do
I expect to find so noble, and generous,
and true-hearted a people. But others
can labour here more effectually than
I, to whom absence of books is no
evil. There would be a general ex
clamation among my books if they were
carried to the Cape. But still, did
not I know that others are to be found
who would be called upon to make no
sacrifices in coming hither, then would
I hesitate not, but instantly plant
myself among these noble men of the
Cape, and live, and love, and labour
here." It was while at Barnstable, on his
second visit, that he received news of
the death of his father ; the old man
had passed away at the round, ripe
age of 75. His son's reflections on
the sorrowful event are thus conveyed
in a letter to his sweetheart : — ' ' I
received your letter, my dear Lydia,
as I never fail to do, with unspeakable
pleasure and satisfaction ; but if the

outside gave me pleasure, and the in
side told me what I had long expected,
yet I cannot deny that the intelligence
found me unprepared. I have, as you
know, long expected the death of him
who is now no more ; yet I had fondly
put off the day of his departure, and,
when the event was told me, my grief
and sorrow were ten-fold greater than
I had expected. I do not mourn
for my father's sake, but for my own.
He goes to meet his friends, to see
again his wife, his fathers, and his
children1 ; ho doubt it is a pleasant
meeting. They may pity his long
delay on earth, and rejoice now that
he has put off the mortal to put on
the immortal. After I read your
letter, and sat silent and lonely by my
own fire, I could almost see his fathers
of other days, the wife of his youth,
and his children' and long separated
friend?, pressing gloriously around
him to press hint once more to their
hearts. Their shout and song of
welcome still ring m my ears. But,
as I said, I lament not for him ; he
has no sigh to stifle, no tear to wipe
away. But how can I, who have been
cradled in his arms, fed by his hands,
blessed by his praj'ers, and moulded
by his tender care-^how cap I for
bear lamenting, now he is gone ? But
enough of this. We shall yet meet ;
and I will no longer weary your soul
with the bitterness of mine. He has
gone ! let us say no more about it. I
entreat you to say nothing upon the
subject in your letters, nor when we
meet. A thousand circumstances will
bring it all up again and again. Do
not let us multiply them without need,
nor foolishly turn away from them
when they occur naturaUy ; for the
valley of tears, when dwelt in, hath a
poisonous influence on the soul ; but,
if only occasionally passed through,
it is full of ' healing waters and foun
tains of strength.'" Before penning
the foregoing he had communicated
his heart's feelings to his journal in
similar expressions. To him his

3»

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

father remained a reality after death
as before, only changed and gone else
where. In all his future troubles he
felt "as a child to its father." Fain
would he, frequently, have thrown
himself into those protecting arms.
The death day of the old man was
ever reverently remembered by him,
for filial and ancestral feeling had a
deep root in his nature. It also welled
reverently up at other times, as the
following finely expressed reflection
written on his own forty - second
birthday indicates : "Aug. 23, 1852.
— Two-andforty years ago, my father,
a hale man, in his one-and-fiftieth year,
was looking for the birth of another
child before morning — the eleventh
child. How strange it is, this life of
ours, this birth of ours, and this death
—the second birth. How little does
the mother know of the babe she
bears under her bosom — aye, of the
babe she nurses at her breast ! Poor
dear father, poor dear mother ! You
little know how many a man would
curse the son you painfully brought
into life, and painfully and religiously
trained up. Well, I will bless you —
true father and most holy mother you
were to me : the earliest thing you
taught me was duty — duty to God,
duty to men ; that life was not a
pleasure, not a pain, but a duty. Your
words taught me this, and your indus
trious lives. What would I give that
I could have added some more of
gladness to your life on earth — earnest,
toilsome, not without sorrow ! As
you look down from heaven, if indeed
you can see your youngest born, there
will be much to chide. I hope there
is something to approve. Dear,
merciful Father — Father God, I
would serve Thee, and bless man
kind !"
The last month of the year 1836
was spent at Salem. He was accom
plishing two purposes there — filling
the pulpit of one of the churches,
though not as a candidate, and stay
ing with the family of his friend and

classmate, Mr. W. Silsbee. He must.
have much enjoyed it, for he writes
that he had been happier than Adam
was before he' was turned out of
Paradise. In January of the next year
he is at Northfield again for a month,
and at Greenfield again during Feb
ruary. As a candidate his success was most
complete, for, in addition to the
" call " which he prevented at Barn
stable, he received invitations from five
other congregations which he had
preached before, namely, Waltham,
Concord, Leominster, Greenfield, and
West Roxbury. So much choice only
served to embarrass him in his de
cision. After much thought, he decided to-*
accept the invitation of the West
' Roxbury congregation. This choice
was made, not because of the salary
offered, which was only .£135 per
annum, nor the largeness of the con
gregation, which, at first, was only
about seventy in all, composed for the
most part of poor, plain people ; but
because it was a quiet country place,
near to Boston and Cambridge, and
promised leisure for work he was most
anxious to accomplish. Further, his
excellent friends, Mr. Francis, of
Watertown, and Mr. Stetson, of
Medford, were within easy reach.
At . this point we must introduce
Parker's own retrospect upon his
period and experiences of candidat-
ing. It is given in his Experience as
a Minister: — " Of course my first
sermons were only imitations ; and
even if the thought might, perhaps,
be original, the form was old, the
stereotype of the pulpit. I preached
with fear and trembling, and wondered
that old and mature persons, rich in
experience of life, .should listen to a
young man, who might, indeed, have
read and thought, but yet had had no
time to live much and know things by
heart. I took all possible pains with
the matter of the discourse, and
always appealed to the religious in-

THE CANDIDATE.

39

stinct in mankind. At the beginning,
I resolved to preach the natural laws
of man as they are writ in his constitu
tion, no less and no more. Afterpreach-
ing a few months in various places, and
feeling my way into the consciousness
of men, I determined to preach no
thing as religion which I had not
experienced inwardly, and made my
own, knowing it by heart. Thus,
not only the intellectual but also the
religious part of my sermons would
rest on facts that I was sure of, and
not on the words of another."
The reader will scarcely need tell
ing that during the whole time occu
pied in candidating, Parker had been
most assiduous in the pursuit of his
studies. A list of works, drawn up at
the close of 1836, shows his reading
for the preceding fourteen months.
It includes 320 volumes, in various
languages, and the best books on the
subjects of which they treat. His
journal/or the period displays schemes
of lectures on Heine, Spencer, the Use
of Nature ; Notes on Public Instruc
tion among the Romans ; a Study
of English State Trials ; a careful
List of Public Documents in England ;
an Account of the Different Rolls from
the Earliest Time ; Dates of the
Doomsday Book, and Memoranda of
the Libraries where such Antiquities
are stored ; Summary of Statistics in
regard to the Social Condition of
Germany ; Births and Deaths in
Prussia; Number of Pupils in the Uni
versities; Longevity of the Professors ;
Proportion of Soldiers to the Popu
lation in Europe ; Pay of Officers,
&C. French works on Philosophy,
Marryat's novels, Latin monkish
hymns, apothegms, parables; &c,
likewise have attention given them.
The comical side of his nature, also,
must be indulged, so he writes —
" History and Spirit of Coxcombry
or Puppyism, in its Origin and De
velopment ; from the Night-Book
of Gottesgute von Thiergarten, "
which has sections on Puppyism iu

the Pulpit, Puppyism of the Press-
and Puppyism of the Parlour, inter
spersed with verse of a somewhat
muddy quality. The journal also
schedules work to be undertaken. "I.
Sundry questions in theology : — a.
What is the extent of known supernatu
ral revelation made to man ? b. What
is the foundation of the authority of
Jesus Christ ? c. What is the meaning
of faith in the Old and New Testa
ment? d. How is Christ more a
Saviour than Socrates? c. Why did
the world need a Saviour ? f. What
has been his influence ? g. Is Chris
tianity to be a universal religion?
h. What is the foundation of religion
in man ? The design of miracles ?
The pretence of them in other reli
gions ? II. Questions in Scriptural
criticism and exegesis : — a. The au
thenticity of the beginning of the
Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The
miraculous conception, b. The resur
rection : Why was the body of Christ
raised? Why 'carried up'? How is!
the resurrection of matter proof of the/
immortality of spirit? Is not the mate- f
rial resurrection of the body of Jesus/
Christ unspiritualising ? " Then come
questions in ethics which are to be
resolved : — " I. The connection be
tween the understanding and the will.
2. Foundation of the idea of duty.
3. Foundation of the idea of God.
4. The limits of duty. 5. Subjective
consequences of doing or omitting
duty. 6. Liberty and necessity.
7. Why is man placed in life? 8.
How great is the difference in the
value of the various means afforded
to attain the end of life ? What state
best fitted thereto? Are outward
means of any avail ? How much ?
[Compare the condition of a Caroli
nian slave and the son of a Boston
merchant, or a New Zealander with a
citizen of Massachusetts.]"
Itwas dangerous work, this question
ing of conventional beUefs ; that is,
dangerous for the beliefs. Parker
had nothing to fear for himself.

40

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

" Who," savs he "dares say that the I samption of one who departs from
man who wi'll adhere to God's truth it ? " He was already earning the
is rash ? and whw will deny the pre- I cross and crown of the fntare !

CHAPTER VI.
The Lover and the Husband*
" Should youthful courtship be forgot,
And never brought to min' ;
Should youthful courtship be forgot,
And the days lang syne ?
Those days of love we ne'er forget :
How sweet your lips to mine 1
Your mother did not heed the theft
In the days lang syne.
How forid we pray'd our lovers' prayer'
In th' moon's romantic shine !
'Trs deeper now and tranquiller
Than in auld lang syne. -
And when beyond the grave we rest,
Where saints in glory shine,
We'll still look back and God will bless
For the days lang syne." — Theodore Parker.-

1T was during the time Parker taught
school at Watertown that he met
with the young lady who after
wards became his faithful, loving
life-partner. Her name, as already
intimated, was Lydia D. Cabot. She
Was only daughter of Mr. John
Cabot, of Newton, and connected
with a family who claimed descent
from the famous Giovanni Cabotti,
the discoverer of the New England
parts of the American continent.
Generally she resided with her aunt in
Boston, but when she won Theodore's
affections she was staying for a time
at Watertown, lodging under the
same roof, and teaching in the same
Sunday-school. Taking into account
how deeply he was already in love
with literature, her conquest was no
small one. She was the first person
he had allowed to break in upon his
studies. For her he gave up time to
take long walks, to gather wild
flowers for a purpose more senti
mental than botany, and to indulge
in her welcome society in the house.
There is reason to believe, however,
that the studies were not allowed to

suffer, whatever his own constitu-'
tion may have done. Miss Lydia's
incursions upon his days meant
incursions by himself upon the mid
night hours. Anyhow, the student*
schoolmaster gave himself up to
"love's young dream." "Now," he
writes, " I feel a new pleasure in the
discharge of all my duties. I love
my books the more, the school the
more, mankind the more, and even,
I believe, my God the more, from
loving you. It has been in other
times than this my highest pleasure
thus to pass my time, thus tb pass my
nights, in high concord with the God
like past ; to collect my own thoughts
and search for new. But now I find
a new pleasure, which, with a louder,
sweeter voice speaks to the heart and
tells another tale," Nor need we
stay to descant upon this "new plea
sure." If the reader is one who has
passed through it, he needs no descrip
tion ; and, if he is one who has not,
description to him will be in vain.
" None but a lover knows a lover's
joys. "
Parker soon informed his father of

THE LOVER AND THE HUSBAND.

41

the newly-formed relationship, and
thus described the disclosure in a
letter to Lydia:— "I walked to
father's ; he soon returned from
church, and I caught him in the
garden and informed him of the
' fatal ' affair, if you will call it so.
The tear actually started to his aged
eye. ' Indeed, ' said he. ' Indeed,'
1 replied, and attempted to describe
some of your good qualities. ' It is a
good while to wait,' he observed.
1 Yes, we are young, and I hope I have
your approval.' 'Yes, yes, I should
be pleased with anyone you would
select ; but, Theodore, ' said he, and
the words sank deep into my heart,
' you must be a good man and a good
husband, which is a great under
taking. ' I promised all good fidelity ;
and may heaven see it kept ! "
In the course of his four years'
courtship, Parker appears to have for
warded as many love epistles to his
mistress as the most faithless swain
who ever figured in an English breach
of promise case ; but, what a differ
ence for the better in the quality 1 Of
course, the more tender passages have
been kept from the public eye ; but
those passages which have been pub
lished afford really pleasant and in
structive reading. They are made
up of remarks on persons, drolleries,
love poetry, moral reflections, de
scriptions of walks and talks, notes
and criticisms on books, aspirations
and anticipations, and are as fresh and
buoyant as they are various. But
the reader will best judge of them
for himself, if we place as many
extracts before him as our limited
space will justify. We begin with
one on whist, as a game suitable for
a minister's wife to play. " Dec. 5th,
1833. Whist is an innocent amuse
ment ; and I know no law, divine or
human, which imposes an unpleasant
sanctimoniousness on ministers' wives.
I take but little pleasure, I confess,
in such amusements — a satisfactory
reason for my abandoning them ; but

it is a reason which should influence
nobody else." — St. Paul's law of con
science admirably put. In the next,
his ever-loving admiration for woman
displays itself. "Nov. 14th, 1833.
You speak of ' poor, weak woman.'
Weakness and strength are only com
parative terms. To speak absolutely,
nothing is strong but Him who is
strength itself. But a woman com
paratively weak ! Turn over the
pages of history, and read what she
has done. Who is it that excites the
giant spirits of the world to run their
career of glory ? and better, far bet
ter, and nobler too, who carries joy
and peace to the fireside of the poor
and the peasant ? " Like most lovers,
he is soon found picturing his future
home with his heart's mistress. On
June 17th, 1835, he writes to Lydia —
" Let us imagine our happiness in
some new station we are to occupy :
we shall see a thousand delights
which now refresh our whole soul
only by their images— the shadows
which they cast before them ; and
when they shall really come, we
shall be all ready to receive them, and
welcome them to our company like
old guests. It is delightful now to
imagine myself a minister, to recount
the duties of the station, and consider
all the ways of performing them, and
the glorious satisfaction of seeing
God's work prosper in my hand. I
tum to a home — a home of beauty, of
affection, of love ; to a home where
all noble feelings are cherished, and all
jarring interests and strife excluded.
Calamities may fall upon that home —
they come upon all men ; each country
has its own storms ; but if it is built
on the rock of holy affection, it will
stand. The floods may pass over it :
they can never shake its fixed foun
dation." Here, in the following, he
speaks, in an amusing way, another
good word for woman: — "I have
been as happy as Adam was before
he was turned out of Paradise, nay,
I mean that I was much happier.

42

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

By the way, woman is often abused
by modern writers, because good
Mother Eve did not throw the apple
in the serpent's face, instead of being
wheedled into eating it. But if if
had been offered to her precious
, spouse, he would not have stood
there shall-I-shall-I-ing, but would
merely have said, ' Apples, indeed !
so early ! thank ye, Mister Snake ! '
and would have eaten it without
thinking of conscience. Now, the
sons of this biped pique themselves
upon being men, not women. Kings
say they reign by divine right, and
impiously stamp ' Rex Dei Gratia '
upon innocent copper ; but woman is
the only monarch that can justly use
these words, and she may say — ' I am
a woman, by the grace of God.' She
alone rules by divine right." In the
next extract we cull, the reader will
find the lover of nature, as also a de
scription of great beauty and sweet
ness. " Besides all this, I have seen
little things which encourage me,
make me wiser if not better. Walk
ing the other day in the woods — i.e,,
iii a road which goes steeply through
the woods — in the midst of the snow
at the bottom of the steep hill there
was a little spring of water, clear as
the sky above, and as unruffled, not
frozen, though winter had set her seal
stiffly upon everything around. Over
this beautiful spring there arose a
great oak, very old and 'stern' to
look upon ; one which had mocked
at many winters. Now, this great
oak clasped a young hemlock tree
with its arms, and seemed to hold it
in shelter from all the mde blasts of
time. The young tree had evidently
grown up under its protection, and
now repaid its defender -by looking
kindly upon him when his own leaves
had all fallen away. It was beauty
in the arms of strength. All this
living scene was reflected in the
little spring, which seemed to smile
at the tenderness of these giant
plants. One would walk about the

streets of Boston a thousand years
without meeting such a comforter as
this. But in the country there is a
tale in everything, and every little
object in nature hath its beauty to
please by, and its moral to instruct
with. Indeed, the country is a great
' system of divinity,' while the city is
but ' a commercial dictionary,' a
'ready-reckoner,' or a 'cookery-
book.' " To the like effect he writes
three days after: — "You know I
lamented the missing of Mr. Emer
son's lectures ; but a single walk
along the banks of the Connecticut,
or among the hills, or a moment's
listening to the pine's soft music, has
taught me more than Mr. Emerson
ahd all the Boston Association of
Ministers." Readers of his works
will, in the foregoing, recognise teach
ing which frequently subsequently
came out in his sermons at the Music
Hall. The next letter, written when he
was candidating at Northfield, begins
by referring to the consolation afforded
him by his host coming into his
room almost every night, and some
times staying till the witching time of
twelve. " Without him I should
have died at least once a day. Paul
says he did that, and the Apostle was
not engaged and away from his lady.
Mrs! D  [his hostess] is a sweet
woman, and a sensible. I almost
envy them their cup of connubial
happiness : but we will have one soon,
as generous and divinely tempered.-
I do not know anything in contem"
plation more delightful than this, that
we may find some place where we
may receive enough of this world's
treasures ; may labour in the most
noble and divine of employments which
man can conceive of, giving a loftier
action to humanity; may exercise
mutually the kindliest feelings of the
heart, the intellect, and the soul,
founding at the same time a family
which shall bear up our name, know
our virtues, reflect the sunshine of our
hearts, and finish our work. Can

THE LOVER AND THE HUSBAND.

43

you conceive anything more noble
than this? I confess I cannot." In
his next letter to Miss Cabot, written
while he was supplying the pulpit
at Greenfield, he makes merry over
their marriage prospects. " Only
think, that after a little bit of court
ship of some four years, we are at
length on the very brink of matri
mony ! Within a span's length of
the abyss ! Without a parish too !
Think of that! ^117 a y'ear, may
be — maybe much less — to support a
wife. Why, I intend to commence
such a rigorous system of sparing that
I shall never cross a t nor dot an i;
for I'll save ink. I dreamed last
night of being at a book-store ; and,
when the clerk showed me some
book which I had long been seeking,
and at a price most villainously
cheap, 'Oh, no,' said I, 'I shall
never buy more books ; at any rate,
never so cheap. I am a-going to be
married ! ' and down went the comers
of my mouth till they touched my
stock. But if soft words can win
hard coin, if there is any money-
getting virtue in a knowledge of some
twenty tongues, any talent in my
mind, or any magic in the most un
shrinking labour, I will take care
that a wife do not beggar the soul of
the means of growth and nobleness.
If I can find anything to do in the
literary way which will get one coin,
be it never so hard, so it conflict with
no duty, I will- put forth my might,
be it little or be it much." This is
about the latest of his love-letters
which has been published ; but within
about a month of the occurrence of
the event, we hear him describing his
feelings, anticipatory thereof, in a
letter to an intimate friend. " With
regard to my marriage, and the
' happy day ' thereof, I can only say
that probably matters will be brought
to a crisis about the 20th of next
month. With regard to my feelings
in approaching the moment, you may
imagine them. They are not homo

geneous, but of a widely different and
various character. Sometimes the
fear predominates ; but usually hope
rules the balance. I look to matri
mony as the completion of man. One
cannot be a whole man until married,
but a pitiful fraction thereof, a man-
nikin., I look forward to marriage
with reverence. I promise myself
much happiness. How soon my hope
will be destroyed, no one can say.
From the character (both of mind and
heart) of Miss C, I have everything
to hope and nothing to fear."
Not only at that time, when it was
so deeply interesting to himself, but
all through life, the subject of mar
riage was one which Parker pondered
deeply. Evidently it was one of the
subjects which he intended to treat
sometime publicly, but never had an
opportunity. Here are wise reflec
tions which he had written in his
journal : — "A whole marriage is when
each portion of each person finds its
satisfaction in the other ; a partial or
functional marriage is when but a
part is thus met. Hence' there are
whole marriages, half marriages, one-
third marriages, and so on, ad infini
tum. Sometimes, by society, friends,
good breeding, &c, the parties are
so welded together that they cannot
easily be sundered; but are yet only
welded, not wedded. Solitude is the
trial of marriages. Marriages are
best of dissimilar material, as iron
runs not so well upon iron as upon
brass ; only the dissimilarity must
not be too great, else it is all wear
and tear. A man not mated, or a
woman not mated, seeks sorrowing
the other half and wanders up and
down without rest. That part of the
nature which is not married and can
not be exercised perishes and corrupts
the rest. If I read aright, a perfect
and entire marriage can only take
place between equals, or, at least
equivalents." In the same notes he
contends that if intercourse were more
free in social life, so that men and

44

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

women would have a better oppor
tunity of meeting with suitable mates,
marriage would be happier and di
vorces more rare; and instances what
takes place among the negroes and
the North-American Indians in proof
thereof. In a long correspondence
he had with two American Shakers
(who discountenance marriage) he
also ably argues the excellency of the
marriage state, and the injury of
systems which include celibacy. So
effectively, indeed, did he do this,
that the Shaker who directly corre
sponded with him was led to leave
the Shaker settlement, and again re
turn to live with his own family.
Parker's marriage with Miss Cabot
took place on the 20th of April, 1837 ;
he being then io his 27th year, and
his bride three years younger. The
ruling passion for writing breaks out
even on his wedding-day ; for in his
journal it is celebrated with exube
rant verse and tender prayer, and
there is a " Matrimonial Code " writ
ten in Latin, which shows that he
most truly ' ' looked forward to mar
riage - with reverence," as he had
written so shortly before. Here is the
" Codex Matrimonianus," translated
into English. " Since, by. the will of
God, a wife is to be given me, it is
becoming that I prescribe for myself
rules and laws. Therefore, by God's
help, I here resolve, promise, and
bind myself steadfastly to observe the
following regulations : — 1 . Never, ex.
cept for the best of causes, to oppose
my wife's will. 2. To discharge all
services, for her sake, freely. 3. Never
to scold. 4. Never to look cross at
her. 5. Never to weary her with
commands. 6. To promote her piety.
7. To bear her burdens. 8. To over
look her foibles. 9. To love, cherish,
and ever defend her. 10. To re
member her always most affection
ately in my prayers : thus, God wil
ling, we shall be blessed. Ap. xx.,
M ucccxxxvn. " There is every rea
son for believing that to the end of his

life he faithfully observed these matri
monial rules.
Three days after his marriage we
thus find him writing to his friend,
Mr. S. P. Andrews — "The tree of
life still stands in Paradise, though
Adam and Eve be cast out, and Cain
murders Abel. So, sometimes, I con
sole my spirit when I deem that all
my present felicity may in a moment
turn into dust, bitter dust, or at least
vanish like the momentary rainbow.
So, indeed, it may be.- Sad presents
ments sometimes spread their shadows
over my path ; but I know that two-
souls made one by love, and realising
that union, can laugh at time and
space, and live united for ever. Be
sides, Death is only a kind angel
with severe countenance, who comes
to bless, though with sighs and
tears." So far as the wife he had selected
was concerned, Parker never had
reason to regret his choice. She was
ever to him all that a wife could be
expected to be, and he was ever
ready to declare her so. In all his
labours, trials, persecutions, disap
pointments, sicknesses of heart and of
body, he found in her his best earthly
comforter and physician. Unlike
many great men, this great man was
happy in his marriage, aind he loved
his wife deeply. The kind of feeling
he all through life had for her is ex-
ampled in the following extracts, one
from the journal and the other from
a letter. " At home nominally ; but,
since wife has gone, my home is in
New Jersey. I miss her — wicked
woman ! — most exceedingly. I can
not sleep, or eat, or work, or live,
without her. It is not so much the
affection she bestows on me as that
she receives by which I am blessed.
I want someone always in the arms of
my heart to, caress and comfort : un
less I have this I mourn and weep.
But soon shall I go to see the girl
once more. Meantime, and all time,
Heaven bless her ! I can do nothing

THE LOVER AND THE HUSBAND.

45

without Lydia — not even read."
That was written while he was at
West Roxbury ; the ensuing was
written many years after at Boston.
" I have been married almost nine
years, but have bo children. This is
the only affliction of my life, almost.
But I never complain of that, for I
am a singularly happy man. You
shall ask my wife if I love her — or
shall see her, and then guess."
Thus he wrote to one of his old
schoolmasters in 1846. Not only up
to that time, but to the end of his
life was he disappointed in having no
children bom to him. This was the
one great sorrow of his life ; for to
have within one the capacity for
loving and training offspring, and no
offspring to love and train, is like one
having eyesight and no light and ob
jects to exercise it upon — it must leave
unsatisfied longing and consequent
Unhappiness. This natural conse
quence at times affected Parker, as
the records contained in his private
journal show. Here are a few of
them : — " At one time in our life we
need objects of instinctive passion,
then objects of instinctive affection.
Neither can take the place of the
other, and both are needed for the
welfare of man. But how many are
destitute of both in the present state
of society ! I suffer continually from
lacking an object of instinctive affec
tion. I want a little Mites 0' Teants,
or Bits 0' Blossoms. [Pet names for
neighbours' children.] I nursed my
affections for Mr. Russell's little ones,
till the affections grew to a great
growth. Now there are no objects
for them to cling to. [He had now
left Roxbury for Boston.] So my
vine trails on the ground, and earth
worms devour the promise of the
grape." " But my immediate help I
find in industry — literary and philan
thropic work. Yet, even with that
help, in the pauses of my toil, the
sense of loneliness comes over me and
fills me with pain. How much worse

must it be with women, and especially
the unmarried! With women the love
of children is stronger than with men,
and they have fewer external duties
to divert their thoughts from their
own sadness. I am sad in the midst
of great religious delight. Ah me !
one thing cannot take the place . of
a different thing. The eye cannot
listen for the ear, nor the ear look for
the eye. Even religion will no't fill
the void left by the absence of certain
other things which I have not. Alas !
it helps me to still the aching part,
not to fill its void. Religion cannot
supply the demands of the finite
affections, any more than a plough can
supply the place of » flute. It can
assure us of a recompense — that it is
all right." Also, in replying to inti
mations from members of his congre
gation of the birth of children to
them, his own feeling of paternal
privation would at times well up.
Two such notes are before us. "I
thank you for so kindly remembering
me in such an access of new gladness
to your hearth and hearts — nay, heart,
for there is but one, especially at such
a time, in man and wife. I have
sons and daughters, sympathetically,
in the good fortune of my friends.
God bless the little immortal, which
comes, a new Messiah, to cheer and
bless the world of home." " It is my
lot to have no little darlings to call
my own. Yet all the more I rejoice
in the heavenly blessings of my friends.
The thing that I miss most deeply in
coming from Roxbury to Boston is
the society of my neighbours' little
children, whom I saw several times a
day, and fondled, and carried, and
trotted, and dandled in all sorts of
ways, as if they had been my own. "
He had not been long in Boston,
however, before he found similar
little playmates, and the occupation
must have been important indeed
which prevented the little visitors
from finding a glad welcome within
the study of "Parkie." When the

•46

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

little flaxen heads and the blue eyes
peeped in at the door, he would open
the top of a secretaire, pull out his
toy carts and his jumping jacks ; and
very soon the floor would become
a playground, and he the biggest
child of them all. Generally he kept
a store of toys, &c, for gifts to the
little ones ; and, even when he was
-travelling on the railway, his bag was
, supplied with candy and other sweet
meats intended for the" delight of any
babies he might come across ; and
frequently he would leave his seat
and book to go and pacify with words
and comfits such as were in distress.
In babies, too, of a larger growth he
showed the same interest and kind
ness, if not in the same way ; he ever
took a deep concern in the education
and moral development of the young
persons with whom he was personally
acquainted. No wonder such a man
felt his own childlessness ; that his
feelings should have been such as
already shown, or as he further ex
pressed them one time in a note to
Mrs. Dall : " I think a man who has
no children is deprived not only of a
solace and a joy, but of a quite im
portant element in his education. I
have always noted this fact in others,
and feel it in my own case."
Parker- was husband — i.e. (Saxon)
house-band — in only two settled resi
dences during his married life — the
Parsonage House at West Roxbury,
and the house provided for him in
Exeter Place, Boston.
The first — the Parsonage — is de
scribed by Parker himself as " a
clever house " ; and from another
source we find that it was a pleasant
white house, about a mile from the
church, close to the straggling village-

street, and the study looking out
through trees upon flowers, vines, and
garden-beds. Two fine tulip trees
stood before the windows, of which
there were eight, and a porch, in the
front of the building ; and along the
road there was a wooden palisade and
gate, painted white. The house had
land surrounding it, and this adjoined
the beautiful grounds of Mr. G. Rs
Russell, his parishioner and friend ;
and near were the grounds of another
member of his congregation, Mr.
F. G. Shaw ; and to the whole of
these, as also to the hearts of the
owners and their families, Parker had
free access. Altogether, his home
at West Roxbury must have been
most enjoyable to the young minister
and his wife. " We have a clever
house, a fine garden, a good horse.
I am at the head of a family of seven
souls, ' to be, to do, and to suffer,'
for them all : no little care. I have
become as practical as Stebbin's ideal
man ; always carry a rule and com
pass in my pocket ; all my talk is of
bullocks, pigs, grapes, strawberries,
and other things which perish in the
using." " Old studies," he goes on
to say, " prosper —metaphysics, the
ology, criticism : all that used to so"
much delight and instruct us, flou
rishes and grows apace in my new
situation. Thoughts bright as heaven,
and profound as the centre of the
earth, sometimes visit me in my lone
liness. Then, too, the smiles of love
cheer and encourage me." Thus
cheerily he writes to his friend Silsbee,
soon after his Roxbury settlement.
Of bis domestic surroundings and
circumstances, when he afterwards
went to reside in Boston, we shall
speak in a subsequent chapter.

THE FIRST PASTORATE— WEST ROXBURY.

47

CHAPTER VII.
The First Pastorate — West Roxbury.
" If on our daily course our mind
We set. to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of costly price,
God will provide for sacrifice ;
Old friends, old scenes will lovelier be,
As more of heaven in each we see.
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Will dawn on every cross and care."
Quoted ty Parker in a Letter.

" AN the longest day of 1837 I
\J was ordained Minister of the
Unitarian Church and Congregation
at West Roxbury, a little village near
Boston; one of the smallest societies
in New England, where I found men
and women whose friendship is still
dear and instructive. At my ordjna-
tion, none of the council offered to
catechise me, or wished to interfere
with what belonged to me and the
congregation, and they probably
, thought of my piety and morality
more than of the special theology
which even then rode therewith in
the same panniers. The able and
earnest ministers who preached the
sermon, delivered the charge, and
gave me the right hand of fellowship,
all recommended study, investigation,
originality, freedom of thought and
openness of speech, as well as hu
manity, and a life of personal religi
ousness. One, in his ordaining prayer,
his hand on my head, put up the
petition, ' that no fondness for litera
ture or science, and no favourite
studies may ever lead this young
man from learning the true religion,
and preaching it for the salvation of
mankind ! ' Most heartily did I say
'Amen ! ' to this supplication." It
is thus Parker refers, in his Ex-
peritnce, to his ordination.
" The able and earnest ministers "
were Mr. Francis (who preached the
sermon, and warned him not to neglect
his studies), Chandler Robbins, Mr.
Cunningham, and Henry Ware (who

offered prayers : the latter praying,
' May his fondness for peculiar studies
never divert him from doing Thy
work'); George Ripley (who gave
the right hand of fellowship), and
Caleb Stetson (who gave the charge
to the minister). Special hymns for
the occasion were written by John
Pierpont and John S. Dwight, both
attached friends of the new pastor.
Already, in the previous chapter,
we have described the domestic cir
cumstances he lived under at West
Roxbury. In the following extracts
from letters to his intimate friend
Silsbee, the reader will find descrip
tions of his human surroundings.
' ' Our neighbours are pleasant. About
fifty to sixty families in the parish —
a hundred to a hundred and fifty wor
shippers. Sunday-school teachers'
meeting at the house of the pastor
once a fortnight, wife's class at the
Sunday-school, pastoral visits made,
schools attended, calls received, bap
tisms, funerals. Such are my out-of-
door matters. I am very pleasantly
situated ; the people good, quiet,
sober, church.going ; capital listeners,
none better ; so much so, that I tell
my friends I think my parishioners
are as much blessed in preaching as
those of even Dr. Channing ; for what
is wanted in preaching they make up
in listening, whereas the Doctor's
people depend altogether upon him.
The Sunday-school grows under my
hand ; and once in two weeks I have
a teachers' meeting, whereat I ex-

48

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

plain the Bible, which is far better for
me and them than all preachment ;
for I arrive at the heart and con
science not less directly than when in
the pulpit ; and, since there is no
formality, the matter goes home, I
trust. I preach abundant heresies,
and they all go down ; for the listeners
do not know how heretical they are.
Nay, I preach the worst of all things
— transcendentalism, the grand heresy
itself — none calling me to account
therefor, but men's faces looking like
fires new stirred thereat, " Above all
things, close, hard work goes on.
" To work ten or fifteen hours a day
in my literary labours was not only a
habit but a pleasure ; with zeal and
delight I applied myself anew to the
great theological problems of the age. "
Here, for instance, is the kind of
plans of studies and out-door labours
which he is trying to carry out : —
" Things to be done this week. —
I. Finish two sermons ; 2. De Wette ;
3. Jacobi ; 4. Fichte (Ethic) ; 5. Duty
versus inclination ; 6. Commence the
account of Moses. 7. Begin the trans
lation of Amnion's 'Fortbildung
Christenthums.' Work to be done this
week. I. Plant the other side of the
brook ; 2. Sow the garden vegetables ;
3. Plough the new land ; 4. Plant
the old alleys ; 5. Visit Mr. Keith
and Chapin in the evening ; 6. See
about the Sunday-school ; 7. Get the
benches for the vestry ; 8. Ask Mr.
Ellis to be superintendent." In
another part of the journal kept at
this time there is the following laid
out for a month : " 1. Continue the
translation of Ammon ; 2. Continue
the study of Plato ; 3. Read Tasso
and Dante ; 4. Iliad ; 5. Greek Trage
dies ; 6. Aristophanes ; 7. Goethe's
Memoirs." In other places he has
laid down the work of a year. This,
for example: — "1. Finish the transla
tion of Ammon, and publish, if
possible ; 2. De Wette ; 3. Course
of study on the New Testament ;
4. Course of study on the Old

Testament ; 5. Progress in Syriac;
6. Danish and Swedish ; 7. Finish
Plato; 8. Continue the study of Greek
writers ; 9. Dante and Tasso ; 10.
Spanish Ballads ; II. Commence the
ideal work." These extracts evidence
that he sought variety as well as
quantity. This is further borne out by the
general reading we find him engaged
in. In addition to the works men
tioned in the foregoing schemes, he
reads Henry More, the Life of Apol-
lonius of Tyana, Bulwer's "Athens,"
Fichte, Coleridge, Descartes, Spinoza,
Gesenius, Ovid, Seneca, He closely
studies the literature of the Bible, the
Egyptian and Phoenician alphabets,
ancient inscriptions and coins, Cartha
ginian, Persian, the Orphic poems,
Meiner's " On the Doctrine of the
One God, " Staiidlin "On the Morality
of the Drama," and works by Paulus,
Bauer, Eichorn, Schleiermacher;',
Strauss. A fragment of a work in
Greek, " On Things Incredible," by
an unknown writer, one Palaephatus,
is especially interesting to him. The
object of the work was to show that
the incidents of Greek mythology
came from the allegorising of ordinary ;
transactions; that Lynceus, seeing
into and through the ground, was a
man who discovered veins and beds
of metals; that Actseo being de
voured by his own dogs, signified the
expense of keeping dogs, which eat
up a man's substance, &c, Parker
writes of it : " How the priests must
have exclaimed against the 'im
pious ' book on the day of its appear
ance ! Such books do good, I wish
some wise man would now write a
book on ' things incredible, ' or ' vulgar
errors,' and show up the absurdity of
certain things commonly believed on
the authority of old Jews : to be
plain, I mean the Old Testament
miracles, prophecies, dreams, miracu
lous births, &c." The reader will
notice that as yet he means only the
Old Testament miracles. Before he

THE FIRST PASTORA TE— WEST ROXBUR I .

49

had grown much older he had to see
that the application of the same logic
was fatal also to those of the New.
The literary work done at this
period includes the reyiew of Strauss's
"Life of Jesus," which he wrote
"with np small labour," at the re
quest of the Editor of the Examiner ;
also the article printed in the Boston
Quarterly Revieul on Dr. Palfrey's
"Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures
and Antiquities. " Many thought the
latter was somewhat severe uppn the
Doctor's views, and Parker himself
declares that his own hair stood up
when he thought of what he had
written, Sorne of his friends thought
he was too sarcastic, and to one of
them he thus replied : — "You think
there is sarcasrn. I do not think
that js tpo strong a word, though I
never intended anything like it. I
hate sarcasm, yet am, perhaps, sar
castic. I wished to. jn,dulge in a little
harmless pleasantry, but I fear the
Dean would not share in the mirth
he excited. You think I indulge the
ludicrpus vein too much. Such is my
propensity, no doubt ; but how ought
things to be treated? Light things
lightjy, graye things gravely, ridicu
lous things ridiculously. I must
think ridicule has its place, even in
criticism," Being " sarcastic " was
a charge he had frequently to de
fend himself against. But when an
earnest man has Pharisaical assump
tion and asinine stupidity to fight
against it is difficult tp be otherwise.
If it is the fate of some men to deserve
thrashing, it is the fate of others to
thrash them. " I never wrote," says
Parker, "a line with' any ill-will or
sarcastic humour towards maid or
man. I should nof dare write with
such a feeling, least of all in such a
cause. I wonder that you can read
'Pilgrim's Progress,' finding nothing
of the kind therein, and then discover
it in my poor writings. What if I had
called men a 'generation of vipers,'
'snakes,' ' children of the devil,' and

the like ? " It is pleasing to find how
much better James Martineau under
stood him than even his American
friends ; for when Parker defended
certain points of his "-Discourse of
Religion," in a Jetter to the English
Divine, the latter replied : " I am
almost angry with ypu for supposing
that I need any answer to the scoffing
accusation brought against you. Who
that has any insight into an author's
spiritual physiognoiny, and can ap
prehend its expressiveness in the
smallest degree, coul4 ever attribute
a sneer to you ? Every great writer
must put forth what is in him in his
own way ; and the excess of manly
strength is healthier than the scruples
of effeminate forbearance.'.'
The society Parker found at West
Roxbury was excellent and yariable.
It included excellent men and women
of all classes. The few well-to-do
families had in them many members
of culture and elegance ; and to en
joy the society of wit and beauty on
pleasant lawns and in well-furnished
drawing-rooms was a new and agree:
able experience to the young mart
brought up in ruggedness and poverty.
But if^he found delight in the homes
and society of his rich and cultured
members, he never forgot the farrners
and labourers ; for it was men and
women he cared for, not the accidents
of their circumstances. An incident
he himself records shows that at West
Roxbury, as at many another place,
lack of wealth was far from meaning
lack of nobility. " Opposite my
house," says hi? journal, ¦" there lives
a poor woman. Her husbapd labours
on a farm at a short distance from his
home, and receives wages. They
haye five children, the oldest probably
not mpre than ten years old. The
family is entirely dependent on the
earnings of the husband. A strange
family came into the village — a Mr.
Wallace, with his wife and two small
child ren. They were still poorer than
the first ; and, to add to their distress,

So

LtPE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Mrs. Wallace Was sick with a pulmo
nary consumption, and 'very low,' as
we say in the country. Now this
good woman finds out Mrs. Wallace,
sees her condition, pities her suffer
ings, and goes to help her. She takes
home the little child, lest it disturb the
mother by its cries, carries home the
soiled linen, washes and irons it; She
sits with her by day and night. Mrs.
- -, the wife of my drthodox brother,
came in to visit her, prayed with her,
and frightened the sick woman badly
by telling her her time was short,
asking her if she ever read the Bible,
&c. It made her almost insane for
two daysi When she slept, a weight
seemed to oppress her head j she saw
frightful Visions, pined for her child,
and has been rapidly growing worse.
I make no comments" The com
ment of most must be, how much
better doing on the part of the ortho^
dox minister's wife would have been
than preaching and praying.
Frequently Parker's local society
Was temporarily increased by the
sojourn under his roof of ministerial
and other friends from a distance. It
was ever a pleasure to him to have
one of these occupying what he used
to term his "prophet's chamber.''
The presence of Mr. Francis, or some
of his old classmates, never failed to
bring a "good time" for Theodore
and his Visitants ; and the study would
frequently resound with the loud and
hearty laughter which resulted from
mimicry, fun, and jokes. "George
Ripley and his wife Came to our house
Friday, and stayed until the next
Friday. We were full of joy and
latlghtftr all the time of their visit."
Equally delightful were the visits of
Mr-. Cranch, or Mr; Silsbee.
Then, by going over to Boston,
either at the meetings of an informal
association termed ''the Friends,"
which met in Mr; Jonathan Phillips'
rooms at the Tremont House, or at
their own houses, he used to meet
with Dr, Channing, George Ripley,

Charles Fdllen, Bronson Alcdtt, Dr.
Hedge, Wendell Phillips, then a
young lawyer, and others eminent in
the mental world. He tniis com
mences a description of a visit to, and
conversation with, Dr. Channing :
"Before attending the meeting [of
' the Friends '] I went to Dr. Chan-
ning's, stayed a couple of hours, and
took tea. His conversation was truly
delightfiil, rather of the nature of
discussioni I felt there was a broad
common ground betweerl us, notwith
standing the immense superiority of
his elevation." Parker then goes
on to recdrd an interesting conversa
tion he had with Channing about
mind and matter, the difference-
between animals and men, &C; His
journal also records other visits to,
and conversations with. Dr. Chan
ning, when such subjects as the
Sabbath; the New Testament, the
character of Jesus, the mythical
theory, the comparative morality of
the Gospels and the best heathen,
were the themes. Channing thought
that Parker had not allowed superiority
enough, in a recent article by him, to 'i
Christian morality; that the character
of Jesus was different in kind to that
of other good men ; and that the Bible
miracles were of a different genus to
those of other sacred books, to all
which Parker emphatically demurred.
Most of all was he shocked when
Channing contended that conscience
must be educated, a doctrine which
Parker rather ridiculed. " Th|j
Doctor said it must be educated, lifcQ
the understanding. But, upon beiqjy
asked if more was needed than this,
that the understanding should be-
rendered capable of presenting the
case distinctly to conscience,
seemed to favour the hypothesis.
asked him if conscience is not
infallible guide. He seems to doubt
it, but is going to think of the ques-
tioni To me it seems that conscience
will always decide right, if the case
is fairly put, and old habits have not

THE FIRST PASTORATE— WEST ROXBURY.

51

obscured its vision. This he seemed
inclined to believe, yet hesitated to
assent. He said conscience was like
the eye, which might be dim, or
might see wrong. But in this case it
is not the eye which sees, but the
soul which looks out at the eye; Now
the organ may be defective, and so
misrepresent ; but conscience, when
the facts are fairly before it, acts
directly and not mediately, and there
fore it is not liable to the same
mistakes with the eye. He seemed
inclined to admit this, yet denied that
we needed any infallible guide ; and
said that the belief in such a want
had led to the theorythat the Scripture
was inspired, word for word. But
Scripture was not an infallible guide ;
and if it were, it would do us no
good, for we could not infallibly
understand it. He thought a man
late in his life (in a case I put) who
had not hitherto consulted his cons
science, would, coming to that ad-
viser, make great mistakes, and
therefore be punished for his past sin
of neglect. Upon the whole, he
believed that if a man should begin
early to ask for the right, with sincere
wish to find it, he never would get
far out of the way j and evan if he
did, he was of course justifiable in
the court of heaven. Conscience is
the last appeal. Never go beyond
that ; even if it says wrong, the man
is degraded who disobeys it. But if
a man's conscience tells him some
thing different from other men's, he
is not to forego it ; but to recast its
plans, examine the subject anew, but
at last adhere to conscience."
.Dr. Channing's death occurred
while Parker was at West Roxbury ;
and the following extract from the
journal will show that his admiration
of the great man continued to the last.
"Oct. 5. — I have to-day heard of
the death of Dr. Channing. He has
/alien in the midst of his usefulness.
His faculties grew brighter as age
'came on him. No man in America

has left a sphere of such wide use
fulness ; no man since Washington
has done so much to elevate his
country. His life has been spent in
the greatest and best of works. A
great man — and a good man — has
gone home from the earth. Why,
Oh ! my God, are so many left, when
such are taken? Why could not I
have died in his stead ?" In the light
of what he himself afterwards became
we can now reply to the closing ques
tion — Because you have yet to live to
become a greater and grander man
than even Dr. Channing.
Parker also, at this time, made the
acquaintance of Bancroft, the his
torian, Moseri Stuart, the famous
" orthodox " professor, of Andover,
and Dr. Channing's nephew and
subsequent biographer, the Rev. W.
H. Channing. As the latter gentle
man has lived for a long time in
England, and is personally known to
many English readers, we doubt not
they will read with interest the follow
ing reference to him from Parker's
journal. ' ' I am exceedingly delighted
with Mr. C. He seems true, a little
diseased in the region of conscious
ness, but otherwise of most remark
able beauty of character ; full of good
tendencies, of noblest aspirations ; an
eye to see the evils of society, a heart
to feel them ; a soul to hope better
things, a willingness to endure all
self-denial to accomplish the end
whereto he is sent ; not covered by
thickest wrappages, which rather ob
scure his worthy uncle, whom I
venerate perhaps too much." This
brings to our mind a conversation
we one time had with Mr. Channing,
in which we expressed our great ad
miration for Parker. He replied,
" Well, you could not admire a
nobler man. " Such a testimony from
a contemporary and co-worker seems
worth preserving.
At a later period of his West Rox
bury pastorate, Parker found further
agreeable society in the Socialistic

52

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

community established at Brook
Farm. This was the idea of his in
timate friend, the Rev. George Ripley,
who, notwithstanding his success as a
preacher, left the ministry, sold off
his fine library, &c, and, aided by
his noble wife and a few kindred
spirits, tried the experiment of realis
ing what they thought ought to be
the true organisation of society. It
was an attempt to associate labour of
hand and labour of heart ; to restore
a more natural relationship between
man and man, and man and nature ;
and practically reconcile the problem
of labour, capital, and culture, by all
alike sharing in needful toils and the
resultant rewards. Like many other
similar attempts made in England and
France, as well as in America, it
failed ; but for a time it held together
a company of noble and earnest men
and women, several of whom have
since highly distinguished themselves
in the worlds of letters and philan
thropy. But, though it failed as si
social and pecuniary scheme, it did
not fail to give a most enjoyable
period — spoken of ever afterwards
with gratification — to those who were
participators. And, though Parker
was not one of these — perhaps his
strong feeling for the practical, or his
absorbing desire to reform theology,
preventing him — he had a large share
of pleasure from frequent visitations.
By a short cut, the Farm was not more
than a mile from his house ; and it was
well worth going this distance to
enjoy for a brief time the social free
dom and delightful conversations to
be had in the little community ; to say
nothing of the fun he could extract
out of finding refined ladies washing
shirts and stockings, literati spreading
manure, and quondam disseminators
of gospel truths disseminating kidney
potatoes. Hitherto Parker had not
begun to take so deep an interest in
social reforms as he did subsequently.
Combined with all this literary and
social activity while at West Roxbury,

Parker pursued habits which were at
once regular, simple, wholesome.
His gardening operations called him
much out of doors in pleasant weather.
His walks were often long ones — to
Boston or the neighbouring towns ; and
ten, fifteen, or twenty miles in the
day fatigued him little. During the
summer he, at times, took walking
tours which showed large powers of
endurance. One time he walked all
the way from New York to Boston,
in marches of about thirty miles a
day. Tours were also made through
and up the White Mountains, and
elsewhere. At another time he, with
Ripley and E. P. Clarke, walked all
the way to Groton to attend a Con
vention of the Come - Outers and
Second Adventists, at which he de
livered a long address, and afterwards
walked home again. Then, his buoy
ant temperament, the jovial times he
had with his neighbours, and the
variety he maintained in his studies
saved him from the usual reactions of
overwork. Isolation was seldom long
indulged, and morbidness was not al
lowed to find a lodgment in his nature.
For the most part, he thoroughly en
joyed his work and life.
Here is a long letter, describing his
experiences in his West Roxbury
pastorate, written at the end of his
second summer there : "I have never
had a summer of more delightful
study than the present, never found
more satisfaction in theological and
philosophical pursuits. I have solved
many questions which have long per
plexed and troubled me, and have
grown in some small measure calmer
than of old time. Tranquillity; you
know, is one of my attainable, but
unattained virtues. Some of my
inquiries have been historical, others
critical ; but philosophy has given me
most delight this season. I do not
say that the greatest questions are yet
solved, oriwill ever be. They stand
now like fire-breathing dragons in my
path ; I cannot drive them away.

THE FIRST PASTORATE— WEST ROXBURY.

53

But though they often heat, they never
bite me. Mr. H. says, in expressing
his despair of philosophy, it is better
to give it all up and study the facts of
nature — with Kirby and Spence, and
White of Selborne ! Who can do it,
if he would ? The Sphinx will have
an answer, or you die. You must
read the riddle. Love of philosophy
may be ' the last infirmity of noble
•minds,' but I will cling to it still.
" You ask me what effect my specu
lations have on my practice: Yoti
will acquit me of boasting when I
say,. the most delightful — better than
I could hope. My preaching is weak
enough, you know ; but it is made ten
times the more spiritual and strong by
my views of nature, God, Christ, man,
and the Sacred Scriptures: In my
religious conversation I tell men re
ligion is as necessary as bread to the
body,, light to the eye, thought to the
mind. I ask them to look into their
hearts and see if it 'is not so. They
say I tell them the doctrines of com
mon sense, and it is tfue. Questions
are often asked on the heretical points.
I tell men that Moses and the writers
of the Old Testament had low views
of God, but the best that men could
have in those times. They und erstand
it, and believe the New Testament
account of God. In regard to Christ,
they see a beauty in his character
when they look upon him as a man,
who had wants like theirs, trials,
temptation, joys and sorrows like
their own, yet stood higher than the
tempter, overcame in every trial.
They see the same elements in them
selves. " I dwell mainly on a few great
points, viz., the nobleness of man's
nature, the lofty ideal he should set
before him, the degradation of men
at this time, their low aims and worth
less pleasures ; on the necessity of
being true to their convictions, what
ever they may be, with the certainty
that if they do this, they have the
whole omnipotence of God working

for them, as the artizan brings the
whole power of the river to turn his
wheel. " Also I dwell on the character and
providence of God, and the exactness
and beauty of His laws, natural, moral,
and religious. My confidence in the
Bible is increased. It is not a sealed
book, but an open one. I consider
there are three witnesses of God in
creation. I. Works of nature : these
do not perfectly reveal Him, for we
¦cannot now understand all its contra
dictions, i. The words of our fellow
men : this confirms all the wisdom of
all the past ; it includes the Sacred
Scriptures. Parts of it differ vastly in
degree from other writings, but not in
kind. 3. The infinite sentiments of
each individual soul. Now, I lay
stress on the first, but more on the
second, arid still more on the third ;
for a man may Have just as bright re
velations in his Own heart as Moses, or,
David, or Paid ; I might say, as
Jesus, but I do not think any man
ever has had such a perfect God-
consciousness as he. -1
¦uTMen no more understand his
words than they can do his miracles.
' Be perfect as God, ' do they know
what this means ? No, no. My con
fidence ifi the Gospel is immeasurably
increased. I see it has meaning in
its plainest figures. t ' He that is
greatest among you shall be your
servant ' — what meaning ! It will be
understood a thousand years hence,
not before. But I see the Gospel is
human, but almost infinitely above
present humanity.
" I feel bound to communicate my
views just so fast and so far as men
can understand them, — no farther.
If they do not understand them when
I propound them, the fault, I think,
is mine and not theirs. I often find
it difficult to make myself understood.
' ' My religion warms my philoso
phy, and my philosophy gives strength
to my religion. You know I do not
boast in all this."

54

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

When he speaks in the foregoing
letter of questions of philosophy which
''stand now like fire-breathing dra
gons in my path ; I cannot drive them
away, ' ' he refers in the main to the great
problem of evil, which about this time
was greatly troubling him. How, St.
George-like, he overcame this fiery
dragon, we shall have to tell when we
come to speak of him as a theologian.
At Boston Music Hall, Parker used
to say that to him piety and morality
were the only sacraments. His ad
vance towards this position at West
Roxbury is indicated by the following
entry in the journal ; " Sunday,
Aug. 1st. — Communion in the morn
ing. This rite becomes less and less
to me. I would gladly abandon it,
for it troubles me. Leave the ele
ments, and give me a meeting for
prayer, conversation, or preaching,
not the amphibious thing we have
now. I confess the rite was never
much to me. The time spent alone
would always have been the more
profitable. Could it be possible, this
should be my plan-^to have a meet
ing in the evening for religious con
versation, and prayer (if needful) at
private houses ; and bread and wine
might form part of the entertainment.
I cannot but think Christ would be
astonished at these rites. But let
this go ; it warms the hearts of pious
women, we aie told." The reader
must, however, guard against the
suppositon that Parker was rash with
the devout prejudices of his members.
The sentiments just recorded were
not published abroad by him at the
time ; they are simply given in his
private diary and correspondence.
He had no lack of courage, but he
thought his views might change ; that
it would be unwise to go too fast for
his hearers ; and, above all, that there
was a danger that in expressing false
views connected with religion he
might injure the religion of his
hearers. He uttered only that in his
sermons and prayers which he really |

believed, but he was anxious to give
his people only that which would
really help them, not merely that
which would perplex. He preached
natural laws ; the simple life of the
farmers, mechanics, and milkmen
about him, of its own accord turned
into a sort of poetry, and re-ap-'
peared in the sermons, as the green
woods, not far off, looked in at
the windows of the meeting-house.
He preached only what he had ex
perienced in his own inward con
sciousness, which widened and grew
richer as he came intp contact with
living men, turned time into life, and
mere thought became character. As,
Mr. Frothingham finely remarks,
" At this period, Parker was no,
image-breaker ; indeed he never was,
unless he saw that the image con
cealed the God."
How careful and tender he was of
the religious prejudices of people the
following experience related by him
self will show : — " I had not long
been a minister before I found the wor
ship of the Bible as a fetish, hinder
ing me at each progressive step. If
I wished to teach the nobleness of
man, the Old Testament and the
New were there with dreadful con
demnations of human nature ; did I
speak of God's love for all men, the
Bible was full of ghastly things —
chosen people, hell, devil, damna
tion — to prove that He loved only a
few and them not overmuch ; did I
encourage free individuality of soul,
such as the great Bible-men them
selves had, asking all to be Christians
as Jesus was a Christ, there were
texts of bondage, commanding a be-
lief in this or that absurdity. There
was no virtue but the Scriptures
could furnish an argument against it.
I could not deny the existence of
ghosts and witches, devils and
demons, haunting the earth, but
Revelation could be quoted against
me. Nay, if I declared the constancy
of nature's laws, and sought therein.

THE FIRST PASTORA TE— WEST ROXBURY.

55

a great argument for the constancy of
God, all the miracles carne and held
their mythologic finger up. Even
slavery was ' pf God, ' for the
'divine statutes' in the Old Testa
ment admitted the principle that man
might own a man as well as a garden
or an ox, and provided for the
measure. Moses and the Prophets
were on its side, and neither Paul of
Tarsus nor Jesus of Nazareth uttered
a direct word against it. I set myself
seriously to consider how I could best
oppose this monstrous evil ; it rer
quired great caution. I feared lest I
should weaken men's natural trust in
God, and their respect for true reli
gion, by rudely showing them that
they worshipped an idol, and were
misled into gross superstition. This
fear did not come from my nature,
hut frqrn ecclesiastical tradition, and
the vice pf a New England theo-
Iflgic culture. It has been the maxim
of almost every sect in Christendom
that the mass of men, in religious
matters, must be ruled with autho
rity ; besides, the man of superior
education is commonly separated
from sympathizing with the people ;
and that by the very culture they have
paid for with their toil, and which
ought to unite the two ; he has little
confidence in their instinct or reflec
tion. But my chief anxiety came less
from distrust of mankind than from
diffidence in my own pqwer to tell the
truth so clear and well that I should
do no harm. However, when I saw
the evil which came from this super
stition, I ppuld not be silent. In
conversation and preaching I ex
plained little details — this was poetry
in the Bible, and not matter of fact ;
that was only the dress of the doc
trine, not truth itself ; the authors of
Scripture were mistaken here and
there ; they believed in a devil, which
was a popular fancy of their times ; a
particular prophecy has never been
fulfilled. But the whole matter must
be treated more philosophically, and

set on its true foundation. So, de
signing to save men's reverence for
the grand truths of the Bible, while I
shoujd wean them away from wor
shipping it, I soon laboriously wrote
twp sermons on the contradictions in
the Scripture — treating of historic
contradictions, where one part is at
variance with another or with actual
facts authenticated by other wit
nesses ; of scientific contradictions,
passages at open variance with the
facts of the rnaterial universe ; and of
moral and religious contradictions,
passages which were hostile to the
highest intuitions and reflections of
human nature. I then inquired about
the expediency of preaching them
immediately. I had not yet enough
practical experience of men to autho
rise me to depart frpm the ecclesi
astical distrust of the people"; I
cqnsulted older and enlightened mi
nisters. They all said ' No ; preach
no such thing ! You will only do
harm.' One of the most learned and
liberal minisfers of New England
advised me never to oppose the popu
lar religion ! ' But, if it be wrong
to hinder the religious welfare of the
people — what then ? ' ' Why, let it
alone ; all the old philosophers did
so ; Socrates sacrificed a cock to
^Esculapius ! He that spits on the
wind spits in his own face ; you will
ruin yourself, and do nobody any
good ! ' Silenced, but not convinced,
I kept my unpreached sermons, read
books on kindred matters, and sought
to, make my work more complete as a
whole, and more perfect in all its
parts. At length I consulted a very
wise and thoughtful layman, old,
with large social experience, and
much esteemed for sound sense ; one
who knew the difficulties of the case,
and would not let his young children
read the Old Testament, lest it should
injure their religious character. I
told him my conviction and my
doubts, asking his advice. He also
thought silence wiser than speech,

56

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

yet said there were marly thoughtful
men who felt troubled by the offen
sive things in the Bible, and would
be grateful to anybne who could
show that religion was independent
thereof. ' But,' he added, ' if you try
it you will be misunderstood. Take
the society at  , perhaps one of
the most intelligent in the city : you
will preach your sermons ; a few will
understand and thank you. But the
great vulgar; who hear imperfectly
and remember imperfectly, and at the
best understand but little, they will
say, ' He finds faults in the Bible !
What does it all mean? what have
we got left ?' And the little vulgar,
who hear and remember still more
imperfectly, and understand even less,
they will exclaim, ' Why, the man is
an Infidel ! He tells us there are
faults in the Bible. He is pulling
down religion!' Then it will get
intd the newspapers, and all the
ministers in the land will be down
vipon you ! No good will be done,
but much harm. You had better 1st
it all alone ! ' I kept my sermons
more than a year, doubting whether
the little congregation would be able
to Choose between trvlth and error
when both were set before them, and
fearing lest I should weaken their
faith in pure religion when I showed
it was not responsible for,the contra
dictions in the Hebrew and Greek
Scriptures I But at length I could
wait no longer ; and to ease my own
conscience I preached the two ser
mons, yet not venturing to look the
audience in the face and see the
immediate result. In the course of
the week, men and women Olf the
commonest education, but of earnest
character and profound religious feel
ing, took pains to' tfcll me of the great
comfort I had givert them by showing,
what they had long felt, that the Bible
is one thing and religion another ;
that the two had no necessary con
nection ; that the faults of the Old
Testament or the New neednot hinder

any man from religions development ;
and that he never need try to believe
a statement in the Bible which was at
variance with his reason and his con.
Science. I could not learn that any
one felt less love for God, or less
love for piety and morality. The
scales of ecclesiastical tradition fell
froni my eyes ; by this crucial ex
periment, this guide-board instance,
I learned that the mass of men need
not be led blindfold by clerical au
thority, but had competent power of
self-direction ; and while they needed
the scholar as their help, had no
need of a self-appointed master. It
was clear that a teacher of religion'
and theology should tell the world all
that he knew thereunto appertaining,
as all teachers of mathematics, or of
chemistry, are expected to do in their
profession." It was after this that
Parker showed that boldness of utter
ance which distinguished him, and for
which he was so shamefully treated.
As fast as he found a new truth, he
preached it. Fortunately for him he
bad some really good and sensible
men to deal with. The last year of
his life he thus Wrdte of them : "I
often wonder that the people at
Spring Street bote with my opinions
as gently as they did; for all Were not
able to take so philosophical views of
them as Dfeacon Farrington. He said,
' Mr. Parker makes a distinction be.
tween religion and theology ; it is a
sound distinction. We like his re
ligion ; it is exactly what we want '.
we understand it ; and this religion is
the principal thing. About the theo
logy we are not quite so clear ; much
of it is different from what we used tb
learn. But we were taught many
foolish things. Some of his theology
we are sure is right ; all of it seems
like good common-sense; and if some
of it does sound a little strange, we
are contented to have him prtach just
what he thinks. For, if he began by
not preaching what he believed, I am
afraid he wbhld end by preaching at

THE FIRST PASTORATE— WEST ROXBURY.

57

last what he did not believe at all !
Wise old deacon ! — I learned a great.
many things from him." It is to be
hoped that church office-bearers like
Deacon Farrington may largely in
crease. They wonderfully aid minis
ters to "declare the whole counsel
of God."
As in the cases of Channing, Robert
son, of Brighton, and other ministers,
whose inner lives have, been made
known to the world, Parker, at times,
felt deeply dissatisfied with his attain
ments. He was troubled as to whether
or not he dught to stay in so small a
sphere as West Roxbury afforded. "I
often ask myself what I am doing
with my one talent, and can only re
ply that I deem myself well nigh
wasting it; Preaching to an audience
of seventy or one hundred and twenty
souls, going about and talking a little
with old women, giving good advice
to hypocrites, and scattering here and
there, I hope, a corn-grain that will
one day getminate and bear fruit.
Oh, could I be satisfied that I am
doing evetl this last I If I deemed it
Certain that any word of mine would
ever waken the deep inner life of
another's soul, I should bless God
that I was alive and speaking. But
I will trust. I am sometimes praised
for my sermons. I wish men knew
how cold those sleek speeches are; I
would rather see one man practising
one of my sermons than hear all mefi
praise them. But of this I am, satis
fied — I am not doing what I ought to
do;" In this reference to men praising
and not practising his sermons there
is the utterance df the heart Of the
true minister. Members of the con
gregation of such an orie little think
how deeply he feels every dereliction
of duty on their part as a reproach
upon himself.
There were times, too, when he
was deeply dejected. He had within
him too great a capacity for sorrow
Hot to have deep sorrows frdm the
occasions thereof, which came to him

as to all mortals. He must have been
labouring under great sadness when
he penned the following in his West
Roxbury diary : " What a fool I am
to be no happier ! I have enough of
the outward of life (bating some few
sorrows known only to myself) ; am
engaged in congenial employment. I
should be much happier, — pshaw ! I
should be much nobler! Let happi
ness happen as it may : it is an acci
dent, not the essence. Let me be
more manly, trtle, simple, Christian.
I am not doing my work ; I am too
idle ; too much afraid of the world.
This week has been entirely wasted.
One good hour of thought a week is
all I will ever ask. Then all the
growth is effected : the rest is only
digging and watering, and pruning
and lopping. I have had more than
one — one oh Monday and one to
night. Yet I have done but little."
"I have ldst many things, ' The
greatest was Hope. Days there have
been when I saw naught else to
freshen my eye, weary with looking
over the dull waste of my early life.
Tired with labour, I have laid down,
my books beside me, the lamp at
summer midnight burning low, all
else silent in sleep. Hope visited
me ; she sat beside me, trimmed my
lamp. In her sublime presence I
grew calm, and composed myself by
her majestic features.-"
It is plain, then, from such extracts,
though they do not exceed a dozen in
the whole of the volumes of his
journal, that, at times, this great soul
had its Gethsemane. The causes
thereof were chiefly two. First, great
as were his attainments, they never
satisfied him. Even on his death
bed his lament was, "I should like
to have lived a little longer to have
finished my work. God gave me large
talents, but I have but half used them."
Higher attainment, not fame, power,
or riches, was ever his aspiration and
ambition ; and it made him unhappy
to find that, strive as he would, his

58

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER,

ideals ever kept so far in advance of
him. "May, 1840. — How my own
thought troubles me ! I have a work
to do, and how am I straitened till
it be accomplished ? I must write an
Introduction to the New Testament-
must show what Christianity is, its
universal and its distinctive part. I
must write a Philosophy of Man, and
show the foundation of religion in
him. In my days of leisure, when I
am not hard at work — on a beautiful
Sabbath, for instance, or in a moony
night, or one filled with stars, when I
walk out, this burthen presses me
heavily. I must do, or die. I sit
down to hard work, and then only do
I feel free from this tormenting spirit ;
at other times I am consumed by self-
reproach for the nothings I have ac
complished, for the nothing I have
undertaken,'' The other cause of his
sorrow was his unsatisfied yearning
for offspring ; for, however fondly he
may have loved the children of his
friends and neighbours, they were not
his own, and they only served to re
mind him the more of his own priva
tion. But his good sense led him to
flee to the two best sources of conso
lation for such depression — religion
and work, Nearly always following
the expression of melancholy in the
journal, there are pious utterances and
schemes of work. For instance,
following after one of these sorrowful
outbursts, as if written immediately
ensuing, there comes this plan of
Work for the Week — "1. Write a
sermon, and finish one not completed.
2. Finish Goethe's '¦ Farbenlehre.'
3. Baur's 'Gnosis.' 4. Do something
to Ammon. 5- Critique — Hebrew
Lexicon. 6. Begin Augusti's Ein-
leitung to A. T. " Such a man may
have fits of depression, but they can
not long affect him. Hence, to his
friends, Parker, in spite of these
secret reasons of dejection — was
known as an habitually genial and
cheerful man.
When he had been settled at West

Roxbury about two and a half years,
he was honoured with a "call " from
the congregation at Lexington— his
native village. His reasons for de
clining it are given in the following
letter, forwarded to his brother Isaap :
" It is doubly delightful to learn that
anyone in my native village should be
pleased with anything that I could dp ;
but in respect to coming to Lexing
ton as a minister, I have several
things to say. J think that you know
that I came here against ray o-wa con?
sent- My friends advised this measure
of settling at West Roxbury, and I
consented with a good deal of un;
willingness ; for / neither liked the
salary of 600 dollars, nor the small
audience of 80 (»- 150 souls. But I
gave up my scruples, was settled — not
for life i but can at any time leave the
place, on condition of giving notice of
my intention six months beforehand.
The parish also can discharge me, by
a majority of votes, on the same con
dition. Thus stands the matter be
tween us, as settled by the contract,
The parish could have no legal or
common claim upon me if I wished
to leave to-morrow. But there are
other considerations that have, and
ought to have, a strong influence.
This parish is small, and the people
poor ; their pnly chance of getting
and keeping a minister depends on
the advantages arising from their
position in the neighbourhood of Bos
ton, Cambridge, &c. Now, if I were
to leave them at this time I fear they
could not secure the services of a
minister of respectable talents, who
would be realty of use to them. Jt
is, therefore, my duty to stay. , "I
could wish with all my heatt for a
larger sphere, a greater number of
hearers, and those more intelligent
and cultivated than the majority at
West Roxbury, but I think tfcy wpnld
lose more than / should gain by my
leaving them. Again, I intend, in
the course of my life, to do more
through the Press than the Pulpit.

THE FIRST PASTORATE— WEST ROXBURY.

59

Here I gan find ten hours a day, for
five days in the week, to devote to
works npt directly connected with the
exercises of the pulpit, and yet neglect
no duty I owe to any man, or to the
whole parish. I could not thus con
trol my time in Lexington, where, the
people are both more numerous and
more scattered. Still further, I doubt
that I could long suit the people at
Lexington. My theologipal opinions
differ very widely from those of the
Unitarians in general, and, perhaps,
would not be acceptable at Lexing
ton ; though I fear very little on that
ground, since J never knew men really
religions to find any fault with them. "
So he continued at West Roxbury,
until, in 1845, it was "Resolved that
Theqdore Parker shall have a chance
of being heard in Boston."
His time at the former place, as
afterwards, was one of great mental
commotion in America. The Uni
tarians had just won their legal right
to deny the Trinity, and had not thus
far shown themselves so narrow and,
intolerant as they did afterwards to
Parker. The Universalists were fight
ing manfully against the most horrible
of doctrines — eternal torments. Lloyd
Garrison was just commencing his
efforts against American slavery. Dr.
Channjng was in the full maturity of
his powers — preaching the dignity of
man, and piety as a purely inward
life, with great eloquence, and had
begun to apply his doctrines to the
actual life of the individual, {he State,
and the Church. Horace Mann was
beginning the battle of universal edu
cation. Rev. John Pierrepont was
fighting a grand and twofold battle —
against drunkenness in the street, and
for righteousness in the pulpit — main
taining a minister's right to oppose
actual wickedness, however popular
and destructive. Emerson was carry
ing all before him with his lectures.
The Phrenologists, Spurzheim and
Comhe, were leading men away from
the old sypernaturaiism, py inducing

them to study the constitution of man
more wisely than ever before. The
works of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Carlyje, Cousin, Strauss, &c, were
being widely studied. The rights of
labour, pf property, of women were
being discussed. It was a time of
conventions, controversies, commo
tions. We have already referred to Parker
walking a long distance to take part
in the Convention called by the
Second Adventists and Come-Outers.
The stirring speech he mad? there thus
concluded :— ' ' What is the church
now? Paul says, 'Where the Spirit
of the Lord is, there is liberty.' But
where the spirit of the church is, there
is slavery 1 The Holy Spirit says,
Be a true soul I live a divine life !
The church demands a belief, and not
a divine life ! The best meji come to
her, and find no life — no power." Of
the Convention as a whole he thus
sums up his impressions :• — " 1. I am
surprised to find so much illiberality
amongst the men who called the Con
vention ; they were not emancipated
from the letter of the Bible nor the
formality of a church. They simply
wish to pull down other sects to make
room for their own, which will pro
bably be worse than its predecessors.
2. I am surprised and enchanted to
find these plain Cape,-Cod men, with
numerous others, who have ma .e
actual my own highest idea of a
church. I feel strengthened by their
example. Only let it be united with
the highest intellectual culture. 3. I
am surprised to find many others who
have emancipated themselves from
the shams of the Christian Church,
and now can worship God at first
hand and pray largely and like men.
I don't know that I have got any new
ideas ; but certainly my confidence in
my old ideas, has been deepened, for
I see they may be made actual."
Soon afterwards he took part in
calling a Convention in Boston for
the consideration of questions con-

6o

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

cerning the Sabbath, the ministry,
and the church. " All my friends
after the flesh, and some of my friends
after the spirit," writes Parker, "re
gretted that I had any agency in
calling the convention. Lamson, a.
I beautiful soul, doubts the convention ;
fears bad use will be made of truth.
Dr. Channing also doubts the pro'
priety thereof, since it looks like
seeking agitation : here again we shall
see. I have my Own doctrines and
shall support them, think the con
vention as it may. I look on the
church as a body of men and women
getting together for moral and re
ligious instruction ; on the minister as
a moral and religious teacher ; and on
Sunday as a day set apart from work
and common secular vocations. All
of them are human institutions, but
each valuable ; I would almost say
invaluable." The convention was
held, but profitless kind of discussion
seems to have been all that came out
of it.
The previous month Parker had
attended another convention, of which
he thus notes : — " Went to Boston td
attend the Non-Resistant Convention.
Don't agree with them entirely, but
like their spirit and upward tendency r
Like not their formula of ' No
Human Government.' Think cir
cumstances render it needful some
times to take life. If a man attack
me, it is optional on my part to suffer
or resist ; but should he attack my
wife, with the worst of purposes, why
should I suffer the wicked to destroy
the righteous, when I could save her
by letting out his life? I should de
precate the issue being tendered j but,
if it were tendered, I have little doubt
which course would be revealed to me
as the true one. ''

Parker had also to consider Mor
monism and Spiritualism ; for tbey,
too, were beginning to exercise men's
minds in America at that time. On
the latter he made the following
pronouncement : — "All the world
and ' the rest of mankind ' is talk
ing about 'spiritualism,' 'rappers,'
'tippers,' 'writers,' 'talkers,' &c.
There are many straftge things testi
fied to by some of the soundest and
Shrewdest of men ; things which I
cannot explain as yet. But I do not
accept the hypothesis that they are
the work of ' spirits,' either the
souls of dead men, or ' angels ' good
or bad. I know nothing to justify
the ' spiritual ' hypothesis. I am
not successful in my investigations ; I
drive off the ' spirits ' by looking at
the table. I once — and once only —
got a response frorn a ' spirit ;' that
was Of a man whom I knew to be safe
and sound on terrafirma here below.
(I have seen him since.) I got any
answer that I wanted to get. If I
had time I should like to look into the
matter a little further. But scientific
men give it the go-by — which seems
scarcely right. It does not now appear
in Catholic districts I am told. Is
it sd? They have enough to excite
their marvellousnesS without tipping
tables !"
Altogether, the times were such as
a strong, enterprising soul likes to live
through; and Parker counted it a
piece of good fortune that he was a
young man when these things were
taking place — when great and little
questions were discussed, and the
public had not yet taken sides. Had
he known the persecution and suffer
ing involved, he would have said,
" Send by another hand, O Lord ! not
mine. "

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

61

CHAPTER VIII.
The Controversy with the American Unitarians.
" They first read him out of their Church, and next minute
Turned round and declared he had never been in it.
But the ban was too small, or the man was too big,
For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig."
J. R. Lowell, on barker's Treatment.

WHAT did Theodore Parker
come to feel and think about
American Unitarianism and Ameri
can Unitarians ? To our mind, the
answers to this question give abun
dant exoneration to him for the
course he took. Rightly, he was
strictly conscientious and truthfully
outspoken ; and when he found that
the American Unitarians were build
ing up religion upon a sandy and
false loundation ; lacked the spiritu
ality and fervour which is the very
life-blood of religion ; used the Bible
to make their positions, as a sculptor
uses clay to shape his model ; spoke
loudly of the Fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood and dignity of man,
and yet sided with the slave-owner,
and distiller, and others, whose very
wealth and influence came from out
raging those sacred principles — how
could he do less than expose some of
these things and denounce the rest ?
Else he could not have been the
true man he was.
He himself has recorded that he
counted it a great good fortune that he*
was bred among religious Unitarians,
for he felt that thereby he escaped
much superstition. But he felt early
that the " liberal " ministers did not
do justice to simple religious feeling ;
I that their preaching seemed to relate
' too much to outward things, not
enough to the inward pious life ; and
that their prayers were cold. But he
felt that, notwithstanding this defect,
they preached the importance and
the religious value of morality as no
sect had done before. Gopd works,
the test of true religion — noble

character, the proof of salvation — if
not spoken, were yet implied in their
sermons, spite of their inconsistent
talk about " Atonement," " Re
deemer," " Salvation by Christ," and
their frequent resort to other pieces
pf damaged phraseology. The effect
of this predominant morality he saw
ip the number of persons of intellect,
talent, genius, integrity, and philan
thropy which the sect included. But
while they had this great practical
excellence, they Jacked the deep in
ternal feeling of pie{y which alone
could make it lasting, and is in itself
the most joyous of all delights. This
fact seemed clear jn their sermons,
their prayers, and even in the hymns
they made, borrowed, or "adapted." -
Most powerfully preaching to the un
derstanding, the conscience, and the
will, the cry was ever " Duty, duty !
work, work ! " They failed to ad
dress with equal power the soul, and
did not also shout, "Joy, joy ! de
light, delight!" "Rejoice in God
always ; and again I say unto you,
Rejoice ! "
This defect of the Unitarians he
looked upon as a profound one. He
saw that, not actually nor consciously,
but by the logic of their conduct, they
had broke with the old ecclesiastic
supematuralism, which, with its whip
of fear, yet compelled a certain direct,
though perverted, action of the simple
religious element in the Trinitarians.
But ceasing to fear "the great and
dreadful God " of the Old Testament,
they had not quite learned to love
the all-beautiful and altogether lovely
one of the universe. He felt that this

62

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

came because they had np theory
which justified a more emotional ex
perience of religion. Their philo
sophy, with many excellences, was
sure of ho great spiritual truth. To
their metaphysics eternal life was
. only probable ; | the great argument
for it came, not from the substance
of human nature, only from an acci
dent in the personal history of a
single man ; its proof was not in
tuitive from the primal instincts of
mankind, nor deductive from the
nature of God, nor yet inductive
from the general phenomena of the
twofold universe ; it was ohLy infer
ential from the " resurrection of
Christ" — an exceptional occurrence
in the story of the race, and resting
on no evidence. Yet, further, he
had found one of their most popular
and powerful writers, in their chief
periodical, declaring that even the
'existence of a God was not a cer
tainty of metaphysical demonstration,
i nor even a fact of consciousness. So
that this great truth, fundamental to
all forms of religion, had neither an
objective, necessary, and ontological
rootin the metaphysics of the universe,
nor yet a mere subjective, contingent,
and psychological root itt the con
sciousness of man ; but, like the
existence of ' ' phlogiston " and the
"celestial aether" of the interstellar
spaces, it was a matter of conjecture,
of inference from observed facts,
purely external and contingent; or,
like the existence of the "Devil,"
was wholly dependent on the
" miraculous and infallible revela
tion." He came to feel, further, of the
American Unitarians that, after de
nying the Trinity and the Deity of
Christ, they did not dare to affirm
the humanity of Jesus, the naturalness
of religion to man, the actual or pos
sible universality of inspiration, and
that man is not amenable to ecclesias
tical authority, either the oral Roman
tradition or the written Hebrew

and Greek Scriptures ; but, naturally
communing with God, through many
faculties, by many elements, has in
himself the divine well of watery
springing up full of everlasting life,
and sparkling with eternal truth, and
so enjoys continuous revelation.
Again, Parker's conscientiousness
— as many another Unitarian minis
ter's has since — revolted at the twist
ing and turning which Old-School
Unitarian ministers were uncon
sciously displaying in their determi
nation to make every text of the
many-bpinioned books of the Bible
teach Unitarian doctrines. f'He found
the prevailing Unitarianism desiring
yto believe nothing not reasonable,
and yet all things scriptural ; hence
they were not prepared to look?
facts in the face, and say manfully,
"Yes, this is in the Bible, and
against us ; and we reject it, because
it is not in Reason, which is above
the Bible." So, with perfect good
faith, Old-School Unitarianism "ex
plained away " what was offensive :
" This is'not in the canon ; that is a
false interpretation." He himself
said that to such a proficiency had
this aft of "explaining away" been
carried, that the Scripture was a piece
of wax in the.hands of the Old-School
Unitarians, and took any shape con
venient for their purpose : the Devil
was an Oriental figure of speech;
Paul believed in him no more than
Peter Bayle ; the miraculous birth of
Jesus, the ascension in the body, the
stories of Abraham, Jonah, Daniel,
were " true as symbols, not as facts ;"
though Moses and Isaiah never spoke
of Jesus in the Law and the Prophets,
yet Jesus was right when he said
they did ; David, in the Psalm, was a
sick man speaking only of himself,
but when Simon Peter quoted that
Psalm, the inspired king was predict
ing Jesus of Nazareth ! Indeed, said
Parker, if the Athanasian Creed, the
Thirty-nine Articles of the English
Church, and the Pope's bull, " Uni-

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

°3

genitus," could be found in a Greek
manuscript, and proved the work of
an " inspired " apostle, the Old-
School Unitarians would, in good
faith, explain all the three, and deny
that they taught the doctrine of the
Trinity or the fall of man !,
We the more readily give Parker's
Views of the Unitarianism of his day
because — owing largely to his in
fluence since — we know it does not
truthfully represent the Unitarianism
of the majority of the, American or
English Unitarians of the present
lime. When true to itself, Unitarian
theology progresses ' in accordance
with the light and intelligence of the
ages, and this it has ddne since the
time of Parker's expulsion. All
along, the Unitarians, especially those
of England, have included amongst
them far-seeing and tolerant men —
the Rev. James Martineau, for ex'
ample — who shared Parker's position
that the soul is above the Bible, and
now, on both sides the Atlantic, the
Unitarians who do so are, we believe,
in a majority. The communion is
now fast taking its stand upon the
great doctrines of Absolute Religion,
as Parker declared it would have to
do if the body was to continue.
Thus it is largely owing to the teach
ings of the Boston Heresiarch that
Unitarianism has undergone the re
vival it has during recent years. The
Unitarianism of the Priestley and
Belsham School, which was that pre*
vailing before Parker's time, is now
dead beyond hope of resurrection.
Of the men of American Unitari
anism, as a whole, Parker came to
have a poor opinion ; though still con
tinuing to preserve high- admiration
for many individuals; He thought
there was little scholarship and less
philosophic thinking among them ;
and he found that, notwithstanding
what individual members did, the
sect, as a whole, was opposed to all
reforms. They, so it seemed to him,
went to work in a false and unphilo-

sophic manner : they confounded the
ology with religion; then thought
that theology must be studied, not as
a science, in the spirit of freedom, but
with fear. So, as he put it, they wove
cobwebs and called it cloth ; and if
a man tore asunder their cobweb-
trousers in putting them on, they
called out " Infidel !" and if he com
plained that he was cold and naked
when he wore them whole, they cried .
out, " Away with him."
The foregoing statements, then,
given almost in his own words, re
present Parker's conscientious con
victions respecting the Unitarianism
and Unitarians prevailing in his day.
What could he do else than preach
and teach as he did? He was not
called upon to separate himself from
the Unitarians ; for it is one of their
foundation principles that free inquiry
and expression should never stop but
with a conviction of the troth. Priest
ley had declared that this was their
duty, even if pursuing it should lead
them beyond Christianity altogether.
Then, Parker's congregation — those
who engaged him and paid him—
never sought to turn him out : it was
Unitarian Associations, with which he
had simply a fraternal relationship,
and which had nothing to do with
either engaging him or paying him,
which did sd.
But, while it is easy to vindicate
Parker's action towards the American
Unitarians, it seems utterly impossible
to vindicate the course of the Ameri
can Unitarians towards him. Theposi-
tions they took up in expelling him
were thoroughly illogical and inde
fensible. After they themselves had
changed from Calvinism, through
Arianism and Arminianism, to Uni
tarianism, they denied Parker's right
to make another advance to Christian
Theism. They declared it right to
ride on the theological railway to the
third or fourth station, the length
they themselves had thus far ridden ;
but that one of their ministers should

64

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

ride to the fifth they could not either
allow or even countenance. Re
formers have seldom friendly feelings
for those who reform beyond them.
Then they denied that Parker's sys
tem could be Christianity, or he a
Christian, because he gave up certain
oi their " essentials"; yet they bitterly
complained of the "Orthodox" saying
that Unitarians were not Christians,
because they gave up certain of their
"essentials" — the Trinity, theDeity of
Jesus, and the outgrowing doctrines.
They said all previous disputes had
been within Christianity, but that
Parker's with them was one outside
Christianity : thus passing sentence
upon the very matter still to be tried,
and saying precisely of him what the
" Orthodox " had, in former days,
said of them. In short, they^were
thoroughly in the wrong ; and it is
not surprising that the verdict of
history has since been against them
and in favour of the man they per
secuted. The story of intolerance we have
now to relate, in addition to being a
prominent episode in Parker's career,
is a lesson enforcing thdrough tolera
tion. As Parker himself finely ob
served, just at the time his persecution
was commencing, we ought all to
learn that " truth is unchangeable, but
orthodoxy and heresy vary with each
country and every age. The world
seems to defend doctrines in the in
verse ratio of their value, as mothers
love best their weak and sickly chil
dren. Nothing will ever save us but
a wide, generous toleration. I must
tolerate and comfort my brother,
though I think him in .error — though
I know him to be in .error. I must
tolerate his ignorance, even his sin —
yes, his intolerance. Here the only
safe rule is, if someone h^s done you
a wrong, to resolve on the spot never
to do that wrong to him or anyone
else. It is easy to tolerate a man
if you know he is a fool and quite
in the wrong. But we must tolerate

him when we know he is not a fool,
and not altogether in the wrong."

As already said, Parker was little
of a heretic towards current Uni
tarian views when at Divinity Hall.
How he and two of his classmates
became the editors of the little maga
zine, the Scriptural Interpreter,
when Dr. Gannett, the colleague of
Dr. Channing, had to abandon it on
account of failing health, the reader
has alfeady been told. Of the three
student-editors, Parker was by far
the largest contributor. In the year
or so of his joint-editorshjp^he con
tributed about forty articles to the
little family periodical, dealing with
such subjects as the Authenticity
and Construction of the Pentateuch,
the Composition of the Psalms, the
Dates and Ingredients of the Books
of Isaiah, the Nature of Prophecy,
the Meaning pf the so-called, " Mes
sianic Prophecies," &c. The debate-
able ground covered was principally
that lying between the currept Unir
tarian views and the new views of De
Wette, Eichorn, Astruc> and other
scholars of the moderate German
rationalist school. Altogether the
matter and manner of the periodical
were such as most present-day Unita
rians would have thought exceedingly
mild. But not so thought the Ameri
can Unitarians of forty years ago,
who, for them, gave him a little of
that Unitarian intolerance of which
hereafter he was to experience so
much. Hardly knowing what all the
commotion was about, Parker had
the drum ecclesiastic beaten in his
ears. Self-constituted guardians of
the faith wrote warning and protest
ing notes, of which the following is a
sample :— " To Messrs . Ellis, Parker,
and Silsbee, Editors, Interpreter,
April 20, 1836. I read, in the last
number of the Scriptural Interpreter,
the article on the 52nd chapter of
Isaiah, and with unmingled surprise
and horror. What could possess you?

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS. 65

What is the object of the theologians
at Cambridge ? Are they determined
to break down the prophecies, and
make our blessed Saviour and his
Apostles impostors and liars ? Can
not our doctrines be sustained in any
other way ? Must the pious Christian
be compelled to give up one passage
after another, one book after another,
one prophecy after another, until he
has nothing left to stand upon but
what is in common with the Deist ?
Where is it all to end ? Tell us, I
beseech you ; that we may quit, if
necessary, the ship before it is too
late i before we have struck upon the
last rock which the vessel of our
faith will bear ? Pause then, I be
seech you, before it is too late. I am
a well-wisher to your work. I have
always been a subscriber. I am one
of the household of your faith. But
another such a blow and I must quit
all I vahie. My religious faith above
all things else ; I cannot part with
it. To escape, therefore, shipwreck,
I must jump overboard before the last
plank is taken away. And not I alone.
Hundreds must do the same ; they
will not bear to have the sacred re
cords of their faith frittered all away,
though it may be in a style a little
more refined than that of Paine, but,
nevertheless, resulting in consequences
which are just the same. Mr. Noyes
strikes a blow and alarms a sect. Mr.
Peabody recovers the ground for a
moment, by holding on to a few pas
sages. The Interpreter follows to
destroy one of the most essential of
these few. The end cannot be far off.
And then, the imposture of the New
Testament and its authors will be the
completion of the dreadful work. — A
Subscriber." As the reader will
notice, the cry all through the letter
is, not "Give me troth," but '.'Give
me comfort— leave me alone in my
ignorance and satisfaction," and this
was largely the attitude of the main
body of Parker's subsequent oppo
nents. In addition to the protesting

and warning missives which came to
the Editors' sanctum, Parker was
spoken to gravely by eminent Unita
rian divines, who received him coolly
and told him how much they regretted
that such or such an article had been
written. He remembered, however,
that it was for him to think with his
own brains and' not with those of
either Dr. this or Dr. the other.
Hence, after visiting such men, we
find him thus writing in his diary —
' ' He found fault with my article in
the Interpreter, upon ' Servant of
God ' : inconsistently, as I think.
He said he was sorry to see it."
The young man herein exemplifies
his early home training: "to inves
tigate all things with his own eyes ;
carefully to form opinions for himself,
and, while he believed them reason-
ablS*and just, to hold and defend
them with modest firmness."
The next step in the controversy
is noted while Parker was supplying
as a candidate at Barnstable. Mar-
tineau's "Rationale of Religious In
quiry " had just then appeared in
America, and the Rev. George Ripley
had written a review of it for the
Christian Examiner, which bad
strongly displeased some of the Uni
tarian divines. One of them, Pro
fessor Andrews Norton, had written
a letter to the Boston Daily Adver
tiser, replying to the review, and
rebuking the writer for being so bold
while yet so young. But the inde
pendent-thinking young man was not
to be thus easily put down, and the
very next day he. gave the eminent
ex- professor as good as he had brought.
Parker's mind about the matter is
thus expressed. "This coming. out
in print, and denouncing the writer
of an article which appeared soberly
and unostentatiously in a periodical
with which Mr. N. had nothing to do,
is ridiculous. A man writes some
thing which differs a little from what
Professor N. believes, and, forsooth,
he must come ' out with his sign-
F

66

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

manual,' and tell the good people of
the land he does not think so ! What
if he does not? Is he the people?
Will all truth perish with him ? The
last time I saw Mr. R. I suggested
that the first one who lifted a hand in
this work would have to suffer ; and
I wished to push some old veteran
German to the forefront of the battle,
who would not care for a few blows :
but he thought there was no danger. "
Parker, in thus suspecting, proved a
truer prophet than Mr. Ripley, for
that little newspaper skirmish was the
commencement of the long and bitter
theological conflict of which we are
now treating. The battle of natural
versus infranatural religion — of reason
against authority — had now begun.
After Parker's settlement at West
Roxbury, about the commencement
of 1837, a clergyman returning to
America from Germany, brought with
him the first copy of Strauss' " Life
of Jesus " which entered the New
World. He lent it to Parker, who
read it, and thereby had his growing
suspicions matured that the New
Testament has a mythology as well as
the Old, and that the miracles of all
times and religions were much alike
incredible. He did not for a moment
accept Strauss' mythical theory ; he
thought the myths had evolved around
the character of Jesus, rather than
that the latter had been evolved from
the former. He even continued to
believe in some of the New Testa
ment miracles, not too closely looking
whether the evidence was sufficient to
establish them as facts. But his belief
in the miraculous was continuously a
diminishing quantity ; and soon after
reading Strauss he had become as
" advanced " as the following extract
indicates. " The Christ of tradition
I shall preach down, one of these
days, to the extent of my ability. I
will not believe the driving beasts out
of the temple with a whip ; the com
mand to Peter to catch a fish ; still:
less the cursing the fig-tree, and the

old wives' fables about the Ascensiom'
His predictions of his death I have
reason to doubt ; but I know not but
they are real. He, doubtless, was
mistaken in his predictions of the end
of the world, or rather his disciples
were ; for the prediction is manifest
and its failure obvious. The ideal
Christ is what we are to preach ; and
perhaps we shall not need the Gospels
much in delineating him. Yet I
should be sorry to lose even the little
they afford us, were it not for the
lamentable matter they connect there'
with. Christianity is much indebted
to Paul. He freed it from its narrow
nessi Was it limited in Christ, or
did its limits come from his disciples?
Christ seems himself to fluctuate —
once he refuses to heal a stranger-
woman's child, as not being part of
his mission. But he is afterwards
surprised to find a greater faith than
in his Own ration. I doubt that he
designed it to be universal ; yet many
passages towards the end of his life
favour ki"
An ingenuous man who records
such convictions in his journal is
certain to soon express them in his
social conversations. Accordingly,
directly after, we find the cry of
' ' Infidel " is being raised against
him. " Nezh 13. — A rare thing has
happened to me to-day ; simply this
— a certain Mrs.  pronounces me
an infidel, in good set speech. The
reason is that I do not think as she
does of the authority of Jesus. She
thinks he has a different authority
from that of the truths he taught;
therefore, that we are bound to obey
him, even if the doctrine in question
does not seem true to us, I think Jesus']
Christ is to be reverenced and obeyed
solely for the intellectual, moral, and
religious truth which he brought to
light by his doctrines and life. If
sentences of his did not seem true to
me, I should reject them ; for I can
accept no opinion which annuls my
own reason. I honour and revere

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

67

Christ more, perhaps, than she,
though not in the same way. After
wards, she retracted the offensive
term, ' infidel '; but this does not
mend the matter. I something doubt
that my sermons breathe the spirit of
infidelity. But all this shows me —
what needed no proof before — how
much easier it is to censure another,
and damn him with harsh names,
than to amend one's own life, or even
to apprehend the difference between
his creed and your own. "
The same year Parker entered the
foregoing in his journal, Emerson
delivered his well-known address on
" The Christian Teacher " before the
senior class of the Divinity College at
Cambridge — the institution at which
Parker had received his theological
training. Accompanied by Mrs.
Parker, he went over to hear it.
Upon returning, he wrote thereof,
" Emerson surpassed himself as much
as he surpasses others in the general
way. I shall give no abstract. So
beautiful, so just, so true, and terribly
sublime was his picture of the faults
of the Church in its present position.
My soul is roused, and this week I
shall write the long-meditated ser
mons on the state of the Church and
the duties of these times." But if
the Address aroused the soul of
Parker in one direction, it roused
the souls of the Conservative Uni
tarians in another and entirely differ
ent one. The ferment it created is
well described in a letter which
Parker sent to his friend, Mr. G. E.
Ellis, then in Europe. "You know, "
wrote he, " Emerson was to preach
the sermon before the class. 1 heard
it. It was the noblest of all his per
formances : a little exaggerated, with
some philosophical untruths, it seemed
to me ; but the noblest, the most in
spiriting strain I ever listened to. It
caused a great outcry ; one shouting,
'The Philistines be upon us !' another,
' We be all dead men ! ' while the
majority called out, ' Atheism I ' The

dean [Palfrey] said, 'That part of
it, as I apprehend, which was not
folly was downright atheism. " Soon
after, Parker wrote another letter to
the same gentleman, to Paris, in
which occurs the following: — "I
sent you Emerson's address to the
Divinity Students. It has made a
great noise. Mr. Norton opened the
cannonade with a broadside aimed at
Emerson, Cousin, Carlyle, Schleier-
macher, Shelley, and a paper called
the Western Messenger. This pro
voked several replies — one of singular
beauty from Theophilus Parsons ;
one from the iron pen of Brownson,
in the Post ; and one from J. F.
Clarke, in defence of the article in
the Messenger. Ministers preached
on Emerson's sermorT. Hettry Ware
amjhm^ - ^mnll on IflftpflrsTOaTTtv
of God, which, it is said, Emerson
denies ; and the students of theDivinity
School come out, cap in hand, and
say, ' Peccavimus omnes ' — the last
class in particular — and request
Henry Ware to publish his sermon,
which is said to be a very good one
and to the point. Brownson writes
a fierce review in the Quarterly,
which, after all, is rather good than
bad, though it contains some severi
ties. Chandler Robbins speaks mildly,
as his manner is, of the whole affair,
and calls the vulgar rant of denounc
ing Emerson a ' vulgar clamour '
and ' the popular roar.' Andrews
Norton is indignant thereat : and
this very minute I have read a fourth
article of his, in this morning's Adver
tiser, on Emerson, in which he says
infidelity and atheism have been long
preached by the Unitarian ministers
— not by all, but by some few. All
this makes a world of talk. It is
thought chaos is coming back. Some
seem to think that Christianity, which
has stood some storms, will not be
able to weather this gale ; and that
truth, after all my Lord Bacoh has
said, will have to give it up now.
For my part, I see that the sun still

68

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER,

shines, the rain rains, and the dogs
bark ; and I have got doubts whether
Emerson will overthrow Christianity
this time. Simmons was ordained
last Tuesday, at Dr. Channing's, as
evangelist to go to Mobile. The
sermon (preached by Dr. Bellows)
is described as being particularly
'liberal'; the preacher maintaining
that goodness is goodness in a hea
then ; that an Esquimaux would not
be turned out of heaven if he were a
good and religious man ; and that
a true and sincere prayer, though
offered to an idol, would go to the
right place, for the only God would
take it. The discourse alarmed and
shocked the more backward of the
brethren ; but the younger-hearted
were not disturbed. The other day
they discussed the question in the
Association, whether E. was a Chris
tian ? G  said he was not, and
defended his position rather poorly,
you may suppose. J. P  main
tained that he was an atheist — a down
right atheist. But nobody doubted
he was a virtuous and most devout
man, one who would enter heaven
when they were shut out. Of course
they were in a queer predicament \
either they must acknowledge a man
may be virtuous and yet no Christian
(which most of them thought it a
great heresy to suppose), and religious
yet an atheist (which js a contradic
tion — to bewithoul God, and yet united
to God), or else affirm that Emerson
was neither virtuous nor religious,
which they could not prove. Walker
and Frothingham thought he should
be called a .Christian, if he desired
the name. Some of the ministers
think we need to have certain 'funda
mentals ' fixed for us all to swear by,
lest the new school among the Unita
rians should carry the whole body up
to the height of Transcendentalism.
Now, it is notorious that the old
Unitarians, in the days when there
was fighting for the faith, had no such
fundamentals ; so Mr. Ripley showed

Dr.  that he (the Doctor) be
longed to the new school, and the
movement party were the lineal de
scendants of the old school of Unita
rians. It is quite evident there are
now two parties among the Unita
rians : one is for progress, the other
says, ' Our strength is to stand still.'
Dr. Channing is the real head of the
first party ; the other has no head.
Some day or another there will be
a great rent in the body ; not soon,
I trust, however."
A few months after the delivery of
the address by Emerson, Professor
Norton preached and published a
sermon on what he named "The
Latest Form of Infidelity" — mean
ing Transcendentalism. To this Mr.
Ripley replied, ably controverting
the Professor's view of the value of
miracles as the exclusive evidences of
Christianity, and correcting certain
doubtful translations from De Wette.
Parker wrote of this reply : "To me
it seems excellent, both in design and
execution — equally fine in manner,
matter, and spirit. The Professor
may well thank Heaven that he has
fallen into the hands of a Christian
man, and not the clutches of a Philis
tine." Mr. Ripley's article was a
fair vindication of German theolo
gians and of reverent free-thinking
from official imputations of infidelity.
Professor Norton again reiterated his
charges in a rejoinder ; whereupon
Mr. Ripley printed two very able
letters : the first an exposition of the
metaphysics of Spinoza, and the
second a defence of the positions of
De Wette and Schleiermacher. Next
an anonymous pamphlet appeared.
Parker then appeared in the contro
versy, but anonymously. His pam
phlet was titled, " The Previous Ques
tion between Mr. Andrews Norton
and his Alumni, moved and handled
in a Letter to all those Gentlemen.
By Levi Blodgett. " Before this, how
ever, immediately after Mr. Norton
had delivered the sermon, Parker

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

69

had written to Miss Peabody, "Is it
not weaker than you ever fancied?
What a cumbrous matter he makes
Christianity to be ! You must believe
it is authenticated by miracles ; nor
that only, but that this is the only
way in which, it can be attested. I
doubt that Jesus himself could be
a Christian on these terms. Did you
notice the remarkable mistranslations
of the German passages ? They are
such as no tyro could make, I should
fancy. It will do one good work : it
will present the subject to the public
mind ; and now we may have a fair
discussion." To Mr. Silsbee he had
written, "There is a higher word to
be said on this subject than Ripley
is disposed to say just now. But a
long controversy will probably grow
out of this : ink will be spilled on
both sides, and hard names called, in
the excess of Christian charity that
usually attends religious controver
sies. I find no men among the Uni
tarian ministers who like the address :
even Dr. Parkman thinks it weak.
But some of the lay brethren think
the matter fixed ; that Mr. Norton
has 'done Transcendentalism up!'"
Hence Parker's own pamphlet. In
it he clearly, pithily, and pointedly
dealt with fundamental questions,
contending that the true foundation
of religion is not in beliefs or Bibles,
but in the soul itself; and when it
was thus seen that man's faith was
intuitive, there was no reason to fear
either criticism or historical doubt.
Religious opinions came and went;
but the soul, with its yearnings for
religious exercise and development,
ever remained, showing 110 difference
except that of lower and higher cul
ture. Instead of the essence, beliefs
were simply the accidents of religion.
This view Parker further ably de-
veloped in a letter written to Dr.
Francis about the time. " It seems
to me most of us set a false value on
the writings of the New Testament.
We take them to be our standard of

life and doctrine ; and yet, probably,
no learned and free Christian thinker
believes all that is contained in any
writer of the New Testament. Two
evangelists evidently believe the mira
culous conception ; all, perhaps, cre
dited the popular notions about ' pos
sessions.' Matthew, Mark, and John
do not say a living dove descended on
Jesus ; but Luke does say it. Can
there be any doubt the first three
evangelists suppose that words were
spoken in an articulate voice announc
ing his acceptance with God ? Cer
tainly there ,can be no doubt that
they, and the Saviour himself, as well
as Paul and Peter, misunderstood
passages of the Old Testament and
misapplied them. No doubt Paul
thought he saw ' angels.' I don't
believe Luke thought the Damascus
journey a natural affair, or that Paul
thought it was less than miraculous.
Peter and John need not be men
tioned, and still less the Epistle to
the Hebrews ; for in all these the
incongruities are more remarkable,
perhaps, than in the other parts of
the New Testament. Now, if the
N ew Testament is a standard of life
and doctrine to you and me, we are
bound to believe these statements (if
possible). But we do not believe them.
This is all right ; but the people be
lieve them, or think they must believe
them, which is still worse. Now, as
you said the other day, how different
the Bible as you studied it at home
from the Bible as your parishioners
listened to it at church ! Is it neces
sary there should always be this cleri
cal view, and this laical view so dif
ferent from it ? Would not the people
be better, wiser, holier, if they were
emancipated from this stupid super
stition, which now hangs like a mill
stone about their necks? It seems to
me, if the true inspiration of the New
Testament was understood, if men
could read it as they read Plato or
Seneca (not that the New Testament
is not incomparably superior to

7o

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

them), they would be more enlightened
and inspired thereby. I take it, the
main difference between us and the
Orthodox is not respecting the doc
trine of the Trinity, or total depravity,
or the fall, or election (for we all
agree near enough on these points,
and believe in ' God the Father,' in
revelation in man, which is the Son,
and in revelation to man, which is the
Holy Spirit, &c), but in respect to
the Scriptures. The Orthodox place
the Bible above the Soul ; we the
Soul above the Bible. They tell us
that, when yon and I were bom, all
revelation was at an end, all the
capital prizes of humanity withdrawn
before our time. When we go up to
the bar of God, and ask for our mite,
they say, ' You have Moses and the
Prophets ; hear them. ' In short,
they say, ' The canon was closed
before you were born : you are to
study its letter, to get out its spirit ;
that is all.' We do not believe this
statement. Is revelation at an end?
Is the Bible better than the soul?
The Hindoo says that of his Veda,
the Mohammedan of his Koran. But
if the Christian says so he dies ; for
Christianity is the religion of free
dom. So the fact that we always
take texts from the Bible, read its
good passages, and pass over its ob
jectionable clauses and allegories, or
hit upon a higher sense to passages,
tends to mislead men as to the true
nature of the book. Do not suppose
I have any disposition to undervalue
the Bible. I only want the people to
understand it as it is. I remember
talking with old Mr. John Richardson
once about the Bible. He said he
had recently read the first part of the
Old Testament again, and he was
sorry he had read it, because he could
not believe it, and before he thought he
believed all. Let any sober man read
De Wette's ' Biblical Dogmatics, ' and
he will be astonished to see how many
doctrines are taught in the Bible
which enlightened men cannot believe.

I must think that, by and by, centuries
hence, the Old Testament will be
dropped out from the Church : then
the New Testament will follow, or
only be used as we now use other
helps. I can't but wish, with you,
that Jesus had written his own books ;
but even then they must have con
tained some things local and tem
porary." A month later we find him writing
another similar letter to Dr. Francis,
on the doubtful authority of the New
Testament over the moral sense, and
asking — " Who will tell us where the
myth begins and the history ends?
Do not all the miracles belong to the
mythical part ? The resurrection — is
not that also a myth? I know you
will not lie horror-struck at any
doubts an honest lover of truth may
suggest ; and certainly I see not where
to put up the bar between the true
and the false. Christianity itself was
before Abraham, and is older than
the creation, and will stand for ever ;y
but I have sometimes thought
would stand better without the Ne\(
Testament than with it." When t
reader remembers that the UnitarianJ
position then was — " Show that it is
taught in the New Testament and it
is our bounden duty to believe it,"
he will see how divergent Parker was
now getting from his co-religionists.
Here is another series of heretical
reflections, entered about the same
time in the journal. "Paul and
Christianity. — What would have been
the result if St. Paul had not been
converted on his Damascus journey?
Take the life of St. Paul out of the
Christian Church, and how much is
left ? Would Christianity have sunk
down into a Jewish sect, like that of
the Essenes? or would it, by its in
herent might, have created a Paul?
How he shot above James and Peter,
and the others, save only John !
What if Christ had been born in
Kamschatka? we should have heard
nothing of him. Why, then, may

ver;t i/

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS. 71

there not have been other Christs?
I doubt strongly that Paul knew any
thing of the Christian miracles, or
the miraculous birth of Jesus, or his
temptation, or prediction of his
death, Had he known the facts (?)
would he have alluded to them."
It was now clear to many of
Parker's intimates that he was on his
way to Jerusalem, "to suffer many
things of the elders, and chief priests,
and scribes," Letters of sympathy,
encouragement, and friendly warning
were reaching him- The two follow
ing replies to lus friend Miss E. P-
Peabody, will show wliat he himself
felt upon the apprehended danger : —
" Touching my becoming a martyr,
as you and Miss Burley conjecture, I
think I shall have no occasion for the
requisite spirit, even if I had that
article in as great abundance as John
Knox or John Rogers. I have pre
cious little of the spirit of a martyr ;
but, inasmuch as I fear no persecution,
I fancy I can 'say my say,' and go
on smoothly; but if not, why — well,
I can go roughly. I trust I have
enough of the Spirit always to speak
the truth, be the consequence what it
may. It seems to me men often
trouble themselves about the conse
quences of an opinion or action much
more than is necessary, Having
settled the question that an opinion is
true, and an action perfectly right,
what have you and I to do with con
sequences? They belong to God,
not to man. He has as little to do
with these as with the rising of the
sun or the flow of the tide. Doubt
less, men said to Galileo, ' Your sys
tem may be true ; but only think of
the consequences to follow ! What
will you do with them ? ' The sage
probably replied, ' I will let them
alone. To do duty and speak truth
is my office. God takes care of con
sequences!'" " I thank you most pro
foundly for the sound and seasonable
advice touching the matter of pru
dence ; but you cannot fancy I have

any desire to set the world on fire by
promulgating heresies. I have not
the furor divinus which impels some
of the young men to vent their crude
conceptions — to the injury, perhaps,
of themselves and the public, Pru
dence, in the common sense, is a
vulgar, sneaking virtue, which bids a
man take care of his meaner interests,
though at the expense of all that is
noble in action, or divine in contem
plation. But Christian prudence is a
different thing. It is a wise forecast
ing of results ; a foreseeing conse
quences in their causes, and preparing
to meet them when they come. I
have only one consolation for all evils ;
and that is an absolute faith that it is
all right ; that it will one day produce
the best possible influences over me,
and that then I shall see how foolish
I have been to complain. All of us
mourn over many failures : favourite
schemes are dreamed out, only to
fail as soon as we attempt to realise
them. By and by the cloud breaks
away, and we see it would have been
worse had they succeeded. It must
be so in all cases. ' May Heaven
refuse to grant half of our prayers,'
was a wise petition of some ojd sage,
There can be no such thing as abso
lute evjl ; and from the standpoint of
Omnipotence, when the whole appears
as it js, there can be no semblance of
evil. This is all the comfort I have
for any sorrow, or for all sorrows ;
therefore I can say with old Henry
Moore ;
' Lord, thrust me deeper into dust,
That thou mayst raise me with the just.' "
The fears of his friends were soon
realised. That course of petty, bitter
persecution which continued so long,
and which none regret more than
most present-day Unitarian ministers,
began to be shown him by the Unita
rian clergy of the Boston district.
Most of them closed their pulpits
against him, and, as American minis
ters exchange much more frequently

72

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

than do English ones, this meant
more there than it would here. He
had now become a black sheep with
"the brethren." "I have solicited
an exchange repeatedly with Y  g ;
could not get it ; with B  tt and
Dr. P  . To ask either of these
men again would be a dereliction from
Christian self-respect. So let them
pass. I feel no ill-will towards any
of them. I will try G  tt soon,
for the experiment's sake, and so with
others. Their answer decides my
course for the future. Let us see !
I should laugh outright to catch
myself weeping because the Boston
clergy would not exchange with me ! "
But he did weep, notwithstanding.
His love of the ministry and his
desire for fellowship with those en
gaged in it, coupled with his immense
capacity for sorrow, overbore even
his sanguine temperament and stout
heart. The man who wrote, " I want
someone always in the arms of my
heart to, caress and comfort : unless
I have this, I mourn and weep,"
could not but feel deeply the pharisaic
and unbrotherly conduct of his col
leagues in the ministry. And, we
doubt not, it was out of the secret
agony arising from his confessorship
that many of the finest passages of the
' ' Sermons of Religion " — telling
of its strength, courage, joy-giving
power — had their growth. As Russell
Lowell wrote of him — •
" Every word that he speaks has been fierly-
furnaced
In the blasts of a life that has struggled in
earnest"
Here is an account of the kind of
conduct he now frequently had shown
to him : it is from his journal : —
"January 2, 1840. — Preached the
Thursday lecture on Inspiration.
After it was over, Dr.  came up
to me, while conversing with Dr.
Francis and Mr. Cunningham, and
said, ' When you write about Ralph
Cudworth, I read ye and like ye ;
¦hut when you talk about future

Christs, I can't bear ye.' There was
a great deal more of the same kind.
He called me 'impious,' whereat I
was so grieved that I left him — not
in anger, but in sorrow — and went
weeping through the street; but at
length bethought me of Ellis, and
went to see him, and so dried my
tears. "
Even at this time he had not com
pletely ceased to believe that Jesus
worked miraclesi It is true he was
finding it difficult to believe some of
those recorded of him ; but his great
concern was with the intolerance
which was absurdly making the
amount of a man's credence of
miracles the measure of his religion.
" 1840, — Last week in May at
tended the annual meetings of the
Unitarians. The following propo
sition was discussed : ' Ought dif
ferences of opinion on the value and
authority of miracles to exclude men
from Christian fellowship and sym
pathy with one" another? This is
the substance : L  says it smacks
of the twelfth century to debate such
a question. I was not a little horrified
to think a doubt could be raised ;
but men went so far as to ask if it
were proper to exchange with one
another, if they differed on this ques
tion. This is the nineteenth century !
This is Boston ! This among the
Unitarians ! Some good speeches
were made by Ripley, Stetson, and
Hedge, quite to the advantage of the
New School, but the fundamental
questions were not touched. I wished
to disenchant men of their' delusions,
but could not. I said nothing. How
ever, they all parted in peace, and
with this conclusion, that though there
were differences of opinion, there was
yet no cause for withholding Chrisi
tian sympathy— a result they might
as well have brought with them as
gathered from such a discussion.
For my own part, I intend, in the
coming year, to let out all the force
of Transcendentalism that is in me.

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

73

Come what will come, I will let off
the Truth fast as it comes."
"June. — I look upon my office as
giving me an opportunity twice a
week of addressing men on their
dearest interests. The creed of the
Church I have nothing to do with.
I wish to make men more moral, and
more religious. If they think as I
do, very well ; if they do not, very
well also. The rites of the Church

do not disturb me much. Baptism I
like — it means something. The Lord's
Supper I don't like as it is now
administered. 1 do not believe in the
Old Testament or the New as my
Christian fellows do. I know there
are not ten churches in New England
where I could be admitted, if moral
as James and pious as Christ."
The open rupture was now soon to
take place.

CHAPTER IX,
The Controversy with the American Unitarians (continued).
" Think ye, in these portentous times
Of wrath, and hate, and wild distraction,
Christ dwells within a church that rests
A comfortable, a cold abstraction ?
He stands where earnest minds assert
God's law against a creed dogmatic,
And from dead symbols free the truth
Of which they once were emblematic.
He cries : ' On, brethren, draw the sword,
Loose the bold pen, and tungue unfearing,
The weakness of our human flesh
Is ransomed by your persevering ! ' " — Quoted by Parker.

TH E event which brought matters
to a crisis was a sermon on
"The Transient and Permanent in
Christianity," preached by Parker at
South Boston, on the occasion of the
ordihation of Mr. Charles C Shack-
ford, on the 19th of May, 1841.
Taking for his text the words-^
" Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my word shall not pass away," he
began by saying — "In this sentence
we have a very clear indication that
Jesus of Nazareth believed the re
ligion he taught would be eternal j
that the substance of it would last
for ever. Yet there are some who are
affrighted by the faintest rustle which
a heretic makes among, the dry leaves
of theology : they tremble lest Chris
tianity itself should perish without
hope. Ever and anon the cry is
raised, 'the Philistines are upon us,
and Christianity is in danger ! ' "
He then proceeded to show how deep
a hold the words of Jesus had upon

the affections and minds of Christen
dom. . "Looking at the word of
Jesus, at real Christianity, the pure
religion he taught, nothing appeared
more fixed and certain. But, looking
at the history of what men called
Christianity, nothing seemed more
uncertain and perishable." "Jesus
told us his word was the word of
God, and so should never pass away;
but who told us that our word should
never pass away ; that our notion of
his word should stand for ever? "
The preacher then proceeded in
the following vigorous strain — " For
centuries, the doctrines of the Chris
tians were no better, to say the least,
than those of their contemporary
pagans. The theological doctrines
derived from our fathers seem to have
come from Judaism, heathenism, and
the caprice of philosophers, far more
than they have come from the princi
ple and sentiments of Christianity.
As all religions became superannu-i

74

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

ated and died out, they left to the
rising faith, as to a residuary legatee,
their form and their doctrines ; or,
rather, as the giant in the fable left
his poisoned garment to work the
overthrow of his conqueror. The
stream of Christianity, as men receive
it, has caught a stain from every soil it
has filtered through ; so that now it
is not the pure water from the well of
life which is offered to our lips, but
streams troubled and polluted by man
with mire and dirt. On the authority
of the written Word, man was taught
to believe impossible legends, conflict
ing assertions; to take fiction for fact,
a dream for a miraculous revelation
of God, an oriental poem for a grave
history of miraculous events, a col
lection of amatory idyls for a serious
discourse touching the mutual love
of Christ and the Church ! They
have been taught to accept a picture
sketched by some glowing Eastern
imagination, never intended to be
taken for a reality, as a proof that the
infinite God spoke in human words,
appeared in the shape of a cloud, a
flaming bush, or a man who ate and
drank, and vanished into smoke ; that
He gave counsel to-day, and the
opposite to-morrow; that He violated
his own laws ; was angry, and was
then dissuaded by a mortal man from
destroying a whole nation. What
was originally a presumption of
bigoted Jews became an article of
faith which Christians were burned for
not believing. Matters have come to
such a pass that even now he is
deemed an infidel, if not by impli
cation an atheist, whose reverence
for the Most High forbids him to
believe that God commanded Abra-'
ham to sacrifice his son, a thought at
which the flesh creeps with horror ;
to believe it solely on the authority of
an Oriental story, written down no
body knows when, or by whom, or
for what purpose ; which may be a
poem, but cannot be the record of a
feet, unless God is the author of con

fusion and a lie. Modem criticism is
fast breaking to pieces this idol which
men have made out of the Scriptures.
Men have been bid to close their eyes
at the obvious difference between
Luke and John, the serious dis
agreement between Paul and Peter ;
to believe, on the smallest evidences,
accounts which shock the moral
sense and revolt the reason, and tend,
to place Jesus in the same series with
Hercules and Appolonius of Tyana.
Men who cry down the absurdities of
paganism in the worst spirit of the
French ' free-thinkers' call others infi
dels and atheists who point out, though
reverently, other absurdities which
men have piled upon Christianity."
Then, after showingthat truth could
not rest upon any person's authority,
not even Christ's, but was its own
authority ; that much of the Old
Testament, and some little of the
New, had been given up by many,the
preacher went on — "If it could be
proved that the Gospels were the fa
brication of designing and artful men,
that Jesus of Nazareth had never
lived, still Christianity would stand
firm and fear no evil. Measure Jesus
by the world's greatest sons, how poor
they are ! try him by the best of men,
how little and low they appear !
Exalt him as much as we may, we
shall yet, perhaps, come short of the
mark. But, still, was he not our
brother ? the son of man as we are ?
the Son of God like ourselves ? In
an age of corruption, Jesus stood and
looked up to God. There was no-.
thing between him and the Father of
all. And we never are Christians as
he was the Christ until we worship as
Jesus did, with no mediator, with
nothing between us and the Father of
all. Already men of the same sect
eye one another with suspicion and
lowering brows that indicate a storm,
and, like children who have fallen out
in their play, call hard names. The
question puts itself to each man, ' Will
you cling to what is perishing, or

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

75

embrace what is eternal?' This
question each must answer for him
self. " My friends, if you receive the
notions about Christianity which
chance to be current in your sect or
church,solely because they are current,
there will always be enough to com
mend you for soundness of judgment,
prudence, and good sense— enough
to call you Christian for that reason.
But, if this is all your religion, alas,
for you, the ground will shake under
your feet if you attempt to walk up
rightly and like men. You will be
afraid of every new opinion, lest it
shake down your church ; you will
fear 'lest if a fox go up he will
break down your stone wall'! If, on
the other hand, you take the true
Word of God, and live out this, no
thing shall harm you. Men may
mock ; but their mouthfuls of wind
shall be blown back upon their own
face. And, alas for the man who
consents to think one thing in his
closet, and preach another in the
pulpit ! God shall judge him in His
mercy, not man in his wrath. But
over his study and over his pulpit
might be written 'emptiness'; on
his canonical robes, on his forehead,
and right hand, ' deceit, deceit ' ! "
The foregoing extracts are simply
a few specimens culled here and there
from the famous South Boston sermon,
given to better enable the reader to
understand the commotion it subse
quently created. For, although the
pulpit was filled with ministers, and
the audience largely composed of
them, Orthodox and Unitarian, there
was no immediate protest made.
The venerable clergyman who offered
the ordaining prayer recognised the
heresy, and petitioned that the young
incumbent might have a living faith
in a Son of God of Divine works and
nature ; and one person went out
during the sermon, but whether to
escape heterodoxy or catch the train
it is not known. Some of the clergy

men present even expressed admira
tion for the discourse, with certain
qualifications. But if little occurred at the time, a
great deal occurred soon afterwards.
The sermon got talked about ; and
this led to the preacher being de
nounced on all hands. The ministers
Parker thought most with him were
amongst the first to denounce him,
now that to be friendly with him
was unpopular and unprofitable.
" Among wonderful things," say the
Arabs, " is a sore-eyed person who
is an oculist," This wonder hap
pened in Parker's case. The min
isters who had previously most dab
bled with heresy were the loudest to
complain of Parker's. Commenting
on this unlooked-for desertion, he
wrote to Dr. Francis, ' ' I never cared
much for the sympathy of other men,
and never less than now ; but once
in a great while I feel it is not alto
gether pleasant to stand alone, to be
viewed with suspicion and hatred.
Blessed are the men who can take
things as they find them, and believe
as the mob believes, and sail in the
wake of public opinion. I remember
you told me a year ago, he that de
fies public opinion is like the man
who spits in the wind ; he spits in
his own face. It is so. But what
then? Let it be so. Better men
have found less sympathy than I. I
do not care a rush for what men who
differ from me do say ; but it has
grieved me a little, I confess it, to
see men who think as I do of the
historical and mythical matter con
nected with Christianity, and who
yet take the stand some of them take.
It is like opening a drawer, when
you expept to find money, and dis
covering that the gold is gone and only
the copper is left. This has been my
fate very often. I put my finger ou
a minister, and 'he ain't there.'" This
arose because of the Trinitarian min
isters present at the ordination joining
in a public protest, and a demand

76

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

being made that the Unitarians should
either accept Parker's position or
disown him. The Unitarian min
isters preferred the latter alternative.
As Parker himself records — " ' Un
believer,' 'Infidel,' 'Atheist,' were
the titles bestowed on me by my
brothers in the Christian ministry ;
a venerable minister, who heard the
report in an adjoining county, printed
his letter in one of the most widely
circulated journals of New England,
calling on the Attorney-General to
prosecute, the grand jury to indict,
and the judge to sentence me fo three
years' confinement in the State prison
for blasphemy ! Most of my clerical
friends fell off— some would not speak
to me in the street, and refused to
take me by the hand ; in their public
meetings they left the sofas or benches
when 1 sat down, and withdrew from
me as Jews from contact with a leper.
In a few months most of my former
ministerial coadjutors forsook me,
and there were only six who would
allow me to enter their pulpits. But
yet one Unitarian minister, Rev.
John L. Russell, though a stranger
till then, presently after came and
offered me his help in my time of
need ! The Controlling men of the de
nomination determined, 'This young
man must be silenced ! ' "
Parker printed the sermon, but no
bookseller iii Boston would put his
name on the title-page. The Uni
tarian ministers had been at work
against him, even with the publishers.
It, in consequence, had to go forth
under the auspices of the Sweden -
borgian firm who ha.d printed it. It
sold rapidly, and the outcry against
it and its author was immense and
almost national. Daily, weekly, and
religious newspapers rang with ani
madversions against its wickedness.
Even the most liberal papers were
made into channels of bitterness.
The words "infidel." "scorner,"
"blasphemer," became three new pro
nouns wherewith to refer to Parker.

He was classed as another Voltaire,
or fresh Thomas Paine. His piety,
professions of faith, learning, genius,
were denied or ridiculed. Even the
most friendly of those who wrote in
the newspapers had little more to
offer on his behalf than excuses.
" The Unitarian periodicals," he
himself records, "were shut against
me and rny friends — the public must
not read what I wrote. Attempts
were secretly made to alienate my
little congregation, and expel me
from my obscure station at West
Roxbury, But I had not gone to
war without counting the cost. I
well knew beforehand what awaited
me, and had determined to fight the
battle through, and never thought of
yielding or being silenced. I told
my opponents the only man who
could ' put me down ' was myself,
and I trusted I should do nothing to
bring about that result. If thrust
out of my own pulpit, I made up my
mind to lecture from city to city,
from town to town, from village to
village, nay, if need were, from house
to house ; well assured that I should
not thus go over the hamlets of New
England till something was come.
But the little society came generously
to my support and defence, giving
me the heartiest sympathy, and
offered me all the indulgence in their
power. Some ministers and generous-
minded laymen stood up on my side,
and preached or wrote in defence of
free thought and free speech, even in
the pulpit. Friendly persons, both
men and women, wrote me letters to
cheer and encourage, also to warn—
this against fear, that against excess
and violence; some of them never
gave me their names, and I only have
this late opportunity to thank them
for their anonymous kindness. Of
course scurrilous and abusive letters ,
did not fail to appear."
It was more especially in the matter
of pulpit exchanges that Parker was
made aware of his repudiation by

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

77

"the brethren." Even those who
had previously arranged for him to
occupy their pulpits found all kinds
of lame excuses for not allowing him
to do so. In two months after the
delivery of the South Boston sermon
he only knew of twelve ministers in
the States that would allow him to
preach for them, and many of these
afterwards "began to make excuse."
This came from the strong pressure
which was brought to bear upon
them— the kind which had been tried
to prevent him getting his sermon
published, and to turn him out of his
little West Roxbury church. The
strong and true resisted it, but the
weaklings allowed it to prevail over
them. "Does he, or would he, ex
change with Mr. Parker," became
the test of Unitarian orthodoxy, and
there was small chance for the candi
date for a pulpit who replied in the
affirmative. Others were dreading
Parker asking them, for they felt it
was contemptible to refuse, and yet
they dared not comply. This was
the case where Parker's face was
known, but where it was not — in dis
tant and secluded places — the people
were sometimes treated with eloquent
discourses from a stranger, and never
dreamed they were listening to the
arch-heretic from West Roxbury.
Indeed, one time, subsequently, when
he had been preaching at the Rev.
J. F.Clarke's church, a very "ortho
dox " lady who did not know him was
heard in the vestibule to ' ' wish that
infidel, Theodore Parker, could only
have heard that sermon " ! The kind
of fencing that was shown will be
best illustrated by one or two actual
occurrences. " Will your husband
exchange with me next Sunday?"
Parker asked one day of the wife of
one of his oldest ministerial friends.
The transparent excuse came in reply,
"I know he would with pleasure,
but am quite confident that he has
already made an engagement." In
another case a minister of unusual

popularity and courage replied with
the question. " Ought 1 to exchange
with you?" "You know best," an
swered Parker. " But some of my
people will be offended if I do."'
"Very well," said Parker, "let it
go then, I don't press the matter."
"But what would you do in my case?"
" 1 should think freedom of thought
and speech worth defending at all
risks, and should make a matter of
duty of the business ; or, if I thought
it of no value, I should say so."
The brother "let I dare not wait
upon I would," and no exchange
occurred. The Unitarian ministers
took shelter under the miserable plea
that, however glorious and invaluable
freedom of thought and speech might
be, the pulpit was not the place to
vindicate it. When Parker's intimate
friend, Dr. Francis, was deliberating
whether or not to accept the theolo
gical professorship at Cambridge, the
authorities there advised him " under
the circumstances " to break an en
gagement he had made with Parker
to have him preach at Watertown.
How nobly he overlooked this con
duct on the part of one who had
otherwise been so good a friend to
him the following letter will show:
"Don't you know that the charge
brought against you by certain of
the ' brethren ' is, not that you have
done, written, or said, or thought
anything specially naughty, but that
you are notoriously the companion of
suspected and abandoned persons ? It
is so. Now I will speak plainly.
I do not wish to stand in your way ;
I will not, knowingly, bring on you
the censure (or suspicion) of your
brethren. Therefore, after you go
to Cambridge, I don't see how I can
visit you as heretofore. Certainly
Mr.  , and Br. — — , will say,
' It won't do ; Francis holds inter
course with Parker ! we be all dead
men.' Now I hope you will con
sider these things. I might, like
Nicodemus, come by night, privately,

78

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

but it is not my way. I hope neither
you nor Mrs. F. will suspect any
thing unkind in this, for I only write
sincerely." But conscience will assert itself, and
before long one of the Boston Uni'
tarian ministers determined he would
obey it rather than the popular cla
mour. This was a man who most
heartily disagreed with Parker's theo
logical opinions, who had in print
termed them " shallow naturalism,"
" ignorant and presumptuous," and
their author " the expounder o f negative
Transcendentalism," in contrast with
Emerson, who was the representative
of the positive side of the new system.
He, in the height of the controversy,
announced to his congregation that he
was going to exchange with Parker,
for he thought difference of opinion
oughtnot to prevent ministerial fellow
ship ; that " the liberty of prophesy
ing " was too precious to be sacrificed
to points of criticism ; and that, not
withstanding all that had occurred,
Parker was a Christian man and a
devout minister. Of course the an
nouncement and the occurrence caused
a great stir, but the minister's noble
straightforwardness elevated him in
men's estimation rather than the con
trary. There were not wanting the usual
"private and confidential" letters to
Parker, agreeing with his views, but
suggesting more caution. To one
such he replied : — ' ' What you say
about touching men's prejudices more
gently is true and just. I can only
say that while I feel great tenderness
towards the preconceived notions of
individuals, when I am to speak of a
mass of doctrines that come between
man and God, I think the blow must
be strong enough to cut clean through,
and let the light stream through the
rent. Besides, the sentiments in the
South Boston sermon had so long
been familiar to me ; I had preached
them so often with no rebuke, that I
was not aware of saying anything that

was severe. I thought the sermon
would be reckoned tame and spirit
less, for it so poorly and coldly ex
pressed what burned in my heart
like a volcano." A brother-in-law of
his even went so far as to question
the sincerity of his motives in preach
ing the obnoxious sermon. Parker
puts him right on that score : — " You
seem to think it possible that my
motives were not good in writing and
preaching the sermon which men
make such a noise about. Now, I
never in my life wrote a sermon with
a deeper conviction of its troth, or of
the good it would do in the world.
I wrote what I felt to the ends of my
fingers. 'If you can find anything
bad, pernicious, or likely to injure
morality and religion, lam very sorry ;
but I am certain it contains nothing of
that character. The noise which men
make, the bad names they call me,
the threats they utter, move me as
little as they move Monadnock. Do
you think I could have any but the
best of motives for this work ? What
eould I gain but a bad reputation?
Nothing else. No : I felt the diffi
culties of the common opinions. I
wished to show that religion was in
dependent of the foolish doctrines
men have pijed upon it. I wanted to
break the yoke of bondage bound on
men's necks, and have done what I
could to make men better here and
hereafter. The opinions in the dis
course are nothing new to me ; not
the random thoughts of a young man,
but the sober, deliberate convictions,
the result of thought and study. The
end will be good, no doubt of that ;
but the end is not yet." Thus it
went on. From foe and friend, from
stranger and relative, in public and
private, he was subject to trials of
mind and temper which it is the lot of
few men to have to undergo. That
he bore it all in the way he did says
more for the genuineness of his re«
ligion than anything else we could
adduce.

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS. 79

" Give me the avowed, the erect, the open
foe;
Him I can meet — perhaps may turn his
blow ;
But, of all friends that heaven in wrath can
hend,
Save me, oh, save me, from a candid
friend."
But sympathisers — men and women
who felt that he was unfairly treated—
increased and multiplied. A number
of gentlemen in Boston wrote him,
asltinghim to give a series of Lectures
in that city on the suhjects" at issue
between himself and his detractors.
He replied that it was with great
reluctance that he had concluded it
wisest and best to decline the invi
tation so generously given him. But
he distrusted his own ability to
effect the object they contemplated.
"The subjects you suggest offer a
noble and beautiful theme, and would
to heaven I were able to discuss them
as I feel they now require to be
treated." Further persistence, how
ever, at length broke down his first
reluctance. He undertook to deliver
a course of lectures in Boston, in the
Masonic Hall, during the winter of
1841-42. The hall was crowded with
earnest thinking men and women from
all around, including students from
Cambridge Divinity School, who were
sent back through the darkness after
the lectures with hearts on fire.
The Lecturer himself thus describes
the delivery of the lectures and their
subsequent publication: "Five or six
men in Boston thought this treatment
was not quite fair ; they wished to
judge neither a man nor his doctrines
unheard, but to know at length what
I had to say ; so they asked me to
deliver a course of five lectures in
your city, on religious matters. I
consented, and in the autumn of 1841
delivered five lectures on ' Matters
pertaining to Religion ;' they were
reported in some of the newspapers,
most ably and fully in the Neto York
Tribune, not then the famous and
powerful sheet it has since become.

I delivered the lectures several times
that winter in New England towns,
and published them in a volume the
next spring. I thought no bookseller
would put his name to the title-page ;
but when the work was ready for the
public eye, my friend, the late Mr.
James Brown, perhaps the most
eminent man in the American book
trade, volunteered to take charge of
it, and the book appeared with the
advantage of issuing from one of the
most respectable publishing- houses in
the United States. Years afterwards
he told me that two ' rich and highly
respectable gentlemen of Boston '
begged him to have nothing to do
with it; 'we wish,' said they, 'to
render it impossible for him to publish
his work ' ! But the bookseller wanted
fair-play." The volume Parker thus first pub
lished is the well-known ' ' Discourse
of Matters, Pertaining to Religion."
It is the book which caused so much
agitation among theUnitarian Churches
of Ireland in 1875, and which ulti
mately led the party of tradition to
form a new sbciety for the promotion
of "Christian Unitarianism." It is
also the book which caused a crisis
within the British and Foreign Uni
tarian Association in 1876, when an
attempt was made to prevent its pub
lication, in the same manner as works
of Channing, Priestley, and others,
had been, by the Association, and
which led to a compromise, under
which it was decided to issue Parker's
"Ten Sermons of Religion and
Prayers," and aid in the dissemination
of the cheap edition of "The Dis
course " of another publisher. It is
not necessary that we should stay to
characterise this wonderful book, for
thanks, most of all, to Messrs. Ogden
and Co., it can now be purchased fi r
the low sum of eighteen-pence. It is,
perhaps, the greatest work ever pub
lished on the subject of religion, and
is as wonderful a production on that
subject as Buckle's complete wo.k

8o

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

would have been on the subject of
Civilization. It will surprise us if
this book does not become one of the
great text-books of the religion of the
future. It has already passed through
five or six editions, and it has been of
untold value in saving the spiritual
lives of hundreds when all else had
failed. Almost every Unitarian min
ister knows of such cases, and many
afford them in themselves.
Mr. Frothingham gives a case in
point : " A Western judge put it one
Sunday in the hands of an idle,
thoughtless youth, who was looking
about for a pleasant Sunday time-
killer. He took it reluctantly — never,
he said, having been able to read a
religious book in his life— and went
with it to his room. By evening he
had read it half through, and wished
to keep it longer. A religious book
like that he had never seen If that
was religion, he liked it. Some days
after, the young man came to the
judge, and said, ' Will you sell me that
book? I want to own it.' 'No,'
said the judge ; ' I won't sell it to you,
but I will give it to you.' And the
•youth went off with the book, grate
ful. Years went by. The young
man became prominent as a politician.
A benevolent institution of the State
needed patronage, which his friends
were indisposed to give ; he stood up,
and said, 'You ought to give it.
The institution is worthy of all as
sistance. I have been there, and ex
amined it ; and, if there are any
Christian people in the world, the
managers of that institution are Chris
tians. ' Through his influence the aid
was obtained. About the same time,
his old friend the judge met him and
asked how he got on with his religious
studies. ' Oh, bravely ! I have that
book now : it has been lent ever so
many times, and read till it was read
almost to pieces. I have had it strongly
bound in leather to preserve it ' "
Parker prepared that book with
great labour, and with what depth of

responsibility maybe judged from the
following entry in his diary: — "To
day I received the last proof-sheet of
my "Discourse of Matters Pertaining
to Religion." It fills me with sadness
to end what has been so dear to me.
Well : the result lies with God. May
it do a good work? I fear not, but
hope there may be a noise about it ;
it will not surprise me. But I think
it will do a good work for the world.
God bless the good in it, and destroy
the bad. This is my prayer."
When the book appeared there was
a noise about it. Most of the period
icals and newspapers reviewed it ad
versely, many most unfairly. The
state of things may be imagined from
the fact that Parker expresses grati
tude for a review which appeared in
the most important orthodox Quar»
terly in America, becausethe reviewer,
while strongly opposing both author
and work, did injustice to neither.
Again he had a shoal of letters from
"friends," complaining of his "sar
casm," and his ' ' sneering " at those
who stood by traditional Christianity.
To one he had occasion thus to
write : — "I never mocked at anything;
I am not aware of uttering contumely
and reproach. I pray thee, where or
when ? I have spoken strongly, and
I have strongly felt. I feel willing to
stand up before men or God, and de
clare that I am not conscious of hav
ing written one line with any unchris
tian feeling. I knew I should be
misunderstood, misrepresented, and
abused. Once I said, ' We whine
and whimper in our brother's name,'
&c. ; for that I have been called
mocker, yet I wrote that sentence in
tears of anguish, in great burnings of
heart. I say to you, what I never
said beforei— not even to my wife —
that after writing some of those sen
tences for which I am most commonly
abused, I have been obliged to pause,
then throw myself on a couch and
get relief in tears. I don't know why
I tell you this, for I do not like to

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

81

talk of myself. So I beg you never
to repeat or show it to anyone. But
it is in such mood that I have written
such passages as some men read in
coldness or in passion, and then call
me an infidel, a heartless man, for
writing! He that reads my books
twenty years hence — if I am not quite
forgotten before that time — will not
find in them the abuse, the sarcasm,
the contumely, and all that, which so
grieves you. At Salem they said I
painted the Salem ministers, at Mar-
blehead, the clergy of the place, and
at Boston it was ' the brethren ' I
'abused, ' and on whom I ' poured scorn
and contempt. ' I think some of the
brethren ought to fall down on their
knees and thank me for my forbear
ance, that I have not told what I most
assuredly have known and still remem
ber." The winter of 1842-3 he delivered
in Boston a course of "Six Plain
Sermons for the Times," prepared
at the invitation of friends who de
sired to hear him again. He repeated
them in seven of the adjacent towns.
"Everywhere," he wrote, "I have
found a much better reception than
I had reason to anticipate. It has
been to me a season of no little
trial. I have no doubt good will
come out of the great evils of the
present day."
The following letter will show
what he felt respecting his cir
cumstances and prospects at this
time: "The experience of the last
twelve months shows me what I am
to expect for the next twelve years. I
have no fellowship from the other
clergy. No one that helped in my
ordination will now exchange minis
terial courtesies with me ; only one or
two of the Boston Association, and
perhaps one or two out of it, will
have any ministerial intercourse with
me. ' They that are younger than I
have me in derision ; ' they turn the
cold shoulder. Well — Quorsum hac
spectantl If I stay at West Roxbury,

I must write one hundred and four
sermons a year for about one hundred
and four people. This will consume
most of my energies, and I shall be
in substance put down — a bull whose
roaring can't be stopped, but who is
tied up in the corner of the barn-cellar
so that nobody hears him ; and it is
the same as if he did not roar, or-as
if he were muzzled. Now this I will
not do.. I should not answer the
purposes of life, but only execute
the plans of my enemies — of the
enemies of freedom of mankind. I
must confess that I am disappointed
in the ministers — the Unitarian minis
ters. I once thought them noble ;
that they would be true to an ideal
principle of right. I find no body of
men was ever so completely sold to
the sense of expediency. Stuff them
with good dinners, and freedom,
theology, religion, may go to the,
devil for all them. I believe the
abolitionists and temperance men are
half right when they say ' the Church
is a humbug ; ' and the other half of
the right is, the ministers are ditto.
Now, freedom of thought and speech
are either worth preserving, or they
are not worth preserving. If the
ministers think the second (as their
life shows they do), let them say
it plainly and manfully, that the
public may no longer look to those
clouds without rain : if they think the
first, then something must be done.
Now, I am not going to sit down
tamely and be driven out of my
position by the opposition of some,
and the neglect of others, whose con
duct shows that they have no love of
freedom, except for themselves,— to
sail with the popular wind and tide.
Now, this I shall do when obliged
to desert the pulpit ; because a free
voice and a free heart cannot be in
'that bad eminence.' I mean to
live at Spring Street, perhaps with
Ripley. I will study seven or eight
months of the year, and four or five
months I will go about and preach G

82

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

and lecture in city and glen, by the
roadside and fieldside, and wherever
men and women can be found. I will
go eastward and westward, and south
ward and northward, and make the
land ring: and if this New England
theology, that cramps the intellect
and palsies the soul of us, does not
come to the ground, then it shall be
because it has more truth in it than I
have ever found. I am perfectly free
of two things — fear and ambition.
What I have seen to be false, I will
proclaim a lie on the housetop ; and,
just as God reveals truth, I will de
clare His word, come what may come.
It grieves me to the very soul of my
heart's life to think of leaving the
ministry (which I love as few ministers
love it) and this little parish. But, if
duty commands, who am I, to resist?"
The horror with which he had come
to be regarded by " the unco' gude,"
and the frequency with which his name
was coupled with that of Thomas
Paine, emboldened the Boston Atheists
and Secularists to invite him to a
dinner arranged for January 30,
1843, in celebration of Paine's birth
day. The reply he returned showed
that, notwithstanding all the charges
which had been brought, there was
little sympathy in him for the theolo
gical side of Paine's character. "With
the views," he wrote, " 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 birthday. I feel
grateful, truly so, for the service
rendered by his political writings, and
his practical efforts in the cause of
freedom ; though with what I under
stand to be the spirit of his writings
on theology and religion I have not
the smallest sympathy."
The unfriendly attitude of the Uni
tarian ministers continued to be the
chief trouble which afflicted him. At
the meetings of the Boston Ministerial
Association — of which he was a
member— his case was frequently the

subject of conference. No member
had courage to move that he should
be expelled, but one brother went as
near this as he dare, by proposing that
if any member held views distasteful
to the majority he should withdraw.
But Parker felt he had done nothing
deserving expulsion, and refused to
make an admission of being in fault
by withdrawing. One, in order to
get rid of him, proposed that the Asso
ciation should be broken up and re
formed. Another wittily made a
reductio ad absurdum of the Associa
tion's intolerance by declaring that if
a minister had a comical squint, that
was quite sufficient reason for members
refusing fellowship with him ! To
the honour of two or three of the
members let it be recorded that they
stood nobly by him. They saw in
Parker a noble, sincere, God-fearing
man, and they never failed to declare
that they did so.
The most notable ministerial inci
dent of all was the "trial" the
Association put Parker through on
the 23rd of January, 1843. He him
self made a very full account of all
that took place, and ironically prefixed
thereto that it was "to be printed in
1899, as a memorial of the nineteenth
century." That account we insert
here, excising only such parts thereof
as are not likely to interest the general
reader. The Hollis Street matter, so
frequently referred to, arose out of an
attempt of certain rich rum-sellers,
members of the Hollis Street Church,
to tum the minister, the Rev. John
Pierpont, out of its pulpit because he
was an advocate of temperance !
"yan. 23rd, 1843. — I attended a
meeting of the Association by par
ticular request. After tea  called
the meeting to order, and with a con
siderable degree of embarrassment,
stated the business of the meeting.
 followed him, and also stated
the occasion, the circumstances that
gave rise to the meeting, viz., that the
Association felt a delicacy in discuss-

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

ing me and mine in my absence. He
said, however, he and the Association
had felt a difficulty in asking me to
come ; for, first, it was my place with
out invitation, and, second, the invi
tation might look like a summons.
These preliminaries settled, the chair
man, Dr. Walker, opened the business
by going in medias res, stating, how
ever, beforehand that, first, I was
not to catechise them ; nor, second,
were they to catechise me. Then he
said that he could have no ministerial
intercourse with me — though still he
hoped to have a friendly and social
intercourse. The reason was the
character of the book I had written.
That he charged me with two offences :
I. It was vehemently deistical, using
the word in the worst sense ; and,
2. It was not only not Christian, but
subversive of Christianity as a par
ticular religion, for it aimed to dissolve
Christianity in the great ocean of ab
solute truth. Then — - took up the
word, and spoke of ministerial ex
changes again, and said also that the
book was not the only offence, but
the article on the Hollis Street
Council was also bad, for it reflected
on the members of the Association.
He confirmed what  had said
relative to the book, but added that
the doctrines of the book were not a
matter of discussion, and that it had
been so agreed at a former meeting.
" Then I stated that it seemed there
were two sets of offences I was charged
withal, to wit, (i) in the book, and
(2) in the article on the Hollis Street
Council. To each I would say a
word, but, first of all, on the matter
of ministerial fellowship. I begged
them to consider that I had never
complained on that account; never
feltanill-naturedemotion, nor uttered
an ill-natured word respecting them,
or any of them, on that ground. I
would, however, tell the result of
their refusing fellowship, viz. . soon
after the South Boston sermon men
refused to exchange with me ; the

result was this — some members of
churches in the city asked me to come
and deliver five lectures on five sub
jects. I went, delivered the lectures
in Boston, and five other places, be
fore some thousands of people, and
printed them in a book. In 1842
some young men repeated the same
arguments, and called me to come and
preach, continually, old sermons every
Sunday evening. I thought it better
to preach six sermons such as were
needed for the times. I did so in
Boston ; they saw the result. Others
in other places made the same re
quest. I went there also. That was
the effect on the public of their treat
ment of me— on myself it had no
effect. I spoke of the article on the
Hollis Street Council, and said that
it was no wonder different men took
different views of that affair. I could
not expect them to take the same
views as myself. I turned to the book,
and proceeded to the first charge, that
it was 'deistical,' and said that I
knew but little of the Deists, but so
far as I knew anything, there were
four classes of them, which were
named by Dr. Sam. Clarke in a book
familiar to all of them ; but all Deists
denied the possibility of direct inspi
ration from God. Therefore, as in
spiration was a cardinal point in my
system, and I maintained that all men
were inspired just in proportion to
their quantity of being and their
quantity of obedience, I did not
come under the caption ; or, if I am
a Deist, I must be put in a class by
myself alone-?-and then it was arbi
trary to call me by a name that did
not describe my belief. Then I pro
ceeded to the second charge, that the
book was subversive of Christianity,
and said that, though an author's
opinion of his own work was of no
value to others, yet I sincerely thought
it was a most Christian book. Chris
tianity was one of three things : either
(t) less than absolute religion, or (2)
equal to absolute religion, or (3) abso-

84

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

lute religion, and something more.
No one, I would assume for argu
ment's sake, would admit the first pro
position. I affirmed the second, they
the third. Therefore, if they would
point out the precise quiddity that
made absolute religion Christianity,
they would do a great service. I
ended by asking the Chairman to tell
just what it was in which Christianity
differed from absolute religion. He
replied, ' But I will remind Mr.
Parker that he is not to catechise
me.' ' ' Then — — took up the article on
the Hollis Street Council.  said
that in that article I held up the
Council to the scorn and derision of
mankind, representing them as a set
of hypocrites and double-dealing
knaves ; that I called the ' result in
council' a 'Jesuitical document1, '
and as he was one of the Council, and
one that drew up the ' result,' he
contended that I had traduced him,
representing him as a double-dealing
and base man ; that I had undertaken
to weaken his influence and ruin his
character with the world and his own
congregation, and, so far as my in
fluence went, that I had done so.
This kind of charge he continued at
length in language and manner which
are peculiar to him.
"I then replied that I was not
answerable for the inference which
other men drew, only for the fact of
what I had written. One man said I
slandered the brethren in the sermon
on ' Pharisees ; ' another in the con
clusion of the South Boston sermon ;
and ¦  that I held him up to scorn
in the article on the Hollis Street
Council. I was not accountable for
their inferences : the facts spoke — the
sermon was written December, 1840,
a whole year before any trouble
began. The ' Pharisees ' spoke of
six classes of Pharisees ; nobody com
plained but the ministers. I should
be ashamed to say that I meant no
personalities in either the ' Pharisees '

or the South Boston sermon, but, if
need were, I would condescend to say
that I meant no particular and definite
persons or body of men in either
case, but aimed to expose sin and
Pharisaism wherever they were — if
in the Association, then there — but
had no individuals before my mind.
The letter on the Hollis Street Coun
cil stood on different ground, and '
there it was plain who was meant. I
had nothing to alter or add to that.
Then , someone said, ' You quoted
the words of somebody — " Expect no
justice of the Council," as if you en
dorsed them.' I told them I did not
endorse them ; since, as the words of
a great and wise man, they required
no endorsement of mine. ' But you
applied them as if you expected no
justice.' I did so then, and do now.
I expected no justice from the Council
at the time. When I wrote, I thought
the 'result,' &c, a most Jesuitical
document ; I think so still. I then
added that I didn't wish to write the
article ; asked others to do so ; they
refused. I consulted several persons,
telling them the view I should ex
press (three of them were present —
but I did not say so). They said, ' Go
on.' I wrote carefully, deliberately,
conscientiously. I told one clergy
man, who had no affinity with me —
a man older than most of them, dis
tinguished for good sense and piety —
.what I had said, before I published ;
he said, ' You are right ; say it in
God's name.' I read it to another,
who had little theological affinity with
me ; he said, ' Well, it ain't much
after all for you to write, and I have
but this criticism to make — that you
have been too severe on Mr. Pierpont,
and not half severe enough on the
Council.' Then said  , 'Well,
Mr. P. can't disown what he said ; if
he is conscientious, as no doubt he is,
we can't ask him to do so. I will say
that I freely and from my heart for
give him, as I hope God Almighty
will forgive me ; but I can never grasp

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

85

him by the hand again cordially. Let
us leave this subject and proceed to
the book. ' He then said that, as I
asked what was to be added to abso
lute religion and morality to make
them Christianity, he would add, the
miracles, the authority of Christ,
which I did not acknowledge. To
this I replied that I made Christianity
to be love to man and God ; and, ad
mitting miracles were performed (for
argument's sake), I did not see how
they affected the case — making that
true and a duty which was not so
before, or of authorizing what was in
fact true and a duty. But further than
that, I did not believe the fact of his
working miracles as a general thing.
I was by no means certain that the four
Gospels came from the men to whom
they are ascribed ; and, if they did, I
could not take their word in the cir
cumstances of the case. I had no
philosophical objection to a miracle —
in my definition of it — but only de
manded more evidence than for a
common event. Then someone said
that was enough ; it was plain I was
no Christian, for Christianity was a
supernatural and a miraculous revela
tion. To which I said that it might
be, but it had not been shown to be
such. Nobody accused me of'preach-
ing less than absolute morality and
religion. If they could exist without
Christianity, what was the use of
Christianity? " Then someone said, ' It is plain
we can't have ministerial intercourse
with Mr. Parker : he denies the mira
cles.' Then I said that I didn't
think it depended on that, it was only
a theological matter at best. The
difference began before the article on
the Hollis Street Council, before the
'Discourse of Religion' — the theo
logical lines were drawn immediately
after the South Boston sermon. I
had a collection of curious letters on
that theme, which I might publish
one day. I was at first surprised at
the effect that sermon had on the

Unitarian ministers. I thought the
sermon a poor one — I was sick when
I wrote it — read it to a friend before
preaching, who said it was the weakest
thing I had written for a long time.
I looked round to see who would
stand by me in the pulpit, and I
had not been disappointed in general.
But in two persons I had been dis
appointed — grievously disappointed.
Then said Chandler Robbins, ' Since
Mr. Parker finds the feeling in re
spect to him is so general, I think it
is his duty to withdraw from the
Association.' Others spoke to the
same purpose — I hurt their usefulness,
compromised their position, &c. I
told them that if my personal feelings
alone were concerned I would gladly
do so, but as the right of free in
quiry was concerned, while the world
standeth I will never do so. The
matter was then discussed at length.
The Chairman said if it were a
meeting of free inquirers he should
very soon withdraw. I showed that
theological ageement in all things was
not necessary to our union, and quoted
the case of Dr. Freeman, for many
years a member of the Association,
who never exchanged with him. To
this the Chairman replied the case
was not in point, for many others of
the Association were not Unitarians.
' Indeed,' said I, ' did they say so ?'
'But the difference,' said the Chair
man, ' between Trinitarians and Unit
arians is a difference in Christianity ;
the difference between Mr. Parker
and the Association . is a difference
between no Christianity and Christi
anity.' 'But that is the very point
in question. What is Christianity?
and what is it that puts Mr. Parker
outside of it ?' Then  said they
did not deny that I was a Chris
tian man, but only that the book was
a Christian book. ' But the man be
longs to the Association, and not
the book; and besides, what is it
that makes the book unchristian?'
Then it was argued that I should not

86

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

now be admitted to the Association,
when my opinions were known ; and
therefore that I either had changed
my opinions since I came, or came
with opinions not known to the
Association : in either case that I
ought to withdraw. I replied that I
was not examined as to my opinions
on admission, and was not asked to
promise never to change. If I did
them an injury they had the remedy
in their hands, and could pass a vote
of expulsion at any time ; but it was
a new thing that the shibboleth of
Christianity among the Unitarians
was miracles. A few years ago it
was said in the Association that
formerly Christianity was thought to
rest on two great pillars,— Jachin and
Boaz — prophecy and miracles. Dr.
Noyes knocked down Jachin, and
George Ripley, Boaz, yet Christianity
stood. If I remember right it was
the Chairman who said so. ' True,'
said the Doctor, ' I do remember
something about Jachin and Boaz ;
but I did not say that I was one of
them who said Christianity did not
rest on the two ; still less did I say
that George Ripley had knocked the
miracles down. '
" So they talked much more to the
same effect. At last,, a little before
nine, Bartol spoke in praise of my
sincerity, which some had called in
question — spoke many words of moral
approbation ; so likewise did Gan
nett, at length, and with his usual
earnestness. Then Chandler Robbins
opened his mouth to the same pur
pose. I burst into tears, shook
hands with Waterston, and left the
room. Going below, in the entry I
met the Chairman, who had gone out a
little before. He shook hands with
me with apparent cordiality — hoped
I would come and see him, &c. So
the matter ended."
Two days after the meeting, Parker
received a most kind and appreciative
letter from the Rev. Chandler Rob.
bins, in which he took up the matters

in dispute, and said : — " I do not be
lieve that you have said aught in
malice against your professional breth
ren ; and when I hear any of these
attempting to make out a case against
you on such grounds, I have not the
least sympathy with them." To this
kindly advance, Parker replied : —
" My Dear Friend, — I thank you
truly for your kind note of Thursday
last ; thank you for your sympathy ;
thank you, too, for the caution you
give me. I can live with no sympathy
but that of the Infinite, and His still
small voice • saying, ' Well done ! '
but when sympathy — human sym
pathy — comes, it is truly welcome.
You mistake a little the cause of my
tears the other night. It was not a
hard thing said by yourself or others.
All might have said such as long as
they liked ; I would not have winked
at that. It was the kind things said
by Bartol and Gannett, and what I
knew by your face you were about to
say ; it was this that made me weep.
I could meet argument with argument
(in a place where it is in order to
discuss 'the subjects' of a theolo
gical book which is talked of), blow
with blow, ill-nature with good
nature, all night long ; but the
moment a man takes my part, and
says a word of sympathy, that mo
ment I should become a woman and
no man. If Pierpont had been pre
sent, I should have asked him, at the
beginning, to say no word in defence
of me, but as many of offence as he
liked. I felt afraid, at first, that a
kind thing might be said earlier in
the evening, and am grateful to the
' brethren ' that they said none such
till late.
" But to leave this painful theme. I
knew always the risks that I ran in
saying what was hostile to the popu
lar theology. I have not forgotten
George Fox, nor Priestley; no, nor
yet Abelard nor St. Paul. Don't
think I compare myself with these
noble men, except in this, that each

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS.

87

of them was called on to stand alone,
and so am I. I know what Paul
meant when he said, 'At my first
answer no man stood with me ; ' but
I know also 'what is meant when a
greater than Paul said, 'Yet I am
not alone ; for the Father is with
me.' " If my life ends to-morrow, I can
say,— ' I have the richest, best of consolations,
The thought that I have given,
To serve the cause of Heaven,
The freshness of my early inspirations.'
I care not what the result is to me
personally. I am equal to either
fate, and ask only a chance to do my
duty. No doubt my life is to be
outwardly a life of gloom and separa
tion from old associates (I will not
say friends). I know men will view
me with suspicion, and ministers with
hatred ; that is not my concern. In
wardly my life is, and must be, one
of profound peace — of satisfaction
and comfort that all the words of
mine are powerless to present.
There is no mortal trouble that dis
turbs me more than a moment — no
disappointment that makes me
gloomy, or sad, or distrustful. All
outward evil falls off me as snow
from my cloak. I never thought of
being so happy in this life as I have
been these two years. The destruc
tive part of the work I feel called on
to do is painful, but is slight com
pared with the main work of building
up. Don't think I am flattered, as
some say, by seeing many come to
listen. Nothing makes a real man
so humble as to stand and speak to
many men. The thought that I am
doing what I know to be my duty is
rich reward to me ; I know of none
so great. Besides that, however, I
have the satisfaction of knowing that
I have awakened the spirit of religion,
of faith in God, in some twenty or
twenty-five men who before that
had no faith, no hope, no religion.

their gratitude (made by word of
mouth, or made by letters, or by a
friend), would compensate me for all
that all the ministers in all the world
could say against me or do against
me. But why do I speak of this?
Only to show you that I am not
likely to be cast down. Some of my
relations, 200 or 300 years ago, lost
their heads for their religion. I am
called to no such trial, and can well
bear my lighter cross.
' ' Perhaps I ought to say that, if the
Association think I compromise them,
and injure them and hurt their useful
ness, they have the remedy in their
own hands, and in one minute Can
vote me out of their ranks. At that
I will never complain ; but so long
as the world standeth I will not with
draw voluntarily while I consider
rights of conscience at issue. I think,
too, that, when I shall have more
leisure (as I shall in a few weeks), I
shall attend the meetings more fre
quently than heretofore. To with
draw voluntarily would be to abandon
what I think a post of duty."
The cross laid upon Parker was an
exceedingly hard one to bear. He
could easily have found bravery
enough, had it not been that he had
so much tenderness and so great a
capacity for suffering ; he could stand
for God and righteousness even in a
minority of one, but to a nature
so needing receptacles for its love,
this loneliness of goodness cost him
dear. He would have been moie
than human to have had his former
intimates desert him, receive "impu
dent letters " from them, have them
call upon him and cause him to have
to speak of their visits as "the most
painful I ever received from any
man," to find "Job's comforters"
even in those who most loudly pre
tended to be his lovers and admirers,
and not to have felt it deeply. Every
body feels competent to give good
advice to a tried neighbour, and

This alone, 'and the expression of | capable of forgiving his enemies ; and

88

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

it is wonderful what an excess of
charity flowed into the breasts of
Parker's friends at the time of this
conflict. Deeply enough was he
tried by the treatment of his op
ponents, but hardly more so than by
he conduct which would have justi
fied him in saying what he kept grace
sufficient never to say: — "Save me
from my friends." That he was able
to go on writing to each and all of
them with so much patience and for
bearance shows the high advance in
the religious life he must have at-
. tained. "I have done nothing for
a month," he writes, in the midst of
his trials ; " been stupid beyond
measure ; was never in such a state
before. Never knew till now the sad
ness of that perpetual disappointment
of hoping, hoping, hoping, and find
ing nothing come of that hope. But
I submit. I think I should complete
the drama of my life well by dying
next autumn. External sadness is in
store for me, no doubt ; but the light
is all bright and beautiful within. I
feel somewhat as Luther in the sad
period of his life. Few would mourn
at my departure. Some few souls
who know me as I am would find a
few tears in their eye, but wipe them
soon (such is the nature of man) ;
others, who have heard my word with
joy, would look for another ; but the
many to whom my name has come
would rejoice at my fall, that the
churches might have rest for a season.
Why am I spared? I know not.
Not for what I enjoy. I asked but
little from Heaven : that little I have
not. I am disappointed, but not
soured ; still cheerful. My smiles are
few, but heartfelt. Let me but finish
the work now in my hand, that my
past life may have its fruit on earth,
I will embrace death. I know not
wherefore I am spared. There are
some living that I cling to as to
angels : these it were sad to leave."
The reader has previously been
told how deeply the death of Dr.

Channing was felt by Parker: it
occurred amidst the troubles of this
time. To a friend he wrote of it : —
" I feel that I have lost one of the
most valuable friends I have ever had.
I have known him well, and have
been blessed by his counsels and
liberal sympathy. His mind was
wide, and his heart was wider yet.
I know not what we shall do without
him. But there are good men still
left ; though never, it seems to me,
could he be so ill spared. Well, he
has done a good work. I am glad that
he has lived thus long, and glad that
he has come to his reward." On the
day of the funeral the journal receives
the following entry: — "To-day was
the funeral of Dr. Channing. There
was a strange combination of men to
perform the services of the burial —
two of them bitter enemies, two of
them differing heaven-wide from the
Doctor. It made me feel disagree
ably to see them in that pulpit to
speak of Dr. Channing — men whom
I have heard mock at and deride that
excellent man. But strange things
meet in this world. " ¦
He continued to fall back on his
old consolers — God and work. He
had nature, full of God, new to him
each year ; his studies ; the prospect
of usefulness ; endeavours to promote
the public virtue. We have spoken
of die great labour he bestowed
upon his lectures, and the grand book
he made from them. The toil on
DeWette's "Introduction to the Books
of the Old Testament " — begun when
he was a candidate at Barnstable —
was not ended till the summer of 1843,
when, after the immense labour, and
the sacrifice of more time and money
than he could afford, it was pub
lished. However willing he may
have been to die in his times of deep
dejection, the teeming literary projects
which filled his mind, and the plans
of future work which fill the pages of
his journal, show that in his times of
better hope he had anything but a

CONTROVERSY WITH AMERICAN UNITARIANS. 89

desire to close his industrious career.
Primitive Christianity, church history,
development of doctrine, the dynas
ties of Egypt, Persian, Semitic, and
Christian mythology, philosophy as
developed in Bacon, Leibnitz, and
Plato, formed the severer studies of
those trial days. For relief he sought
through the pages of the Grecian
poets — Tyrtseus, Anacreon, Sappho,
Orpheus, and Pindar. In hours of
devotional mood, La Motte, Fenelon,
Madame Guyon, and John Woolman,
the Quaker, were the writers in whose
piety his troubled soul found help and
solace. His engaging in translating
mystic German hymns shows his,
soul's longing to find yet more its
centre in God. And the calmness of
his inner life, amidst all the storms
of the outer, shows how well he suc
ceeded. A man of less strength of soul, and
less depth of conviction, would have
allowed himself to be driven by all
this persecution and Sadducean sym
pathy further and further from the
position of those who thus treated
him— further in the opposite direction
than he otherwise would have gone.
The world has had many such in
stances. But Parker stood to his
convictions just the same as if he had
received the widest tolerance. At
the very time when he was freely
charged with being a pantheist, he
was writing to a friend: — "I am no
pantheist, or ever was. I am no
more troubled by pantheism or by
anthropomorphism than at noonday
the evening and morning twilight
.trouble me. The whole difficulty
comes of attempting to get a logical
and definite conception of God ; but
neither the head nor the heart will
subsist on abstractions." At the very
time when he was under the ban of
depreciating Jesus, he was writing : —
"It seems to me that, if we always
obeyed the law God has written on
our hearts, the decisions of reason, of
conscience, and of faith would be as

infallible in their action as the instinct
of the bee and the law of gravitation
now are. But no man is in this state.
We are not one with God as Christ
was : so we are in doubt and fear.
The best and wisest now feel this the
most deeply. Jesus alone felt none of
it." At the time he was called an
enemy to Christianity, he was enter
ing iu his journal: — "Christianity is
a field on which may be raised the
strangest crops — wood, hay, and
stubble, wheat and beans. The soil
remains, the crop varies. The time is
coming when men will wonder 'quite
as much at the Christianity of the nine
teenth century as we wonder at that
of the ninth century. Christianity is
progressive, because it is not positive,
but natural : therefore Christianity is
the hope of the world, the desire of all
nations." At the time he was charged
with being too hasty in his generalisa
tions, he was pondering month after
month upon questions which most
men would have answered almost off
hand, to say nothing of the conscien
tious laboriousness with which he
verified all that he published. He
was charged with being rash in dis
carding the Scriptural miracles, but
we have seen how slowly he gave
these up ; and there is the fact that
since his time men like Dr. James
Martineau, and a majority of the
highest thinkers, have followed exactly
in his course. And as to the charge,
freely brought against him, that he
was Thomas Paine's disciple and suc
cessor, we have seen already how
little deserving he was of that. The
great desire the Unitarians now show
to hold him up as one of their noblest
prophets shows how completely in
the wrong were those who so in
considerately ill-treated him thirty
years ago.
In the autumn of 1843 he found
himself so wearied and exhausted by
the extraordinary trials and labours
of the two previous years that he
gladly availed himself of a monetary

90

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

gift which enabled him to carry out a
long-cherished desire to make a tour
of Europe. His purpose was to
spend a year in recovery, observation,
and thought. He wished to study
nations he had previously known only
by their literature and by other
men's words ; to see the effect which
despotic, monarchic, and aristocratic
institutions' have on multitudes of
men who from generation to genera
tion had lived under them ; to study
the effect of those forms of religion
which are enforced by the inquisitor
or the constable ; and, in many forms,
to see the difference between freedom
and bondage. Also to learn what
warning and what guidance the Old
World had to offer to the New ;
to converse with eminent men, and
to compare their schemes for im
proving mankind with his own. Still
more, he wanted an entire year, free
from all practical duties, for revising
his own philosophy and theology, and
laying out plans for future work.
The Sunday before he left, he
preached a discourse to his little
West Roxbury congregation from the
text, " I have not shunned to declare
unto you all the counsel of God,"
In it he pointed out the danger which
besets a minister — the danger of be
coming too self-confident on the one
side, or allowing himself to become a
mere instrument in the hands of his
sect and social circumstances on the
other. Following this he recapitu
lated what he had sought to teach
them, and referred to the kind of
treatment he had received from his
ministerial brethren. It was as follows
that he concluded : — " I knew my
hands could win my bread, for they
could toil at numerous crafts, and were
perhaps better educated than my head.
I never thought of being silenced.
The fact that a truth was unpopular

was the reason why it should be
spoken with a thousand tongues. . . .
But I must bring all this to a close.
What shall I say ? Has my ministry
thus far been a faithful one ? I cannot
judge myself. In some things it has
surpassed my expectations : in others
fallen far short of it. You shall say
whether or not I have done good to
your hearts, and thereby made your
lives better. If I have deepened your
love of troth, if I have helped you to
a clearer knowledge of duty, if I have
enabled you to bear better the bur
dens of life, to love man and God, to
obey His laws, meekly and reverently
to trust therein with a calmness which
the world cannot disturb ; if I have
persuaded or helped any of you to
aspire after a manly character and a
divine life, then I feel that I have not
laboured in vain. We have discoursed
on the loftiest themes ; for six years
our prayers have been mingled to
gether. Here we have assembled for a
closer remembrance of one so dear to
our heart and the world's heart. The
recollection of these modest walls, of
these familiar faces, while they bring
tears to my eyes, will bring not less
joy to my heart. May God bless you
and keep you, and lift the light of
His countenance upon you ; may rea
son guide you ; may religion be your
daily life, your hope, and your por
tion for ever and ever. Farewell. "
On the 9th of September, 1843, he
set sail in the ship Ashburton for
England. He had just before in
scribed in his journal: — " It has long
been a day-dream with me to visit
Europe; it now approaches fulfilment.
A friend kindly furnishes me the
means. "
Before concluding the story of his
conflict with the American Unitarians,
we will follow him on his tour to
England and the Continent

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

91

CHAPTER X.
Twelve Months in Europe.
' Me other cares in other climes engage,
Cares that become my birth, and suit my age ;
In various Knowledge to improve my youth,
And conquer Prejudice, worst foe to Truth ;
By foreign arts domestic faults to mend,
Enlarge my notions and my views extend ;
The useful science of the World to know,
Which books can never teach, or pedants show." Lord Lytteltoit.

THEODORE PARKER'S visit
to Europe was one for study
rather than pleasure. During its con
tinuance he'made books of the men,
women, institutions, various things,
he came in contact with. He came
forth from his little study at West
Roxbury in order that he might occupy
for a time the vast and novel one which
Europe itself affords to the thinking
and observant American. This was
the main object he gratified in his
tour ; the others — pleasure and reco
very — were made into incidentals.
For some time before he left home
he had been making memoranda of
matters to be studied, and men and
things to be seen. In England he
was going to attend to matters relating
to his own and his wife's ancestors ;
to look up points in New England
history and biography at the Heralds'
Office ; to examine the Cudworth
Papers in the British Museum ; to
see Lord Howe's monument in West
minster Abbey ; the houses of John
son, Franklin, Milton, and Newton
in London ; the London University ;
Hallam and Hennell ; to ask Dickens
about the writer on American News
papers in the Foreign Quarterly Re
view, &c. &c. In Germany, he was
going to examine the schools in Saxony
and Prussia ; the Hernhiitter Esta
blishment ; in Switzerland, ascend
Mont Blanc, &c. &c. Similarly he
had previsionally noted of the other
countries and places he intended to
visit.

He was detained for three days at
New York, owing to the vessel wait
ing for a wind. This time he occu
pied in visits to Lydia Maria Child,
Isaac T. Hopper, and others, and in
examination of the institutions and
wicked haunts of the city. When
Mrs. Parker and he went on board
they were accompanied by a number
of intimate friends, who left behind
them a fragrant present of peaches
and flowers. By sunset the shore of
America was beginning to disappear,
upon observing which our tourist
made this entry in the journal : — "My
friends are behind ; but one is with
me to whom my mortal weal and woe
are united. I often think I ought
never to return, yet, perhaps, I shall.
Be this as Heaven appoints. "
He soon discovered that his sea
going qualities were not Al. For
five or six of the first days he was
severely afflicted with sea sickness,
and during no part of the twenty-five
of the voyage does he appear to have
been well. But this.did,not prevent
him from at least striving to work.
Sick men are proverbially selfish,
and Parker in one of his sermons said
this of himself, but on board the
Ashburton, notwithstanding his own
sickness, the first matters that exer
cised his thoughts were those per
taining to the general welfare. First
he was troubled about the condition
and relationship of the human beings
on board the vessel. " There is one
thing that disturbs me much at sea ;

92

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

that is, the awful difference between
the cabin and the steerage, or the
forecastle. If I were in the fore
castle, perhaps it would not appear
so bad ; I might think the men in
the cabin deserved their pre-eminence
of ease and comfort. Now, I know
it is not so. Here are one hundred
and sixty poor wretches in the steer
age, with almost no comforts, while
the thirty in the cabin live in luxury.
As the lion in the wilderness eateth
up the wild ass, so the rich eat up
¦ the poor. Alas ! this truth is told
us often enough ; jn great cities it is
thundered in our ears each moment,
but in that little despotism, a ship,
you see the whole thing more clearly,
because more compendiously. There
must be a cure for this terrible evil.
What is it ? " He then goes on to
notice several courses which, if fol
lowed, he thinks might be palliatives
for the evil, but records his convic
tion that so deep is it he can look
for relief only gradually, by applying
good sense to religion, and religion
to life. Next, in anything but the
spirit of a sick and selfish man, he
writes<down in the journal : — "I am
now to spend a year in foreign travel.
In this year I shall earn nothing ;
neither my food, my clothes, nor even
the paper I write on. Of course I
shall increase my debt to the world
by every potato I eat, and each mile
I travel. How shall I repay the
debt? Only by extraordinary efforts
after I return. I hope to continue
my present plans in this way. A.
Practical. I. To work in behalf of
temperance, education, a change in
the social fabric, so that the weak
shall not be the slaves of the strong.
2. To show that religion belongs to
man's nature, that it demands piety
and morality (the inward sentiment
and outward action), and theology
(the mediator between the two). B.
Speculative. I. To write an intro
duction to the New Testament. 2.
To write a historical development of

religion in the history of man. [He
subsequently gathered a great amount
of material under appropriate heads —
enough for two volumes — and wrote
a portion of this projected work, but
did not live to finish it.] 3. Such
other works as may become necessary,
e.g., a popular introduction to the
Old Testament, in i2mo. In this
way I hope to work out my debt."
His sickness being unfavourable to
reading, he turned to planning ser.
mons — laying out thirty-seven sub
jects in all ; one on the Italian pro
verb, "The devil's wheat grinds all
to bran."
. Landed at Liverpool, he began to
visit and observe almost everything,
and make notes thereof in his diary.
The warehouses, enormous docks,
monuments, beggars in the street,
the markets, with the prices of the
meat and vegetables, "clean men-
servants, looking like Methodist min
isters," costly churches. Anent the
latter he indited : — " I have thought
there are two ways of honouring God,
one in stone and mortar, and the
other in benevolence and daily duty.
I love the beautiful like a poet ; but
potatoes first and paintings after
wards is my rule." This view he
further emphasised subsequently when
at Rome, by saying he would rather
be Benjamin Franklin than Michael
Angelo, and that he thought that a
George Stephenson who organised
use was better than a Rubens who
merely copied beauty.
From Liverpool he proceeded to
Manchester. Here the factories,
machines, men, colleges, curiosities,
all gave him interest. In a letter
home he thus described a visit to
the "Old Church," or Cathedral :—
"When we were at Manchester we
went into a very old church, the
newest part of it built in 1422. It
was very beautiful. We saw where
Cromwell's soldiers— for they made
barracks of the church — 'broke down
the carved work.' I felt the natural

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

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emotions of reverence at treading
such ancient aisles, consecrated by
the prayers and remembrances of
four hundred years ; and felt, too, a
sort of hatred towards ' old Noll ' who
did such things. But the next day I
went to worship in the old church.
The organ gave out its beautiful
tones ; the sexton, arrayed in a sur
plice, showed us into a handsome pew,
but sent an old, tottering, venerable
man into a little dirty box. Presently
the dean and canons came in, in their
robes, preceded by an usher. The
dean has a salary of about 25,000
dollars per annum. A fat chough,
with a face like George III., got
into the reading desk, and ' galloped
like a hunter over his prayers ; ' and
another preached a most stupid and
arrogant sermon. I could not but
think Cromwell did only half his
work, and when I was at Oxford I
wondered why he never went there
with his breaching cannon."
He met with the Rev. W. Gaskell,
the minister of the Cross Street Uni
tarian Chapel, and was much in his
company. Mr. Gaskell wished him
to preach for him — thus having the
honour of being the first minister in
England to give him such an invita
tion ; but, as the Sunday approached,
Parker felt too unwell to comply.
He also went several times to the
residence of Professor F. W. New
man, who was at that time in Man
chester ; and, at dinner at the Rev.
John James Tayler's, Parker, New
man, and the host formed the party.
The reader will be interested to read
what Parker has recorded of so in
teresting a meeting. ' ' We talked
about various matters of scholarship.
He (Professor Newman) thought
Xenophon gave the truer account of
Socrates — so thought Tayler. I stood
out for Plato's account — of course
somewhat idealised, else we could
not explain the hostility of the Athe
nians (excited by the orators, who
were all sophists), nor for the in

fluence he exerted on the world, then
and since then. Professor Newman
did not like Plato ; he thought he
never did the sophists justice ; that
Protagoras was not so bad as Plato
made him. This led to a long dis
cussion oi the functions of the sophists,
and the cause of their origin at that
period. Newman thought they were
a sort of private tutor, and not so
black as they were often painted. I
added that the state of theology na
turally helped form this race of men.
Then we came upon the ' Republic. '
Mr. N. thought it foolish to attempt
such a work, which must necessarily
be vain. I defended the scheme as
a method of putting forth great
thoughts. This led to a talk about
the truths which lay at the bottom of
the treatise. Then we spoke about
Aristotle ; his better method of giving
an account of the actual. Professor
Newman surprises me. I know many
that I think have more native power
than he ; but few of our scholars
show such accurate and varied learn
ing — such accomplished scholarship. "
It was a remarkable occurrence, this :
the young man, who fifteen years
before was digging and ploughing on
a farm, meeting college-bred Pro
fessors on their own ground, and
holding his own in the discussion.
His next remove was to Derby
shire to visit the Duke of Devonshire's
famous residence at Chatsworth,
and where he noticed the original
" Christus Consolator," from which
the familiar print is taken. Then he
made his way to Kenilworth to visit
the ruins of Leicester's famous castle ;
next to Warwick, where he much
admired the Vandykes and Holbeins,
the picture of Charles I. on horse
back, the portraits of Strafford,
Ignatius Loyola, John Locke, &c,
displayed in the ancient and pictur
esque castle of the Earls of Warwick.
Then the eight miles further to Strat-
ford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birth
place, where he copied many of the

94

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

curious inscriptions on the tombs and
church walls. He wrote home soon
after : — " I have been to Kenilworth,
to Warwick Castle ; have been in the
room where Shakespeare was bom,
and have stood over his grave — you
may judge with what feelings."
At Oxford — to which he next pro
ceeded — the venerable buildings, the
halls, pictures, and, above all, the
books, afforded him great wonder and
enjoyment. In the Bodleian Library
he found many books not to be seen
in America, which he had long been
anxious to see ; and, accordingly, he
seized the opportunity to examine
them. His visit was- just about the
time of the Fuseyite agitation, and
he wrote to Dr. Francis, from Oxford,
under date of October 18, 1843 : —
" Puseyism is getting forward rapidly ;
it has already embraced the greater
part of the piety, and the learning,
too, of the Church ; and men look
forward to the time when the Pusey-
ites will all secede in a body as not
far distant. Really the rise of this
party in the Church is one of the
most encouraging signs of the times.
The Old Church is not so dead as
men fancied; some are found who
say to the fat bishops and easy deans,
'Go to the devil with your livings
and your rents — your tithes and your
distrainings ; let us put life into these
old forms which you are humbugging
the people withal. We want a re
vival of Christianity — primitive Chris
tianity, and will believe anything, and
sacrifice all things, but we will have
it.' Here is Dr. Newman — gives
up a rich living out of conscientious
scruples ! Dr. Pusey, born of one of
the oldest families in the kingdom,
who, at Pusey Hall, keeps a horn of
gold given them by Canute — a man
bred in all tenderness — rides on the
outside of coaches, and submits to
all manner of hard fare, to save
money to give to the poor and pro
mote education, Christianity, and the
like of that ! He says a man in good

circumstances ought to give up a
fourth part of his income for bene
volent purposes — and does it ! "
Passing on to London, he saw
Thomas Carlyle twice, taking tea
with him at one of the visits. He
breakfasted with Babbage, the emi
nent mathematician, "had a fine
visit ; saw his wonders and heard his
wonders." Soon he left England for
Paris. Here he visited the Sor-
bonne to present a letter to Victor
Cousin ; the Opera Comique ; the
ancient churches, Notre Dame, the
Pantheon, St. Sulpice, St. Etienne
du Mont ; the Morgue ; the gallery
of the Louvre ; H6tel de Cluny ;
Porcelain Factory at Sevres ; Musee
d'Artillerie ; Palais de Justice ; H6tel
de Ville ; H6tel des Invalides ; Bibli-
otheque Royal ; the Gobelin tapestry ;
St. Germains des Pres; Palais des
Beaux Arts ; Ecole des Beaux Arts,
St. Denis, Versailles, &c. He no
ticed the non-observance of the Sab
bath — so different from New England ;
marked the strange names given to
streets ; rambled among the old book
stalls on the quays. The impressions
he formed of the French, and wherein
he thought they differ from the Eng
lish, are thus quaintly given: — " They
are always gay ; gay in their busi
ness, gay in their religion; their
churches even have a style that is
peculiarly French— at least, since the
time of Delorme all their architecture
has been gay. The Frenchman would
'dance before the Lord.' Now,
John Bull all the week long is spin
ning cotton, raising potatoes, fatting
oxen, and sending ships to the end
of the world. He has managed
matters so that the income of his
Church is 44,000/. more than the
income of all the other Churches of
Europe put together, and so that
six per cent, of his whole population
receives support from the public
purse. All the week long he never
thinks of God, nor cares for truth
and righteousness; but Sunday comes,

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

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and then John is mighty religious all
at once." He went to hear lectures
on all kinds of learned subjects :
Arabic, Corneille, Cicero, philosophy
of Gassendi and Descartes, law of
nature and nations, ancient history,
mysticism of the Alexandrine school,
unity of the human race, and Italian
literature, and made notes of them.
The lecture on Mysticism was by M.
Jules Simon, and in view of the emi
nence the learned Frenchman has
since attained, the reader will be
interested in Parker's references to
him. "Jules Simon is not twenty-
six years old. I went to his salle
half an hour before the time ; it was
half full then. By-and-by I heard
a step at the private door, and the
audience clapped their hands. Then
entered a finely formed young man,
elegantly dressed, with one of the
finest countenances I ever saw — pale,
with deep, dark eyes ; he looks reli
gious, mystic, and philosophic. He
lectured on Proclus and his school,
on the mysticism of Proclus, its origin
and effects. He had no notes, but
leaned back in his chair, looked up
towards the ceiling, then at the audi
ence, then began. His words were
musical, his manner perfect ; it was
the beau ideal of lecturing. He did
not quite do justice to Plato, for he
went back to Plato to trace the mys
tical elements in Proclus. I never
heard or read a neater exposition of
doctrines than his of Plato's notions
of God, though I think them a little
erroneous." At the Jardin des
Ptantes he heard St. Hilaire lecture
on "Vultures," and carried classi
fication, habits, anecdotes all away
in his notes. He took lessons in
French, and practised writing the
language by making notes at lectures
and writing descriptions of places of
interest in it. He also gave con
siderable thought and research to the
past history of Paris, and got at the
curious fact that Notre Dame stands
on the ruins of an old Roman temple

with an inscription still on the stones.
After twenty-six days of this hard,
busy work, he went on from Paris to
Lyons. In this " city of massacres " he
went into the cellar where Polycarp
" preached the Gospel of Christianity
when it cost something to be a
Christian ; " stood upon the grave of
Irenaeus ; saw the bones of Christian
martyrs piled up in a large vault,
and in sight thereof thought how
little, in comparison with those of
former ages, men had now to give
for their religious faith.
At Avignon he stood (the reader
may judge with what feelings) in the
secret chambers of the Inquisition ;
saw the holes where the instruments
of torture were put up, the fireplace
for heating pincers, the dungeon
where heretics were starved to death.
This was at the Palais des Popes,
formerly the residence of the Popes
of Rome, and it caused him to re
mark in a letter home : — " Here
everything differs so much from home,
and I depart so much from my com
mon way of life, that I sometimes
doubt if I am the same Theodore
Parker that used to live at West
Roxbury. I am half inclined to be
lieve that he is a mythological person,
and has no real historical existence.
But when I come to a college, a
book-store, or a Roman temple, and
above all to the Palais des Papes at
Avignon, I believe that I am my old
self, not a whit changed. "
He next visited Aries, Marseilles,
Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa. Florence
and its many wonders and beauties
fairly transported him. He noted of
the Church of Santa Croce : — " This
is the great burial-place of the illus
trious departed of Florence ; here
sleep in peace the men that were
persecuted when living, and driven
from their native land. It is a little
curious that Galileo should be buried
in this church, and have such a monu
ment here, for the tribunal that per-

96

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

secuted him had its residence in this
very cloister. So the world goes.
The conventuals of St. Francis, to
whom Urban IV. entrusted the In
quisitorial power in Tuscany, meet
in the cloister of Santa Croce. Now
the Grand Duke of Tuscany is curious
to preserve every relic of Galileo,
even his finger, kept in the Laurentian
Library." Then follow his impres
sions of the art treasures of Florence.
' ' I have now visited most of the
wonders of this charming place. Let
me say that the great paintings of
Raphael — the Madonna Della Seg-
giola, the Julius II. , the Leo X. , the
Fomarina — affect me more than I had
ever dreamed of. The first time I
went to the Pitti Palace I did not
know what I was to see ; all at once
my eye fell on the Madonna. What
a painting I God in heaven, what a
painting ! What a genius ! I must
say the same of the great works of
Titian — the Magdalen, and both the
Venuses ; butthe Laocoon, the Venus
de Medici, and the Apollo did not
fill my mind as I had expected. The
statues in general have fallen a little
below my imagination ; the paintings
(I mean the great ones, which I knew
well by engravings before) have risen
above it far; so have the public
buildings." Possibly he liked the
paintings best because they better re
present life and movement than statu
ary. He went into the convent at
tached to the chapel of St. Antonin,
and saw the cell in which Savonarola
used to live. " It is like all the rest;
small, ten feet square, perhaps, and
ten feet high. There is a fresco of
Beato Angelico, representing the
coronation of the Virgin. Here lived
that dauntless soul, who feared no
thing but wrong and fear ; a soul of
fire was in him. "
He left Florence "with sorrow,"
returned to Leghorn, and sailed to
Naples. From thence he ascended
Mount Vesuvius, and went so near the
crater that he was in danger from the

masses of melted stone which fall con
tinually, a few of the smaller pieces
actually hitting him on the shoulder.
He visited Puteoli, Baiaa, Pozzuolo,
" classic ground," " but what a differ
ence between the ancient tenants and
these their successors ! Here those old
Romans revelled in their Titanic lust,
here they poisoned one another, here
they framed plans and conspiracies
which affected the welfare of a world. "
He visitedalso theplaceswhereCicero,
Horace, Pollio lived, and Virgil, by
tradition, was buried. ' ' Italy, " wrote
he, "is the land of artistic elegance
and social deformity. " Accordingly he
studied the condition of the people,
the taxes, cost of living, statistics of
trade, &c. , the humanity of Italy, not
less than its art.
After visiting and making diagrams
of Herculaneum and Pompeii, he pro
ceeded from Naples by diligence to
Rome. ' ' Oh, what thoughts it awoke
in my heart when first I saw its domes,
and rode down the Via Appia. There
is no city, except Athens and Jerusa
lem, so full of recollections to me as
Rome. Twice it has been the capital
of the world — once of the Pagan, by
physical violence ; once of the Chris
tian, by spiritual violence. She has
made a desert about her twice. The
memorials of the arts, however, came
from the times of the Emperors, scarce
any from that of the republic I love
to walk about the streets, or sit in the
Forum, and think of the armies that
marched out of this little city — the
influences that went forth to conquer
the world. What traces of these stern
giants are written all over the earth.
One might, in travelling in the land of
giants, come all at once on the foot
prints of one in the sand ten feet long
— and from that judge of the race.
So it is with the Romans, but you
meet their footprints everywhere. Yet
they invented nothing, not even the
arch. They borrowed their literature,
their art, their religion, but their arms
they made. But, alas, what a con-

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

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trast, as one sits in the Forum, and
looks on the crowd of beggars and of
blackguards. Oh, city of crime from
the days of Romulus till these days !
Thou that stonest the prophets ! The
blood of martyrs is upon thee from thy
earliest to thy latest days. " He stayed
a few weeks in the Eternal City, and
soon found wonders he was not looking
for. In the Church of St. Mary Mag
giore he was shown some fragments
of Christ's cradle ! "In St. John of
Lateran is the table on which the
Twelve took the Last Supper — the
heads of St. Paul'and St. Peter— the
actual Well of Samaria, between two
pillars from Pilate's house at Jerusa
lem — the stone on which the soldiers
cast lots for Christ's vesture — the
pillars between which Pilate stood
when he told the people to take Christ
and crucify him — the column that split
asunder at his Crucifixion (very neatly
done)— and four columns supporting
a slab which shows the exact height
of Jesus— just six feet I and not far
off is the Santa Spala, a flight of
twenty-eight marble steps, which Jesus
descended when he went to be cruci
fied. It is not lawful for anyone to
walk up them : penitents ascend on
their knees. We saw several going
up, but they are poor folk for the most
part. At the head of the stairs is a
chapel, containing a picture of Jesus
when twelve years old, painted by St.
Luke, the only one from that artist !
Here, too, I saw a hole in an altar —
through the marble slab — made in this
way : a priest did not believe in Tran
substantiation ; so, one day when he
was celebrating mass, the wafer whip
ped through the slab of marble, and
left agreat spot of blood on the column
beneath which supported it. The red
spot is still faintly visible. The hole is
an inch and a half in diameter.
Really, I think I shall tum Catholic,
and be baptized on Easter Day in
the baptistery of Constantine, where
Rienzi bath ed, and where all converted
Jews and infidels are baptized."

Interspersing his studies of the
ecclesiastical, historical, and artistic
features of Rome, he remembered St.
Paul's residence and suffering here,
and sought out the associations of
"the chiefest of Apostles." , When
visiting "St. Paul in the Corso," he
thus reflected : — "Perhaps Paul actu
ally lived here and died here I It is
something to stand on the spot where
Paul once stood. I should like to sit
here and read his Epistles. Oh, the
soul-stirring man ! It is easy to, build
churches to his memory." At the
Mamertine Prison, where Jugurtha
died, and the conspirators that were
with Catiline : — " Yes, here was Paul
a prisoner ! The custode shows a
spring that spouted up for St. Peter
(who was here nine months with
Paul), in whjch he baptized forty-nine
soldiers, all of whom became martyrs.
There is a stone which records the
same event. I drank some of the
water. But, all nonsense apart, it is
something to sit down in the dungeon
where Paul was a prisoner!" Another
reference to Paul is contained in the
following "mem," called forth from
what they saw at the Carnival, after
taking a coach and riding round ' ' to
see the nonsense." "Notice the
beggars in the midst of this festivity,
and their hideous deformity. They
are sad enough objects at all times —
on a festal day what shall we think
of them? Men throw flour at each
other, and the rich spoil the coats of
the rich with what would have glad
dened the heart of the beggars !
' Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you — ' Ah, this- is the
city where Paul was crucified. They
would crucify Christ if he were to come
here or to Boston. God bless men !
— they can't crucify Christianity."
Along with a party of other Ameri
cans, Parker and his wife were one
Sunday presented to the Pope. " He
stood in the simple dress of a monk,
with his back against a sort of a
table, and talked with Mr. Greene, H

98

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

who had introduced us. He blessed
some rosaries which the Americans
had brought. We stayed about twenty
minutes. He has a benevolent face,
and looked kindly upon us. Talked
about the state of Rome — about the
English language in America — about
the famous polyglot Cardinal at the
Propaganda — made a sign, and we
withdrew." Of course, the Coliseum was visited.
It called forth the following impres
sions : " It is more perfect than I
feared. It has now been consecrated,
to keep it from the devastations of
modern Rome. At the entrance is a
cross, with a sign-board which pro
mises forty days' indulgence to all
who will kiss the cross. In the very
centre oi the amphitheatre is another
cross with another direction — that he
who kisses that shall have plenary
indulgence for two hundred days. If
Seneca or Cicero were to come back,
he would think the world had made
little progress in the theory of religion,
whatever had been done in the prac
tice of it. Sometimes a monk preaches
here. What recollections come up !
The gladiators, the wild beasts, the
Christians, the emperors, the armies ;
Rome fallen ; the new Rome — and
that, too, fallen. Oh ! one could
move the stones by preaching here.
I could not help looking at the place
professionally, and thinking it would
be a fine place topresLchParkerism in. "
When visiting St. Peter's — the
cupola, the ball, and all that is com
monly seen there — he had a con
versation with the guide about the
Inquisition, near by. The guide
told him there were four or five hun
dred inmates incarcerated therein ;
but they were no longer put to
torture. They never came out again,
and were never seen any more or
heard of.
He makes the following allusion in
his journal to a visit paid by him to
the Catacombs : "Went to the Cata
combs in the vicinity of St. Ignese, a

little way out of the city. Entered
the chapels with the little caves on
each side, each large enough for a
single body. These once contained
the ashes of the martyrs. In some of
the chapels the ceiling was covered
entirely with paintings. There was the
Good Shepherd ; here Christ preach
ing, though but a child ; here the
Hebrew Youths in the Flames ; here
Daniel in the Lions' den; here the
whole Story of Jonah, emblematic of
the death and resurrection of Christ ;
and here the Miratle at Cana, the
symbol of transubstantiation ; and
many more. I am confirmed in my
opinion that, long before Constantine,
the Church had departed from the
ideal simplicity of the primitive state,
so often contended for by Protestants.
Indeed, I am now more than ever per
suaded that, as Christ gave no form,
the first one used by the apostolic
churches was much less simple than
we fancy. I shall never forget the
impression left on my mind by this
visit. I should like to come and sit
here all night and read the Fathers —
Origen's cohortation to his young
converts, urging them to be martyrs,
or something of Cyprian or Ter
tullian, or the lives of the martyrs
themselves. No wonder the CathoUc
Church has such a hold on the hearts
of the world, while she keeps in her
bosom the relics of the sainted dead-!
Yet, as I walked about here, I could
not but think how easy it must have
seemed, and have been too, to bear the
cross of martyrdom ; the recollection
of Christ, of the apostles, the cer
tainty of the prayers and best wishes
of men on earth, the expectations of
heavenly satisfaction — all would con
spire to sustain the spirit, and make
the man court and not shun the
martyr's death. Father Marchi, a
priest who has devoted his life to the
study of the Catacombs, went with
us, and explained everything ; showed
us curiosities without stint relating to
the early Christians ; bottles of dried

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

99

blood of the martyrs ; instruments of
torture ; images of Christ, of the
Virgin, &c. I saw proofs enough
that some of the alleged 'corrup
tions of Christianity' date back to
107 A.D. The worship of the Virgin
can be traced nearly as far ; that of
the invocation of saints for the dead,
quite to that very year. I think you
find the ceremony of saying mass, as
at present, pretty distinctly traced
hack to the beginning of the second
century. In the chapels of the Cata
combs are frescoes, painted in the
second century (at the latest, in the
early part of it), representing the
miracle of Cana in such conjunction
with the saying of mass that it shows
a distinct allusion to the transforma
tion of the bread and wine into the
body and blood of Christ ; at least
they say so."
Happening to be in Roihe on Ash
Wednesday, when the Pope is accus
tomed to celebrate mass in the Sistine
Chapel, in the presence of the car
dinals and other Church dignitaries,
Parker attetided the service. " The
music was fine. The ceremony did
not impress me at all. It brought to
my recollection him of Nazareth,
whose picture hangs over the altar.
I remembered what he said of the
temple, of the chief priests, &c. The
whole filled me with compassion, and
drew tears from my eyes. Is it
always to be so, and in Christian
Rome, by the head of the Church ?
The ceremony of kissing the Pope's
hand or foot, the kneeling before him
and burning incense, and all in the
name of the carpenter's son at Naza
reth — it is quite too bad. I honour
the learning, the zeal, the devotion,
the humanity, there is in the Catholic
Church ; but this nonsense is too
much for me. As if God laughed at
the whole, there was the awful fresco
of Michel Angelo representing the
Last Judgment ; and here, too, was
Aaron with the Hebrews worshipping
the golden calf ; and Moses in indig

nation breaking the tables he had
just received ! There is no irony
like that of Nature." It is evidently
With him at Rome as he had already
written home from Florence, " I love
the music and architecture of Catho
licism ; its doctrines, its rites, and its
general effect, I must say, I hate all
the more in Europe than I hated at
home. "
Not but what he is anxious to see
the good side of Romanism. This
reflection, for instance, made after
attending vespers at St. Peter's, can
not have Come from an altogether
hostile heart. "The perfection of
music— it would stir the heart of a
statue to hear it. The children were
gathered together (ift a. few children)
to be instructed. Half a loaf "is
better than no bread ; and I make
no doubt the essentials of Christianity
are inculcated. " He also took every
opportunity of trying to get to know
the Roman Religion as its own most
eminent advocates represent it. In
order that he might better do this,
he procured a letter of introduction
to a ybung American Catholic in
Rome; who in turn introduced him tb
several Catholics, eminent men and
capital scholars, to a D.D., a Bishop,
and a Cardinal. " I have talked a
good deal with them about their faith;
though I have not disputed, but only
questioned. I feared that I might
have sometimes done them injustice,
but I think I have not. I have
found them universally kind, per
fectly free from cant ; they don't
draw down the comers of their mouth,
nor talk through their nose, nor roll
up the whites of their eyes, and say,
' O-6-6-6 ! ' There is much about
the Catholic Church that I always
liked — its music, architecture, paint
ings, statues. Besides, there is a
long list of saints, whom I truly
reverence, enrolled on its calendar.
The Church is democratic (in thfe
good sense) in appointing its saints.
None are made saints except for

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

personal qualities ; not for wealth, or
birth, or power — but goodness. What
if they do pray to the saints, as the
Protestants say, or through them, as
they say ? The true God, I take it,
would as lief be called St. Cecilia as
Jehovah : and a true prayer must be
acceptable to the true God. I told a
Jesuit Father so, the other day ; but
he said that was an odious doctrine —
it justified idolatry. The Catholic
Church practically, I think, culti
vates the feelings of reverence, of
faith, of gentleness, better than the
Protestant Churches ; but I can't
think it affects the conscience so
powerfully, and- 1 know that at pre
sent it does not appeal to the reason
or practical good sense. While
Bishop B. says, ' Out of the Catholic
Church is no salvation,' he adds,
'but none is damned except for his
own fault, and many may be in the
Soul of the Catholic Church who are
not in its Body.' God only knows
who I I wish I could think better of
the priests here.
"It is difficult to say what is the
present condition of the Catholic
Church ; they are certainly making
great exertions to extend their faith
in all parts of the world ; the present
Pope is a pious and excellent man, I
should judge : one that fears God and
loves mankind, believing himself
fallible as a man but infallible as
Head of the Church, and his character
has had an influenoe on the Church.
I should be sorry to see the Catholic
Church fall now ; for which of the
Protestant sects could take its place ?
Perhaps it will outlive them all ; for
there is a terrible unity in its system,
and it holds to its first principles
with remorseless fidelity. If I wanted
to convert a fop to Christianity, I
think I would send him to Rome ;
but if I wanted to put a philosopher
in the Catholic Church, I would send
him anywhere but to Rome."
Nine days after leaving Rome, he
reached Venice. He wrote of it,

" Venice is a dream of the sea. Occi
dental science and Oriental fantasy
seem to have united to produce it. A
Pagan Greek might say that Neptune,
drank with nectar and Amphitzite,
slept in the caves of the sea, and
dreamed as he slept. Venice is the
petrification of his dream. The sun
colours curiously the walls of the
palaces and churches. It seems as if
their wealth had ran over and stained
the walls. What a history was hers !
What a destiny in the economy of
the world ! Who that had lived in
the time of the second crusade could
ever have fancied her present lot?"
He next visited Padua, Vicenza,
Verona, Innspriick, Munich, Regens-
burg, Passan, Lintz, Vienna, Prague,
— where he did not forget the me
morials of Huss and Jerome, and the
religious wars ; Dresden — where he
saw the ring and drinking-cup of
Martin Luther, and the crucifix of
John of Bologna.
Arrived at Berlin, he sent to Dr.
Francis the following graphic descrip
tion of it : " Here I am at Berlin, in
the third story of the British Hotel.
Do you know what sort of a place
Berlin is ? No ? Imagine a sandy
plain forty miles square, with one or
two nasty rivers trying to get through
it, but doubtful all the time that they
had taken the right way. In the
centre of this plain, and on the banks
of the most doubtful of the rivers,
imagine a great number of brick
houses covered with stucco, and a
few churches, &c, of the same ma
terial. Then imagine one street,
sixty or seventy feet wide and two
miles long, with another street, two
hundred feet wide and one mile
long, having four rows of lime trees
in it, a foot-walk in the centre,
and two carriage ways, one on each
side ; then add some hundreds of
other streets, all straight, and you
have a conception of Berlin. For the
moving part of it, imagine 1,000
hackney coaches, the drivers with

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

cows'-tails on top of their caps, 100
private carriages, 400 drags for beer,
150 carts and waggons for other
business, 30,000 soldiers, 1,650 stu
dents, 180 professors (it will take a
day to imagine them all), a King,
Baron Von Humboldt, and 270,000
others. Imagine the King with a
belly like Uncle Tom Clarke, the
students with mustachios, the pro
fessors lecturing on Dagesh lene, the
King 'counting out his money,"
Baron Von Humboldt sleeping on
his laurels, and the 270,000 smoking,
walking, weaving, making pipes, and
getting dinner ; and you have an idea
of the personate of Berlin. "
He went to hear all the celebrated
professors of the city — Hengsten-
herg, Twesten, Marheinecke, Vatke,
Michelet, Boeekh, Schelling, and
Werder — each in his own department
of philosophy, history, antiquity, or
philology. Hegelianism was the as
cendant philosophy of the time, and
Parker sent Dr. Francis a charac
teristic description of a lecture by
Werder, a disciple of the system, on
Legit. " The point at issue was the
definite ground or substance of
thought. He got into a great pas
sion and a desperate fix with the
definite ground, trying, as I dimly
gathered, to discover the fundamental
foundation. He said in Beslimmung
there was being and Realite\ Here
upon, a fat, chubby student, with
cheeks like one of your classmates)
evidently his ma's darling, tried hard
to conceive the difference, but, after
numerous ineffectual attempts, gave
it up in despair. Then said the pro
fessor, ' In being there is something
real, and something else. The some
thing is through and through some
thing, and not the else : else is
through and through else, and not
the something.' He got into quite a
dithyrambic mood upon this : put
his finger on the organ of individu
ality, then laid it alongside of his
nose, then flourished it "in the air. It

is no easy thing to go down to the
profound of Hegelism. You must
take off your corporeity, which is all
of many men ; then lay aside your
notions, which is, with most men, like
plucking ^Esop's jay ; then take off
your conception ; then you are far
too naked to be ashamed. In short,
you are a primitive man — a pure
spirit. You have then the proper
' alacrity in sinking ' ; you go down,
down, and learn that Seyn is equal to
Nichtstyn." One concludes, after
reading this, that the learned Ger.
man who is said to have evolved a
camel out of his internal conscious
ness must* have been an Hegelian
Professor. The civil and social condition of
the state and people of Germany
much interested him, and led him into
considerable research. He studied
the institutions of government, the
habits and morals of the people, in
spected the schools, collected sta
tistics of education, and had inter
views with many of the celebrities.
tie concluded from the whole that the
moral state of the Germans was not
high ; and the ancient reputation
for chastity which Tacitus gave the
women, was not, according to his
observation, sustained by facts. Then
he looked sufficiently below the sur
face to see that the accounts which
superficial travellers bring back to
England and America of Continental
sobriety were not borne out by facts —
at least, with regard to Germans.
The statistics of the consumption of
beer and ardent spirits proved that
intemperance was a prevailing vice —
not the intemperance that maddens,
but the intemperance that muddles.
He estimated that, in Prussia alone,
from forty to forty-five million gallons
of distilled spirits were consumed
yearly, while the consumption of beer
was something enormous.
The next point in his journey was
Wittemberg, a city which in itself he
was pleased with, but its associations

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

with Luther were to him its great
attractions. He found the graves
of Luther and his illustrious friend
Melancthon in the Schlosskirche, and
inspected the paintings of the two
men hanging close by ; also the
pulpit in which Luther used some
times to preach. ' ' We entered the
church by the door where Luther put
up the ninety-five theses. I bought
a copy of them in the church. What
a change from then till now ! When
shall the work end? At night I
walked in front of the door to medi
tate. The evening star looked down.
A few persons went and came. The
soft air fe>l upon my head. • I felt the
spirit of the great Reformer. Three
centuries and a quarter, and what
a change ! Three centuries and a
quarter more, and it will be said the
Protestant religion did little in com
parison with what has since been
done. Well, if this work be of God ! "
This evidently refers to the inscrip.
tion on the pedestal of Luther's statue
in the market-place :
" Is it God's work ? 'twill always stay ;
Is it man's work ? 'twill pass away."
It would also appear to give coun
tenance to the theory which Mr.
Frothingham enunciates, that Parker
thought himself a second Luther,
palled to fight against the authority
di the Bible and for that of the
soul, as the first Luther felt called to
fight for the authority of the Bible
and against that of the Catholic
Church. He went to Luther's house: "I
saw the very room in which he used
to write, and think, and work ; the
stove which he devised, himself, with
its reliefs representing the four evan
gelists and other scriptural characters.
There was the seat at the window
where he sat with Catherine de Bore,
and looked at the evening sky ; there
the table at which he sat with
Melancthon and the rest. The books
are gone (he never had many), the

papers, the man. I went into another
room which served for family pur
poses, and yet another where he
lectured. Here are still curious things
of his : his beer-jug ; a glass cup
given him by the Elector, and broken
to pieces by Peter the Great. Here
are some embroideries from the hand
of Catherine — a face of Luther,
worked, perhaps, by her. Here were
the impressions of his seal. I bought
one. . I saw the genealogical tree of
his family. Six of his descendants
still live at Berlin, Erfurt, Potsdam,
and Leipsic, all in humble circum
stances. I plucked a few leaves
from a linden and a rose-bush that
grew in the garden. The guide had
great reverence for the reformer, der
heilige Dr. Luther, as he called him.
I had heard 'stout old Martin'
often enough, but here I felt nearer
to the man than before. God be
praised that he has lived ! We went
out of the walls to the spot where he
burned the Pope's Bull. It is railed
round, planted with shrubs, &c. A
young oak grows now in the midst of
it ; the old oak under which the
thing was done was hewn down in
the Seven Years' War. We went to
his monument ; the pedestal is of
polished granite. I regretted the
polish. Beneath the canopy is a
fine brown figure of Luther in his
preacher's robes, with his Bible in
his arms — a grand figure — large,
manly, with the peasant's expres
sion, but full of nobleness and com
manding faith."
Proceeding on to Halle, he met
Tholuck, and heard him lecture. He
heard Erdmann defend Schleier-
macher from the charge of pantheism.
He also paid a visit to the house and
grave of Gesenius, the great Hebrew
scholar. After calling at Leipsic, he
went to Liitzen, where he saw the
stone where Gustavus Adolphus died,
and the Ruthus where his body lay.
At Weimar he saw the outside of
Goethe's house, but could not ^et to

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

i°3

see within. At Erfurt he visited the
cloister where Luther, when a monk,
used to pace, and the monastery where
he took ecclesiastical vows. From
Eisenach he went out to Wartburg,
where Luther one time lived and hid.
" Saw the very room where he toiled
in translating the Bible, the table he
wrote on, the spot at the wall where
he threw the inkstand at the Devil.
The blow must have been a hard
one, for it knocked off the plaster,
and left the ink on the stone itself.
But relic-hunters must not be critical.
Here is the closet he used, studded
all over with thick-headed nails ; the
chapel where he used to preach ' justi
fication by faith ' and ' hatred to the
Pope.' This was his Patmos. It is
a fine position. You see a great
way from the Wartburg."
At Frankfort, he found the Jews
split up in two parties — one expecting
a Messiah, the other not. " Strange
to say, the government, which, of
course, has no belief in a Jewish
Messiah yet to come, takes the side
of the old party and wars against the
new school of Jews."
In Heidelberg, he visited all the
notable professors — Schlosser, UU-
man, Umbreit, Havernik, Delitzsch,
Paulus, Creuzer (men whom he al
ready knew from their books), and
Gervinus, who subsequently became
famous in the philosophy of history,
and from that meeting to the end of
his life one of Parker's warm friends
and admirers.
Carlsruhe and Stuttgart were next
visited, and then came scholastic Tu
bingen. Here he had long talks
with Ewald, the great historian of
the people of Israel, and Baur, the
founder of the historical school of
New Testament critics. He also
attended lectures by them, as also by
Schmidt. Ewald came out and kindly
took them into his study. " He is
about fifty, with long hair that hangs
about his shoulders. He wore a sort
of blouse of calico, with no vest or

neckerchief. Has a fine spiritual
countenance. He expressed surprise
that I in America should know his
works ; still more that his works upon
the Prophets should have fallen into
my hands. He complains that the
Bible is not studied with freedom;
says that the more you study it, and
the more freely, the more excellent
it appears. He laughed about men
fearing for religion lest it failed. I
was glad to hear him say that the
irreligious tendency of philosophy had
received an entire check, and mainly
from the higher philosophy itself.
He was glad to hear that I had trans
lated De Wette ; for, he said, in ten
years it would produce a great change
in theological affairs." He thought
Baur was a prodigy of learning ; and
in reply to a question as to how many
hours a-day he studied, he replied,
"Only eighteen." This surpassed
even what Parker ever did in his best
days, but he had the advantage over
the German in being practical as well
as studious, in organising his thought
to meet the requirements of every
day life.
At Bale he naturally made for the
residence of De Wette, whose " In
troduction to the Old Testament," as
the reader is already aware, he had
translated. He described De Wette
as a compact little man, with a rather
dry face, a little irritable, perhaps,
soured by his long disasters. Parker
was with him a good deal, walked
with him, dined with him, visited
under his guidance the curiosities of
the place, heard him lecture, &c.
When he reached Beme he had his
first view of the Alps. "The solid
mountains seemed clouds, not at all
to belong to the earth." AtLausanne
he went to see the house in which
Gibbon, the historian, formerly re
sided. At Geneva he remembered
the former association of Calvin and
Servetus, Rousseau and Voltaire, with
the place. " Went into Voltaire's
house : saw his study, sleeping-room,

104

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

all just as he left it From this little
room he made kings and popes
tremble." After the lovely Swiss
mountain district came Zurich. Here
he heard Hitzig and Oken lecture,
and at Schaffhausen he called on
Schenkel. At Strasbourg, which he
next visited, he mounted the spire
of the fine cathedral, as high as the
police would permit Mayence, Wies
baden, Biberich, Ems, Coblentz, were
passed through. At Bonn he failed
to see Bleek through him being away
from home, and Nitsch — whom he
saw — was surprised to learn that the
Unitarians existed without a creed.
At Cologne, the cathedral called
forth his admiration ; but he would
not have any money wasted upon its
completion. " The day of building
grand churches is over. Ours is not
a believing age, but an investigating
one. Better days will come, when a
nobler civilisation shall incarnate its
thoughts, and, without oppressing the
poor, raise temples to God most
high." After visiting Antwerp, where
he was disappointed in Rubens' pic
tures, Liege, and Aix-la-Chapelle,
he took boat, and again reached
England. In London he again saw Carlyle,
also John Sterling, then "near the
skies — a consumption shortening his
life," and whose Life Carlyle subse
quently wrote ; and Hennell, the
author of Christian Theism, whom
Parker described as being more nega
tive than positive in his religious
views. He saw also other men of
eminence, and tried, unsuccessfully,
to get a publisher in England for his
translation of De Wette. He went?
to South Place Chapel to hear W. J.
Fox preach about the Jews, and was
introduced to him after the sermon.
" He may be the best man in Lon
don, but his face is unfortunate."
Next he visited Cambridge, but found
little there to record. He also made
brief trips to other places not recorded
in the journal. At one place he met

a Church of England clergyman, with
whom he entered into conversation.
Parker asked him if it was not pos
sible for all classes of Christians to
agree to differ about their theologi
cal symbols, ceremonies, disciplines,
modes, and the like, while they fell
back on the great principles of reli
gion and morality : in a word, on
religion and morality themselves ;¦
and told him that he had aimed in
his humble way to bring this about '
The clergyman said he liked the plan
much, and did not see why all could
not unite on these principles as they
were expressed in the Thirty-nine
Articles !
At Liverpool, he made his way to
the residence of the Rev. James Mar
tineau, whom he found at home, and
talked with him^-so Parker writes in
the journal — about "promiscuous
things." By Dr. Martineau himself
we have been kindly furnished with
the following details, which we are
sure will be read with interest. " In
August, 1844, he found me just re
moved into the barely finished house
which I had built in the Prince's Park,
Liverpool ; and, with one of my chil
dren in my arms, I met him, balanc
ing himself on a plank over an area,
which gave the only approach to my
front door : and this precarious recep
tion was the subject of not a little
fun afterwards between ourselves and
among the children. I was too un
settled to ask him to take up his
abode with me ; but saw him as fre
quently as a two miles distance and
the shortness of his time at Liver
pool permitted. His frank and hearty
manners, his eager and racy talk,
lighted up with flashes of genial
humour, and somewhat hot extrava
gance, made all reserve with him
impossible, and set me at ease with
him at once ; and when he had gone
I had the delightful consciousness of
a new and rare friendship with a man
of truly noble and lofty nature. I
remember comparing my fresh per-

TWELVE MONTHS IN EUROPE.

ios

sonal impression Of him with the pre
vious literary one, and coming to the
conclusion that his stature was higher
as a practical reformer than as a great
thinker. The particular conversations
which led me to this estimate, I can
not recall ; but I gained from him
rather less than I had expected in
speculative matter, and vastly more
in relation to social and moral ques
tions. In the pulpit everyone felt
him to be the same as in private —
manly, simple, direct, even in the
moments of highest elevation : so
much so that, instead of carrying his
manner beyond his matter, he hardly
rose to the level of his rich and kind
ling style. His delivery of even the
most fervid and poetic thoughts was
less that of the possessed idealist
than of the earnest realist whose
dealings were with the men he was
addressing." On the Sunday he preached in
Liverpool twice — in the morning be
fore Dr. Martineau's congregation at
Paradise Street Chapel; and in the
afternoon to the congregation of the
Rev. J. H. Thorn, at Renshaw Street
Chapel. The only other Unitarian
Minister then in Liverpool — the Rev.
John Robberds — was in the congre
gation in the afternoon at Renshaw
Street, and was anxious to have had
Parker to preach for him at the
Toxteth Park Chapel, if his stay would
have allowed.
What a difference there is in the
treatment of Parker by the Unitarian
Ministers of Liverpool when com
pared with that shown him by those
of America I From the earliest, Dr.
Martineau enrolled him amongst the
prophets ; and Mr. Thom — one of the
noblest and most respected Unitarian
Ministers in England — has declared
that he "should feel it a deep sorrow
to have been at any time of his life
one of Parker's repudiators." Mr.
Thom has also given the following
interesting particulars of Parker's
second visit to Liverpool : — ' ' On his

arrival, I was writing in my study on
a Saturday evening when a card was
brought to me, on which was written
'Theodore Parker.' His face, in
deed his whole body, was at all
times full of expression ; and it pained
me to observe that he entered the room
like a man who was doubtful of his
welcome, and was evidently surprised
by the warmth of his reception. After
a little, I said, ' You will preach for
me to-morrow.' Even then he was
not quite assured, so sorely had he
been wounded by distrust, and slowly
and sadly spoke the words, ' Are
you fully aware of what you are
doing ? ' I laughed, and said, ' Oh,
yes ; I know all about you, and all
your relations to your brethren in
America, as far as they have been
made public' He did preach for me
the next day, a considerable part of
his morning congregation at Paradise
Street Chapel following him to Ren
shaw Street Chapel in the afternoon.
After the service, the late Mr. Thornely
came to me and said, ' That is a man
of piety.'
' ' Mr. Martineau was from home at
the time ; if he had been preaching in
the evening, Parker would have been
present to hear him. As it was, he
spent the evening with me and mine
in the country, in company with my
father-in-law, Mr. Rathbone, who,
though not given himself to any
scepticisms, and looking on them
perhaps when not of a moral nature
as rather a waste of working energy,
was troubled or alienated by no man's
speculations in whom he recognized
the ' full heart ' of a Christian. It is
delightful to mc now to recall how
instantly the two men found out one
another. They were both of a noble
countenance ; I can still see the light
that was on their faces. Parker de
clared that evening that he considered
his controversial work as over, and
that he intended to devote the rest
of his days to affirmative religion,
and to writing the history of Chris-

io6

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

tianity. But one who must take the
nearest duty, ajid fight on the side of
righteousness in every great conflict
of his day, could not thus forecast his
own life. "
Dr. Martineau has, in a letter to the
Inquirer, also informed the world
with what great delight Parker was
heard upon the occasion of his
preaching at Liverpool.
The next we hear of the temporary
roamer, he is at home at West Rox
bury. " Sept. I, 1844, Sunday. —
.After a most prosperous and felicitous

voyage of twelve days, completing
the -quickest passage ever made, I
reached home — saw the household,
and the blessed Russells, all the four
little and live plants in bed. Who
shall tell my joy at returning, who
the rapture with which I saw old
friends I " Parker evidently at this
time felt the truth of those words of
Shenstone, — " The proper means of
increasing the love we bear our native
country, is to reside some time in a
foreign one."

CHAPTER XI.
The Unitarian Controversy Renewed.
. " The religion which the tyrant persecutes makes the victim stronger than the victor ;
then it steals into the heart of the people, and, as the wind scatters the martyr's ashes far
and wide, so the spectacle or the fame of his fidelity spreads abroad the sentiment of
that religion which made him strong," — Theodore Parker.
THEODORE PARKER returned
to America more determined than
ever to preach and promulgate those
high views of God, duty, and immor
tality, in which be so firmly believed
and for which he had previously been
so much persecuted. When at Flo
rence he had written home to Dr.
Francis, " I have now had five
months' leisure to consider my own
position. I feel all its melancholi-
ness, the severity of the task laid on
me ; but I feel, too, that I must on,
on : that the time of rest will never
come in my day, and for ine ; but,
so long as I live, that I must war
against the false gods and their priests
as false. I have done little hitherto ;
if health continues I may, perhaps,
do somewhat. I am grateful for this
opportunity to pause in the middle of
my course and see where I am going.
I have done wrong things, no doubt ;
but, the more I think of it, the more
the general tendency of my path

seems to me the true one, and the
less do I feel an inclination to turn
away or to stand still." The seven
months of subsequent travel still
further confirmed him in this position.
After examining his views in all kinds
of lights and with all manner of aids,
after personally investigating the state
of theology and religion all over
Europe, he was more than ever con
vinced that there was need for a New
Reformation, and that in so far as it
in him lay it was his duty to be its
Prophet and Confessor.
The reader has seen with what de
light he once more found himself at
West Roxbury. With equal joy he
was received by his congregation.
They sent him an address of greeting
and welcome, and made him a pre
sent of a valuable pen, which, in a
note he wrote them, he thus acknow
ledged : — "I thank you heartily for
the cordial greeting with which you
welcome me back to my home ; for

THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY RENEWED.

107

your expressions respecting my past
labours, and your generous hopes for
my future works. The pen you are
so good as to send me is almost too
beautiful to be used. I shall always
prize it highly for the associations
connected with it, and as a token of
your esteem and friendship. I trust
I shall never use it badly, nor in a
bad cause." In itself this was a small
incident, but quite large enough to
show the excellent relationship sub
sisting between the persecuted man
and his own people. As one result
of his travel, and consequent increased
knowledge and experience, the ser
mons he now preached to his little
congregation were charged with posi
tive faith, larger, broader, more earn
est, than had come from him before.
If he pulled down the false, it was
only that he might be enabled to
build up the true. If he cut out
cancers from the body of the popular
Religion, it was with a reverent desire
to make her constitution thoroughly
sound and whole. No one knew
better than he that all pulling down,
all surgery, will not do, and that
it is upon affirmations — not upon ne
gations — that men have to live. In
deed, it was because he so firmly
believed in the affirmations of true
religion that he was so anxious to
rid the world of the superstitions and
excrescences which do so much to
negate them. He himself tersely, if
quaintly, put this point a short time
afterwards : — " I never regarded my
function as negative except in a small
degree. I would pull up the weeds
and give them to the pigs ; then
plant the corn for men and pigs too."
The first extra-ministerial work he
performed after his return home was
the preparation and delivery of three
lectures. One was upon " The Signs
of the Times," and, being filled with
warm anticipations and most out
spoken criticism, it excited afresh the
public interest in him. It also awoke
the opposition against him, for it soon

became evident that this had only
been sleeping because of his personal
absence. His unwise enemies little
thought of what they were doing for
him by all this ; for, more than by
what his friends did, more, perhaps,
than by what he did for himself, they
helped him to the position of fame
and influence which he subsequently
occupied. It is thus that persecution,
like " Vaulting ambition o'er leaps itself,
And falls on t'other side."
Amongst the earliest entries in his
journal after his return was this : "I
have now-a-days some few struggles
with myself to repress indignation at
insults, real or fanciful ; I must out
grow this." That will indicate what
he was being made to feel in private
life. In little over two months after
his return, the same miserable spirit
of narrowness and bitterness once
more affected him in more public
ways. The first exhibition of it came forth
when, in November, 1844, the Rev.
John Turner Sargent, minister of the
Suffolk Street Chapel in Boston, in
vited Parker to exchange pulpits with
him. Mr. Sargent's was a mission
chapel, supported by the Boston
Benevolent Fraternity of (Unitarian)
Churches, and they would not tole
rate Parker being allowed to preach in
one of their chapels. The Executive
Committee accordingly called a meet
ing, deliberated, passed resolutions,
and framed a remonstrance against
Parker being allowed to preach, which
was sent to all their missionary-minis-;
ters, and wrote a warm letter to the
particular offender. But Mr. Sargent
was too noble and too well-circum
stanced to be coerced into joining in
what he could not help but feel was
religious persecution. He did not
agree with Parker's views, but he felt
he was unjustly ostracised. Fortu
nately for his (Mr. Sargent's) inde
pendence, he was not an ordinary

io8

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

missionary-minister, depending upon
the small pittance generally paid such
men for his livelihood. He had means
of his own, and spent largely of them
upon the poor and outcast he came in
contact with ; and the chapel where
he preached had been erected and
embellished chiefly by his own family.
Out of the deep benevolence of his
nature he had devoted himself to the
work of humanizing and blessing the
residuum of one of the lowest dis
tricts in Boston, and had succeeded
in gathering together a congregation
of those who loved him dearly. These
" common people heard" Theodore
Parker "gladly," for he had preached
to them before he was ostracised for
heresy. Mr. Sargent felt it Was right
that they should go on being allowed
to hear him ; defended his action in
exchanging with him, and, rather
than promise not to do so, he sent in
his resignation to the Committee.
This miserable intolerance — this com
plete departure from Unitarian prin
ciples — thus drove from the ministry
to the poor one of the best men it
ever had ; and the poor had thereby
to become incalculable sufferers. Of
course, the matter made a great noise
in Boston. On both sides, newspaper
letters and pamphlets were numerous.
The Trinitarians pointed to the case
as one showing that, notwithstanding
all the Unitarians said about creeds
and confessions, they 'were just as
much unwilling to allow divergence
from their track as were the " ortho
dox " from theirs. While the secular
papers caustically asked if this was
the "liberty" of their ministers,
of which the Unitarians so loudly
boasted ?
A month or so afterwards, when
the excitement arising from Mr. Sar
gent's fcase was still at its height,
another bright example of how Boston
Unitarians favoured free thought and
free expression was afforded. There
existed at the time what was called
" The Great and Thursday Lecture,"

an ancient institution inaugurated by
one of the earliest ministers of the
venerable First Church, in Chauncy
Place, who, beginning by preaching
it himself, had afterwards got the
whole of the Unitarian ministers of
the city and district to take turns
with him ; and it had at this time got
under the conduct of the Boston As
sociation of Ministers, each of the
members of which was expected to
take it in rotation. But, from having
been originally, for many years, a
famous and flourishing weekly ser
vice, "The Great and Thursday
Lecture " had fallen away to a very
low condition thirty years dgo. A
poor attendance — made up mostly of
Venerable women and stray country
ministers, poor singing, and a poor
service, was the usual order of things ;
and it is not surprising to find that
the ministers forming the Association
were often anxious to escapethe ordeal
of having to take the service, or that
supplies and substitutes were difficult
to secure. But when Parker preached
the Thursday lecture, on December
2fJth, 1844, there was a much different
state of things. The church was
crowded, even to the pulpit stairs,
the service was a living one from
beginning to end, and the utterances
of the preacher were listened for as
those from the lips of an oracle.
His subject was, "The Relation
of Jesus to his Age and the Ages,"
and the text used was, " Have any
of the rulers, or of the Pharisees,
believed on him ? '' The printed ser
mon lies before us as we write. It
opens with a reference to what co -
stitutes a great man, and what great
men do for humanity. " When Jesus
arose — as in the case of all great men
—be was doubted, because conven
tionalists prefer past dead men to
those newly arising ; sick men like fo
be healed by the medicine which
helped them the last time ; at least
by the customary drugs which are
popular." "Neither of the three

THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY RENEWED. 109

parties of the time — the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, or the Essenes — would
accept, acknowledge, or even perceive
the greatness of Jesus of Nazareth.
All three expected a different kind of
man." " It is so now. Some seem to
think that if Jesus were to come back
to the earth, he would preach Unit
arian sermons from a text out of the
Bible, and prove his divine mission
and the everlasting troths, the truths
of necessity that he taught, in the
Unitarian way, by telling of the
miracles he wrought eighteen hun
dred years ago ; that he would prove
the immortality of the soul by the fact
of his own corporeal resurrection.
Others seem to think that he would
deliver homilies of a severer charac
ter ; would rate men soundly about
total depravity, and tell of uncon
ditional election, salvation without
works, and imputed righteousness,
and talk of hell till the women and
children fainted, and the knees of men
smote together for trembling. Per
haps both would be mistaken. '' "It
was so then ; Jesus spoke not for the
prejudices of such, and so they re
jected him. But he was rejected by
those outside the sects, those who
were weary of absurdities, thirsting
for the truth, sick they knew not why,
and waiting for the angel who should
come and heal them, though by
troubled waters and remedies un
known. It was not the publicans and
harlots who laid their hands upon the
place where their hearts should be,
saying, 'you hurt our feelings,' and
'we can't bear you.' It was because
he spoke for all mankind and not for
any of the sects that his truths ride
on the wings of time, and are welcome,
beautiful, and blessing wherever man
is found, and so must be till man and
time shall cease. He met with op
position, enough of it." " The Sec
tarians cursed him ; cursed him by
their gods : rejected him, abused him,
persecuted him, sought his life. Yes,
they condemned him in the name of

God. All evil, says the proverb,
begins in that name ; much continues
to claim it." "Jesus looked to God
for his truth, his great doctrines — not
his own private personal ones, de
pending, on his idiosyncrasies and
therefore only subjectively true, but
God's — universal, everlasting, the
absolute religion. I do not know
that he did not teach some errors also,
along with it. I care not if he did.
It is by his truths that I know him."
" No wonder, then, that men soon
learned to honour Jesus as a God, and
then as God himself. Apostolical
and other legends, &c. , believe men
of these things as they will. To me
they are not truth and fact, but
mythic symbols and poetry ; the
psalm of praise with which the world's
rude heart extols and magnifies its
King." " That God has yet greater
men in store, I doubt not ; to say
this is not to detract from the majes
tic character of Christ, but to affirm
the omnipotence of God. When they
come, the old contest will be re
newed, the living prophet stoned —
the dead one worshipped. "
In the foregoing bald outline we
have quoted about the strongest sen
tences which the sermon contained;
yet what a clamour it raised ! Even
his daring to have praised Jesus in
the manner he did, was an offence in
him in the eyes of some. Heated
controversies took place on various
hands. The Unitarian ministers were
more than ever decided that he should
be got out of the Association, but
the problem was how had it to be
done. They dared not expel him
openly, and he refused to voluntarily
withdraw. After much discussion and
deliberation, the device was hit upon
of handing back the power to invite
ministers to deliver " the Great and
Thursday Lecture," to the minister of
the First Church. The latter fell in
with the device : re-invited all the
ministers to join him in it, except
Parker, and thus the Association's

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

difficulty about him taking his turn
at the Lecture was acutely managed.
There were certain plain, blunt people
in Boston who did not hesitate to
call this an unhandsome juggle, and
certainly it does appear open to that
construction. There was, however,
a sort of poetic justice came, soon
after, for "the Great and Thursday
Lecture" failed entirely and had to be
given up.
The next movement in the conflict
took place about another month later.
It is indicated by the following entry
in Parker's journal : — "January 17,
1845. — Two members of J. F. Clarke's
Society came here this afternoon to
state to me that in the Church of the
Disciples there was a strong feeling
about my exchanging with their
minister. They came with the kindest
intentions to notify me of the fact —
to state, furthermore, that some of
the society would abandon the church
if I came. But I think the principle
in virtue of which Clarke asked an
exchange is true. I feel inclined to
live out this principle." The circum
stance was this : Mr. Clarke had given
notice to his congregation. that, while
he had no sympathy with Parker's
heresies, he thought it wrong to allow
differences of opinion about theology
to hinder the duty of Christian fellow
ship, and that it was his intention to ex
change with him thefollowingSunday.
Some members of the congregation
were wild at the announcement, and
two, after doing all they could to
dissuade Mr. Clarke, decided upon
attempting to persuade Parker not to
come — as recorded, and with what
success, above. When Parker came
the place was crowded, notwithstand
ing that several of the more rabid
ordinary attendants further protested
by staying away. He gave them his
beautiful, and certainly innocent,
sermon on the " Excellency of Good
ness," but this did not serve to allay
the prejudice which had been formed
against him. Amazing as it may seem,

a number of Mr. Clarke's members
seceded from him because of this act
of ministerial fellowship, and helped
a missionary-minister, who had distin-
guished himself incondemning the con
duct of Mr. Sargent, from his humble
mission chapel to a fine one in another
district. But,likeall passionate freaks,
this soon ended. The quondam mis
sionary-minister's new society soon
diminished and disappeared. It may
have been that the better sense of
people was with the stigmatised man
after all.
It was now clear that, whatever
message from God Theodore Parker
might have, the Unitarian ministers
were determined it should not have a
chance of being heard in their churches.
There were, however, not wanting a
few earnest men in Boston, who saw
that in all this the great principle of
religious freedom was in danger. " It
was ecclesiastically repudiated, and
that, too,- with scorn and hissing by
the Unitarians — the 'liberal Chris
tians ! ' the ' party of progress ' —
not less than by the orthodox." A
number of these earnest men came
together, privately first and afterwards
in public, to look matters in the face,
and decide what should be done. And
at a meeting held January 22nd, 1845,
this resolution was adopted — "Re
solved. That the Rev. Theodore
Parker shall have a chance to be
heard in Boston." Measures were
soon taken to make the resolution an
event. But so great was the prejudice
against Parker, that though payment
was offered in advance in turn for all
the unoccupied halls in Boston, only
one, the Melodeon, could be hired for
the purpose. But this, though it had
the disadvantage of being a music
hall, and often on a Sunday morning
displayed remnants of the theatrical
paraphernalia in use the previous
night, was the largest and most
central. In writing tb his congregation
at the close of life, he himself thus
refers to the commencement of the

THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY RENEWED.

new movement. " One rainy Sunday,
the streets full of snow, on the ibth
of February, 1845, for the first time
I stood before you to preach and
pray : we were strangers then ! I
spoke of the ' Indispensableness of
True Religion for Man's Welfare in
his Individual and his Social Life.'
I came to build up piety and morality,
to pull down only what cumbered the
ground. I was then in my thirty-
fifth year, and had some knowledge
of the historical development of
religion in the Christian worid. I
knew that I came to a ' thirty years'
war,' and I had enlisted for the
whole, should life hold out so long.
I knew well what we had to expect
at first ; for we were committing the
sin which all the great world-sects
have held unpardonable— attempting
to correct the errors of theory and
the vices of practice in the Church.
No offence could ecclesiastically be
greater ; the Inquisition was built to
punish such ; to that end blazed the
faggots at Smithfield, and the cross
was set up on Calvary. Truth has
her cradle near Golgotha. You knew
my spirit and tendency better than
my special opinions, which you then
gave a 'chance to be heard in
Boston.' But I knew that I had
thoroughly broken with the eccle
siastical authority of Christendom ;
its God was not my God, nor its
Scriptures my Word of God, nor its
Christ my Saviour ; for I preferred
the Jesus of historic fact to the Christ
of theologic fancy. Its narrow,
partial, and' unnatural heaven I did
not wish to enter on the terms pro
posed; nor did I fear, since earliest
youth, its mythic, roomy hell, where
in the triune God, with his pack of
devils to aid, tore the human race in
pieces for ever and ever. I came to
preach 'another Gospel,' sentiments,
ideas, actions, quite unlike what be
longed to the theology of the Christian
Church. Though severely in earnest,
I came to educate men in true

religion as well as I could. I knew
I should be accounted the worst of
men, ranked among triflers, mockers,
infidels, and atheists. But I did not
know all the public had to offer me,
of good or ill ; nay, I did not know
what was latent in myself, nor foresee
all the doctrines which then were hid
in my own first principles — what em
bryo fruit and flowers lay sheathed
in the obvious bud. But at the
beginning I warned you that if you
came, Sunday after Sunday, you
would soon think very much as I
did on the great matters you asked
me to teach — because I had drawn
my doctrine from the same human
nature which was in you, and that
would recognise and own its child."
The first arrangement he made
with the Boston committee was to
preach two Sundays, and if possible
to continue to preach for them every
Sunday morning for a year. Parker
had no desire, at the time, to leave
his, "Patmos at West Roxbury,"
and he arranged to continue there,
preaching himself on the Sunday
evening and furnishing a substitute
for the morning. On the night of
the Sunday of his first service at
the Melodeon he thus expressed his
feelings in the journal: — "To-day
I have preached at the Melodeon for
the first time. The weather was
highly unfavourable — rainy, and the
snow dejpp — the streets passable only
with difficulty. Still, there was a
large audience, mostly of men. unlike
most of my audiences. I felt the
greatness of the occasion ; but I felt
it too much to do justice, perhaps, to
myself. I felt not at ease in - my
service. I felt as one that is with
some friends, with some foes, with
many strangers. It has been a day
of struggles. A long, long warfare
opens before me ! Shall I prove
worthy? How much can I do?
How much can I bear? I know not.
I look only to the soul of my soul,
not with over-confidence in myself,

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

but with an adamantine faith in
God." It will be seen from this that
the new campaign was opened in a
noble and reverent spirit — a spirit
well deserving the great success
which attended it during the fourteen
subsequent years.
There was, after this, another con
ference between him and a committee
of the Boston Association of Ministers
touching their differences; but, though
kindly in spirit, it failed to show a
common ground on which they could
henceforth work professionally to
gether. Just about the time he
commenced to preach at Boston he
published a long brochure, entitled
"A Letter to the Boston Association
of Congregational Ministers, touching
certain matters of their Theology."
In a sermon preached by him to his
West Roxbury congregation he ex
plained that his object was " to
relieve the brethren from the em
barrassment of being held answerable
for my opinions while they had no
opportunity of showing men how
much they differed from me. Now,
only two possible courses can be
conceived : I. To reply to all the
questions. This, I knew, they could
not do, for there was the greatest
diversity of opinions amongst them
selves. They could not agree. 2.
Such being the case, they could state
to me and the public that they could
not answer my letter point for point,
because they were not agreed. Of
course, the logical inference would
thus be plain to all : — Here are men
turning a man out for not agreeing
with them, who do not agree amongst
themselves! The letter is one of the
ablest productions we ever read. It
so manifestly shows the absurdity
and inconsistency of the Boston
Ministers that we would fain insert it
bodily here; but as that is impractical
we give a considerable portion of it.
After devoting several pages to ex
pressing the respect he feels for many
of the ministers of the Association,

their treatment of him in the cases
of Rev. J. T. Sargent, Rev. John
Pierpont, and similar matters, Parker
goes on to write : — " The Unitarians
have no recognised and public creed.
It used to be their glory. At the
Theological School in Cambridge I
subscribed to no symbolical books;
at my ordination I assented to no
forms of doctrine, neither church nor
council requesting it. When I be
came a member of your learned bod; ,
no one asked me of my opinion.-,
whether orthodox or heterodox. No
one even demanded a promise that I
should never change an opinion or
discover a new truth ! I know, gen
tlemen, that I differ, and that very
widely, from the systems of theology
which are taught, and from the phi
losophy which underlies these sys
tems. I have no wish to disguise
my theology, or to shelter it beneath
the authority of your association : let
it stand or fall by itself. But still I
do not know that I have transgressed
the limits of Unitarianism ; for I do
not know what those limits are. It
is a great glory to a liberal associa
tion to have no symbolical books, but
a great inconvenience that a sect be
coming exclusive should not declare its
creed. I cannot utter the shibboleth
of a party till I first hear it pro
nounced in the orthodox way. I
shall presently proceed to beg you
to point out the limits of scientific
freedom, and tell the maximum of
theological belief which distinguishes
you from the ' orthodox,' on the one
side, and the minimum thereof which
distinguishes you from the ' infidels,'
on the other side. ... I must beg
of you to tell me what is orthodoxy
according to the Boston Association.
The orthodoxy of the Catholic Church
I know very well. I am not wholly
ignorant of what is called orthodox
by the Lutheran and Calvinistic
Churches ; but the orthodoxy of
the Boston Association of Ministers
is not a thing so easy to come at.

THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY RENEWED. 113

As I try to comprehend it, I feel that
I am looking at something dim and
undefined. It changes colour and it
changes shape : now it seems a
mountain ; then it looks like a cloud.
You will excuse me, gentlemen, but,
though I have been more than seven
years a member of your reverend
body, I do not altogether compre
hend your theology, nor know what
is orthodox. You will do a great
service if you will publish your sym
bolical books, and let the world
know what is the true doctrine ac
cording to the Boston Association of
Congregational Ministers. I have
defined my own position as well as I
could, and will presently beg you to
reply, distinctly, categorically, and
unequivocally, to the following ques
tions. Gentlemen, you are theolo
gians ; men of leisure and learning ;
mighty in the Scriptures. Some of
you have grown grey in teaching the
world ; most of you, I think, make
no scruple of passing judgment, pub
lic and private, on my opinions and
myself. It is therefore to be sup
posed that you have examined things
at large, and been curious in parti
culars ; have searched into mysteries
of things, deciding what is true, what
false, what Christian and what not ;
and so have determined upon a
standard of doctrines whiqh is to you
well known, accessible, and acknow
ledged by all. Some of you can
sling stones at a hair's-breadth in the
arena of theology. You are many,
and I am standing alone. Of course
I shall take it for granted that you
have, each and all, thoroughly, care
fully, and profoundly examined the
matters at issue between us ; that you
have made up your minds thereon,
and are all entirely agreed in your
conclusions, and that on all points :
for sure it were not charitable to sup
pose, without good and sufficient
proof, that a body of Christian
ministers— conscientious men,leamed,
and aware of the difficulties of the

case — would censure and virtually
condemn one of their number for
heresy, unless they had made per
sonal investigation of the whole
matter, had themselves agreed on
their standard of orthodoxy, and
were quite ready to place that standard
before the eyes of the whole people.
I beg that this standard of Unitarian
orthodoxy, as it is agreed upon and
established by the authority of the
Boston Association, may be set before
my eyes and those of the public at
the sanie time, and therefore, gentle
men, I propose to you the following
" Questions.
"Class I. — Scholastic questions,
relating to the definition of terms
frequently used in theology : —
"What do you mean by — (1) ' sal
vation ;' (2) ' a miracle ;' (3) ' inspi
ration ;' (4) ' revelation ' ?
" Class II. — Dogmatic questions,
relating to certain doctrines of the
ology :'—
5. In questions of theology, to
what shall a man appeal ? and what
is the criterion by which he is to test
theological, moral, and religious doc
trines? Are there limits to theolo
gical inquiry? and if so, what are
those limits ? Is truth to be accepted
because it is true, and right to be
followed because it is right, or for
some other reason ?
" 6. What are the conditions of
salvation, both theoretical and prac
tical ? and how are they to be known ?
' " 7. What do you consider the
essential doctrines of Christianity?
What moral and religious truth is
taught by Christianity that was
wholly unknown to the human race
before the time of Christ? and is
there any doctrine of Christianity
that is not a part also of natural
religion ?
' ' 8. Do you believe all the books
in the Bible came from the persons
to whom they are, in our common
version thereof, ascribed ? or what
I

H4

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

are genuine and canonical Scrip
tures? " 9. Do you believe that all or any
of the authors of the Old Testament
were miraculously inspired, so that all
or any of their language can properly
be called the Word of God, and their
writings constitute a miraculous reve
lation? or are those writings to be
judged of, as other writings, by their
own merits, and so made to pass for
what they are worth ? In short, what
is the authority of the Old Testament ?
and what relation does it bear to man
— that of master, or servant ?
" 10. Do you believe the law
contained in the Pentateuch, in all
parts and particulars, is miraculously
inspired or revealed to man ? or is
it, like the laws of Massachusetts, a
human work, in whole or in part ?
"11. Do you believe the miracles
related in the Old Testament? — for ex
ample, that God appeared in a human
form, spoke in human speech, walked
in the Garden of Eden, ate and
drank ; that he commanded Abraham
to sacrifice Isaac, and made the ver
bal declarations so often attributed to
Him in the Old and New Testa
ments ; that Moses spoke with Him
' as a man speaketh with his friend ; '
that the miracles alleged to have
been wrought for the sake of the
Hebrews in Egypt, the Red Sea,
Arabia, and Palestine, and recorded
in the Bible, were actual facts ; that
the births of Isaac, Samson, and
Samuel were miraculous ; that Ba
laam's ass spoke the Hebrew words
put into his mouth ; that God did
give to Moses, and others mentioned
in the Old Testament, the commands
there ascribed to Him ; that the sun
stood still as related in the Book of
Joshua ; that Jonah was swallowed
by a large fish, and while within the
fish composed the ode ascribed to
him ? And do you believe all the
miracles related in the Books of Job,
Daniel, and elsewhere in the Old
Testament ?

"12. Do you believe that any pro
phet of the Old Testament, solely
through a miraculous revelation made
to him by God, did distinctly and un
equivocally foretell any distant and
future event which has since come to
pass? and, in special, that any pro
phet of the Old Testament did there
by, and in manner aforesaid, distinctly
and unequivocally foretell the birth,
life, sufferings, death and resurrection
of Jesus of Nazareth, so that Jesus
was, in the proper and exclusive sense
of the word, the Messiah predicted
by the prophets and expected by the
Jews? " 13. What do you think is the
meaning of the phrase, ' Thus saith
the Lord,' with its kindred expressions
in the Old Testament ?
" 14. Do you believe that all or
any of the authors of the New Testa
ment were miraculously inspired, so
that all or any of their language can
properly be called the Word of God,
and that their writings constitute a
miraculous revelation? or are those
writings to be judged of, as other
writings, by their own merits, and so
made to pass for what they are worth ?
In short, what is the authority of the
New Testament? and what relation
does it bear to man — that of master,
or servant ?
"15. Do you believe the Christian
Apostles were miraculously inspired
to teach, write, or act, with such a
mode, kind, or degree of inspiration as
is not granted by God in all time to
other men equally wise, moral, and
pious ? Do' you think the Apostles
were so informed by miraculous in
spiration as never to need the exercise
of the common faculties of man, and
never to fall into any errors of fact
and doctrine ? or are we to suppose
that the Apostles were mistaken in
their announcements of the speedy
destruction of the world, of the resur
rection of the body, &c. ?
"16. What do you think is the
nature of Jesus of Nazareth ? Was he

THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY RENEWED. 115

God, man, or a being neither God nor
man ? And how does he affect the
salvation of mankind ? In what sense
is he the Saviour, Mediator, and
Redeemer ?
"17. Do you believe that Jesus of
Nazareth was miraculously bom, as it
is related in two of the Gospels, with
but one human parent ; that he was
tempted by the devil, and transfigured,
talking actually with Moses and Elias ;
that he actually transformed the sub
stance of water into the substance of
wine ; fed five thousand men with five
loaves and two fishes ; that he walked
on the waters ; miraculously stilled a
tempest ; sent demons out of men into
a herd of swine ; and that he restored
to life persons wholly and entirely
dead ?
"18. Do you believe that Jesus had
a miraculous and infallible inspiration
different in kind or mode to that
granted to other wise, good, and pious
men, informing him to such a degree
that he never made a mistake in
matters pertaining to religion, to the
ology, to philosophy, or to any other
department of human concern ; and
that therefore he teaches with an au
thority superior to reason, conscience,
and the religious sentiment in the in
dividual man ?
" 19. Do you believe that it is im
possible for God to create a being
with the same moral and religious
excellence that Jesus had, but also
more and greater intellectual and other
faculties, and send him into the world
as a man? or has Jesus exhausted
either or both the capacity of man, or
the capability of God ?
"20. Do you believe that, from a
state of entire and perfect death, Jesus
returned to a state of entire and per
fect physical life ; that he did all the
works and uttered all the words attri
buted to him in the concluding parts
of the Gospels after the resurrection ;
and was subsequently taken up into
heaven bodily and visible, as men
tioned in the book of Acts ?

"21. Do you believe that, at the
death of Jesus, the earth quaked, the
rocks were rent ; that darkness pre
vailed over the land for three hours ;
that the graves were opened, and
many bodies of saints that slept arose
and appeared to many ?
"22. Do you believe that Jesus, or
any of the writers of the New Testa
ment, believed in and taught the ex
istence of a personal devil, of angels
good or bad, of demons who possessed
the bodies of men ? and do you your
selves believe the existence of a per
sonal devil, of such angels and de
mons ? In special, do you believe that
the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacha
rias, and to the Virgin Mary, and
uttered exactly those words ascribed
to him in the third Gospel ?
"23. Do you believe that the writers
of the four Gospels and the book of
Acts never mingled mythical, poetical,
or legendary matter in their composi
tions ; that they never made a mistake
in matter of fact ; and that they have,
in all cases, reported the words and
actions of Jesus with entire and per
fect accuracy ?
"24. Do you believe the miracles
related in the book of Acts ?— for ex
ample, the miraculous inspiration of
the Apostles at Pentecost ; the cures
effected by Peter, his vision, his mira
culous deliverance from prison ' by the
angel of the Lord ; ' the miraculous
death of Ananias and Sapphira ; the
miraculous conversion of Paul ; that
diseased persons were cured by hand
kerchiefs and aprons brought to them
from Paul ; and that he and Stephen
actually, and with the body's eye, saw
Jesus Christ, an actual object exterior
to themselves ?
"25. Do you believe that Peter,
in the Acts, correctly explains certain
passages of the Old Testament as
referring to Jesus of Nazareth, his "
sufferings, death, and resurrection?
that Jesus himself — if the Gospels
truly represent his words — in all
cases applies the language of the Old

n6

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Testament to himself, in its proper
and legitimate meaning? Was he
never mistaken in this matter? or
have the passages of the Old Testa
ment many meanings ?
"26. Do you think that a belief
in the miraculous inspiration of all or
any of the writers of the Old Testa
ment or New Testament — that a
belief in all or any of the miracles
therein mentioned ; that a belief in the
miraculous birth, life, resurrection, and
ascension of Jesus ; that a. belief in
his miraculous, universal, and infallible
inspiration — is essential to a perfect
Christian character, to salvation and
acceptance with God, or even to par
ticipation in the Christian name ? and
if so, what doctrine of morality or
religion really or necessarily rests, in
whole or in part, on such a belief ?
' ' 27. Do you believe that the two
ordinances — Baptism and the Lord's
Supper — are, in themselves, essential,
necessary, and of primary importance
as ends, valuable for their own sakes ?
or that they are helps and means for
the formation of the Christian cha
racter, and therefore valuable only
so far as they help to form that
character ?
"28. Do you think it wrong and
unchristian in another to abandon
what he deems to be a popular error,
Or to embrace aud proclaim an un
popular truth? ^Do you count your
selves, theoretically, to have attained
all religious and theological truth, and
to have retained no error in your own
creed, so that it is wholly unnecessary
for you, on the one hand, to re-ex
amine your own opinions, or, on the
other^o search further for light and
truth yor do you think yourselves
competent, without such search or
such examination, to pronounce a
man an infidel, and no Christian,
solely because he believes many things
in theology which you reject, and re
jects some things which you believe ?"
The letter thus concluded: — " Gen
tlemen, you are men of leisure, and

I am busied with numerous cares ;
you are safe in your multitude of
counsel, while I have comparatively
none to advise with. But notwith
standing these advantages, so emi
nently on your side, I have not feared
to descend into the arena, and, look
ing only for the troth, to write you
this letter. I shall pause, impatient
for your reply ; and with hearty
•wishes for your continued prosperity,
your increased usefulness, and growth
alike in all Christian virtues and every
manly grace, I remain, gentlemen,
' ' Your obedient servant,
"Theodore Parker.
"West Roxbury, March 20, 1845."
This masterly letter remained a
standing challenge to the Unitarian
Ministers and Churches. It was
never answered, never even fairly
taken up. It effectually terminated
the controversy which had so long
raged ; ahd Parker's connection with
the Unitarian communion henceforth
ceased. The truth is he was too
religious a man for men who were
making theology into religion, who
were caring far more for how people
cried "Lord, Lord," than for how
they were doing "the will of the
Father." The American Unitarians
of thirty years ago were all for re
spectability and propriety ; Parker
was all for improvement and advance
ment, and no wonder he lost faith in
them. " The Unitarians are getting
shockingly bigoted and little ; their
late meetings were windy, and they
meet to ventilate their narrowness ;
yet how contemptible must be a sect
who only deny the divinity of Christ,
affirming a denial, their life the de
velopment of a negation. Anniversary
Week had painfully little of the Chan
ning, much of the Norton, bating
his scholarship, more of the  ,
cunning, specious, superficial, and
worldly. The Universalists are more
human than they ; they declare the
fatherhood of God, and do not stick
at the consequences, everlasting hap-

THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY RENEWED.

117

piness to all men. I think they are
the most human sect in the land.
They had an address on temperance,
one on slavery, one on war, delivered
before their ministers on Anniversary
Week." But though none of those who
treated Parker so severely for his
views dared to enter into controversy
with him on the points at issue, to
the end of his life they seldom failed
to avail themselves of any opportunity
offered to annoy and insult him. As
samples thereof we will give two in
cidents which occurred, both in con
nection with Harvard University —
which is in the hands of the Uni
tarian body. The first illustration of
preserved Unitarian ill-will Was af
forded about three years before his
death, when his health was already
fast giving way. The Senior Class
in the Cambridge Divinity School in
vited him to deliver the customary
address before them and the public,
the Sunday before their graduation.
But the theological faculty, consisting
of three Unitarian Doctors of Divinity,
interposed their veto, and forbade him
being allowed to speak there ! Such
a prohibition had not been known
before. These doctors were men
none of whom "was ever accused of
"believing too much," yet they saw fit
to offer Parker, because it was he,
the greatest ecclesiastical, academical,
and personal insult in their profes
sional power, in the most public
manner, and that, too, at a time
when he was just recovering from
severe illness, and fluttering 'twixt
life and death — his physician telling
him the chances were equally divided
between the two ; and when, if he
stood in the pulpit to preach, he could
only do so by holding on to the desk
with one hand while he lifted the
other up ! The other case occurred
in July, 1859 — about eleven months
before his death — and when inherited
consumption left only one chance in
ten for his recovery. Mr. M. D.

Conway, now minister of South Place
Chapel, London, was then a student
at Cambridge (U. S.) theologi
cal School, and at a meeting of
the Alumni he proposed the follow
ing resolution : — " That the Associa
tion has heard with deep regret of
the failure, during the past year, of
the health of the Rev. Theodore
Parker ; and we hereby extend to
him our heartfelt sympathy, and ex
press our earnest hope and prayer for
his return, with renewed strength, and
heart unabated, to the post of duty
which he has so long filled with
ability and zeal." The motion was
supported by the Rev. J. F. Clarke,
that year the President of the Ameri
can Unitarian Association, but the
other ministers could not forget their
old grudge against the subject of it.
Various transparent reasons were of
fered for not adopting it, and in the
end il was avoided by an adjournment.
Parker thus wrote about the affair to
the Rev. J. F. Clarke :— " What a
row you and Conway made at the
meeting of Alumni a month ago, or
less ! You the President of the
Unitarian Association ! only think of
it ! I am afraid you are ' raised
up ' ' for the disturbance of the
Br-rotheren ' as Dr.  would say.
Poor men ! So they couldn't say,
' Well, we're sorry you're sick, and
hope you'll get well, and come back
to your old place, and go to work ! '
No : they could not say that — how
could they ? But this mode of treat
ing the matter will damage those men
not a little. ' What ? ' honest men
will say, 'couldn't you wish your sick
brother might get well, and come
back, and work against popular wick
edness, in low places and high places?
Afraid he'd hurt the word o' God,
and knock down the Church o' God !
Do you think they're so much in
danger that a little consumptive
minister in Exeter Place could finish
one or the other ? ' . . . I have
been in battle for twenty years,

u8

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

treated as no other American ever
was, and. it is not likely I have escaped
without many a wrong deed. You
have sometimes told me of my faults.
God bless you for it ! I took the
advice greatly to heart. But a note
at Harvard College Chapel won't
save a man whose relations all die of
consumption soon as that ugly cat
puts her claws into their sides. For
the ministers' sake, private and public,
I should rather they would have
passed the resolution which brave,
affectionate young Conway pre
sented ; for my own sake it is not
of the smallest consequence. At
twenty-nine it would move me ; not
at forty-nine. "
If we may judge from articles —
evidently written by Unitarian min
isters who were contemporary with
Parker — which have appeared lately
in the Boston Christian Register,
the organ of the conservative Uni
tarians of America, he has not yet,
even sixteen years after his death,

been forgiven. But how seldom those
who are most in fault towards a man
forgive him ! Notwithstanding this
latent spirit of bitterness against him,
however, his influence grows in
America, as in England. "No
body," writes an American Unitarian
Minister, the Rev. A. D. Mayrj —
"Nobody is surprised to find the
books of Parker in every thoughtful
man's library, or to hear multitudes
of strong men Impute their conver
sion to him. " American Unitarians,
as English ones, are now insisting
that he shall have an official recogni
tion given him, at least as full as that
accorded to Dr. Channing. In both
countries the advocates of infra-
naturalism, who play the part of Mrs.
Partington, and with a mop of tradi
tional rags try to mop back the
Atlantic ocean of his influence, will
most assuredly in the end experience
that infatuated old lady's overwhelm
ing defeat.

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

119

CHAPTER XII.
The Second Pastorate. — Boston.
" A Theologian from the School
Of Cambridge on the Charles, was there :
Skilful alike with tongue and pen,
He preached to all men everywhere
The Gospel of the golden rule,
The new commandment given to men.
Thinking the deed, and not the creed,
Would help us in our utmost need.
With reverent feet the earth he trod,
Nor banished Nature from his plan,
But studied stillwith deep research
To build the Universal Church,
Lofty as is the love of God,
And ample as the wants of man." — Longfellow.

WHEN it is remembered that
for seven years Parker had
preached at West Roxbury to an
audience varying from seventy to one
hundred and twenty ; that he had
frequently been told that he was far
more fitted for a. scholar than a
preacher ; that he himself felt how
much more he loved meditation and
seclusion than mixing with crowds ;
the reader will not be surprised to
hear that his success as a preacher,
in the experiment made for a year at
the Melodeon, almost as much sur
prised as it delighted him. The large
hall was crowded every Sunday morn
ing with eager, earnest, intelligent
listeners, chiefly of the humbler
classes, and including many who had
not before submitted themselves to
the influence of positive religion. It
was not at all a rich or fashionable
audience, but one of thoughtful,
sensitive, humane men — seekers,
doubters, reformers— and one such
as the preacher himself liked. He
felt that it was a wide and noble
position that he had been called to.
He was an inspiration to the people ;
they were an inspiration to - him.
Even those who came out of mere
curiosity were led up to reverence
and worship by his manly piety,
powerful assaults upon the con

science, and transparent love for
man. The success of the first twelve
months proving so great, his Boston
friends were anxious for him to leave
West Roxbury altogether, and per
manently settle with them. Re
marking upon this, he wrote in his
journal: — "I would gladly, for my
own quiet, remain always here ; but
I shall go to Boston and work, if
they need me and wish me. I pray
for this only, that I may be greatly
good and pious, and thereby greatly
useful unto man. If I pass ten years
in Boston, labouring at that church,
I may do something, it seems to me.
If not, why, I have done my best,
and will not complain. My chosen
walk will be with the humble. I
will be the minister of the humble,
and, with what of culture and love
I have, will I toil for them. I re
joice to see that most of my hearers
are from the humbler class of men.
If it had been only the cultivated and
the rich, I should feel that I was
wrong somewhere ; but when the
voice comes up from the ground, I
can't refuse to listen to it."
Parker was thus called to his great
work, as has been many another
Saviour of society, by the ' ' common
people " — those from whom almost

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

every grand ameliorative reform has
sprung. The new call was accepted.
He resigned his position at West
Roxbury in a tenderly-worded letter,
and wrote most pathetic sentences
about his separation from his dear
friends there in the journal. His
desire was to remain still with them ;
his duty commanded him to Boston.
His installation at the latter place
as minister of the Twenty-eighth Con
gregational Society of Boston took
place on Sunday, January 4, 1846.
There was no ordination in the ordi
nary sense, only the chairman of the
committee making a short statement
of the measures taken in forming the
society and calling Mr. Parker. But
never were there more of the realities
of which ordination gives symbols
present in such a service ; and, the
substance assured, what mattered the
shadow ?
Parker's sermon on the occasion
was on " The True Idea of a Chris
tian Church ;" and as in it he out
lined the work he was then entering
upon, a few extracts from it will, no
doubt, be acceptable to the reader.
For this we avail ourselves of the
excellent synopsis made of. the dis
course by Mr. Frothingham. Taking
no text, he began by saying, " We
are here to establish a Christian
Church ; and a Christian Church, as
I understand it, is a body of men and
women united together in a common
desire of religious excellence, and
with a common regard for Jesus
of Nazareth,, regarding him as the
noblest example of morality and re
ligion." " The essential of substance,
which makes it a religious body, is
the union for the purpose of culti
vating love to God and man ; and the
essential of form, which makes it a
Christian body, is the common regard
for Jesus, considered as the highest
representative of God that we know.
It is not the form, either of ritual or
of doctrine, but the spirit which con
stitutes a Christian Church." "Chris

tianity, to be perfect and entire,
demands a complete manliness ; the
development of the whole man, mind,
conscience, heart, and soul. It aims
not to destroy the sacred peculiarities
of individual character ; it cherishes
and develops them in their perfec
tion." "A Christian Church should
aim to have its members Christians,
as Jesus was the Christ ; sons of
man as he was, sons of God as much
as he." " If Jesus were ever mis
taken — as the evangelists make it
appear — then it is a part of Chris
tianity to avoid his mistakes, as well
as to accept his truths." "It is
Christian to receive all the troths of
the Bible ; all the truths that are not
in the Bible just as much. It is
Christian also to reject all the errors
that come to us from without the
Bible or within the Bible." "It is
only free men that can find the truth,
love the truth, live the truth. As
much freedom as you shut out, so
much falsehood do you shut in."
" To think troth, is the worship of
the head ; to do noble works of use
fulness and charity is the worship of
the will ; to feel love and trust in
man and God is the glad worship
of the heart." " Christianity should
be represented as human, as man's
nature in its true greatness. " " The
members of a Christian Church
should be mindful of one another ;
they should bear one another's bur
thens ; they should advise and ad
monish one another: the strong
should help the weak, the rich the
poor." "The Christian Church
should have an action on others out
of its pale ; should live to see its
truth extend ; should be a means of
reforming the world after the pat
tern of Christian ideas ; should bring
the sentiments, ideas, actions of the
times to be judged by the universal
standard ; should measure the sins of
commerce, the sins of the state, by
conscience and reason, by the ever
lasting ideas upon which is based th,-

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

welfare of the world. A Christian
Church should be a society for pro
moting trae sentiments and ideas,
for the promotion of good works.
It should lead the movement for the
public education of the people."
" Here are the needy, who ask for
justice more than charity. Every
beggar, every pauper, condemns
our civilisation. Whence come the
tenants of all our almshouses, jails —
the victims of vice in all our towns ?
Why, from the lowest ranks of the
people, from the poorest and most
ignorant ; say, rather, from the most
neglected. What have the strong
been doing all this while that the
weak have come to such a state ? "
" Does not Christianity say the strong
should help the weak ? Does not that
mean something? Every almshouse
in Massachusetts shows that the
churches have not done their duty ;
that the Christians lie lies when
they call Jesus Master, and men
brothers. Every jail is a monument,
on which it is written in letters of
iron that we are still heathens ; and
the gallows, black and hideous, the
embodiment of death, the last argu
ment a ' Christian ' State offers to
the poor wretches it trained to
be criminals — it stands there as a
sign of our infamy ; and, while it
lifts its arm to crush the life out of
some miserable man, whose blood
cries to God against Cain in the
nineteenth century, it lifts the same
arm as an index of our shame?"
" Is that all ? Oh, no ! Did not
Jesus say,, ' Resist not evil with
evil ' ? Is not war the worst form of
that evil? and is there on earth a
nation so greedy of war, a nation so
reckless of provoking it, one where
the war-horse so soon conducts his
foolish rider into fame and power?
Is that all? Far from it. Did not
Christ say, ' Whatsoever you would
that men should do unto you, do
you even so unto them ;' and are
'Were not three million brothers of

yours and mine in bondage here, the
hopeless sufferers of a savage doom ;
debarred from the civilisation of our
age, the barbarians of the nineteenth
century ; shut out from the pretended
religion of Christendom, the heathens
of a Christian land ; chained down
from the liberty inalienable in man,
the slaves of a Christian republic?
Does not a cry of indignation ring
out from every legislature in the
North ; does not the press war with
its million throats, and a voice of
indignation ' go up from East and
West, out from the hearts of free
men? Oh, no. There is none of
that cry against the mightiest sin of
this age. The rock of Plymouth,
sanctified by the feet which led a
nation's way to freedom's large estate,
provokes no more voice than the
rottenest stone in all the mountains
of the West. The few that speak a __
manly word for truth and everlasting '
right are called fanatics ; bid be
still, lest they spoil the market !
Great God I and has it come to this,
that men are silent over such a sin ?
'Tis even so. Then it must be that
every Church which dares assume the
name of Christ, that dearest name to
men, thunders and lightens on this
hideous wrong ! That is not so.
The Church is dumb, while the State
is only silent ; while the servants of
the people are only asleep, ' God's
ministers' are dead!" "In the
midst of all these wrongs and sins,
the crimes of men, society, and
the- State, amid popular ignorance,
pauperism, crime, and war, and
slavery, too — is the Church to say
nothing, do nothing — nothing for the
good of such as feel the wrong,
nothing to save them who do the
wrong ? Men tell us so in word and |
deed ; that way alone is ' safe ' ! If
I thought so, I would never enter the
church but once again, and then to
bow my shoulders to their manliest
work, to heave down its strong
pillars, arch and dome, and roof and

122

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

wall, steeple and tower, though, like
Samson, I buried myself under the
ruins of that temple which profaned
the -worship of God most high, of
God most loved. I would do this in
the name of man ; in the name of
Christ I would do it ; yes, in the dear
and blessed name of God." " The
Christian Church should lead the
civilisation of the age. It will be in
unison with all science ; it will not
fear philosophy ; it will not lack new
truth, daring only to quote ; nor be
obliged to sneak behind the inspired
words of old saints as its only
fortress, for it will have words just
as truly inspired, dropping from the
golden mouths of saints and prophets
now. A Church truly Christian must
lead the way in moral enterprises, in
every work which aims directly at
the welfare of man. There was a
time when the Christian Churches, as
a whole, held that rank. Do they
now ? Oh, no ! not even the Quakers,
perhaps the last sect that abandoned
it. A prophet filled with love of
man and love of God is not therein
at home. I speak a sad truth, and
I say it in sorrow. But look at the
churches of this city : do they lead
the Christian movements of this city
— the temperance movement ; the
peace movement ; the movement for
the freedom of man ; for education ;
the movement to make society more
just, more wise and good ; the great
religious movement of these times?
Not at all." "Christianity is hu
manity. Christ is the son of man, and
manliest of men ; pious and hopeful
as a prayer, but brave as man's most
daring thought. He has led the
world in morals and religion for
eighteen hundred years, only because
he was the manliest man in it, the
humanest and bravest man in it, and
therefore the divinest. He may lead
it eighteen hundred years more. But
the churches do not lead men therein ;
for they have not his spirit — neither
that womanliness that wept over Jeru

salem, nor that manliness that drew
down fire from heaven to light the
world's altars for well-nigh two thou
sand years." " There are many ways
in which Christ may be denied : one
is that of the bold blasphemer, who,
out of a base and haughty heart,
mocks, scoffing at the manly man,
and spits upon the nobleness of
Christ. There are few such deniers :
my heart mourns for them. But they
do little harm. Religion is so dear
to men, no scoffing word can silence
that ; and the brave soul of this
young Nazarene has made itself so
deeply felt that scorn and mockery
of him are but an icicle held up
against the summer's sun. There is
another way to deny him : that is to
call him Lord, and never do his
bidding ; to stifle free minds with
his words ; and, with the authority
of his name, to cloak, to mantle,
screen, and consecrate the follies,
errors, sins of men. From this we
have much to fear. " "In our day,
men have made great advances in
science, commerce, manufactures — in
all the arts of life. We need, there
fore, a development of religion corre
sponding thereto. Let us have a
Church in which religion, goodness to
wards men, piety towards God, shall
be the main thing. Let us have a
degree of that suited to the growth
and demands of this age. Its prayers
will be a lifting up of the hearts in
noble men towards God, in search of
truth, goodness, piety. Its sacra
ments will be great works of reform,
institutions for the comfort and cul-
tu re of men. If men were to engage in
religion as in politics, commerce, arts,
if the absolute religion, the Chris
tianity of Christ, were applied to life
with all the might of this age, as the
Christianity of the Church was then
applied, what a result should we not
behold I We should build up a great
state with unity in the nation and
freedom in the people ; a state where
there was honourable work for every

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

hand, bread for all mouths, clothing
for all backs, culture for every mind,
and love and faith in every heart.
Truth would be our sermon, drawn
from the oldest of Scriptures, God's
writing, there in nature, here in man ;
works of daily duty would be our sacra
ment ; prophets inspired of God would
minister the word ; and piety send
up her psalm of -prayer, sweet in its
notes, and joyfully prolonged. The
noblest monument to Christ, the
fairest trophy of religion, is a noble
people, where all are well fed and
clad, industrious, free, educated,
manly, pious, wise, and good." It
was thus he spoke on the day of his
installation as minister over the
Twenty -eighth Congregational So
ciety of Boston. And it was precisely
because the noble promises thus held
out were so faithfully realised that
the ministry and society thus begun
soon afterwards became so famous.
How Parker strove to actualize his
idea of a Christian Church is faintly
indicated by a letter written three
years afterwards to Rev. Joseph H.
Allen: — "Our Church in Boston,"
wrote he, " attends a. little to the
humanities in an ecclesiastical sense ;
not much, for we are poor. We
have a Committee of Benevolent
Action who are the Almoners of the
Society. Twice a year we take up
a collection for the poor. Once a
fortnight the committee meet in the
season from October to May, and
consult about cases, &c. They keep
a record of their doings, and are
eminently useful. They find places
for men, women, and children ; and
the blessing of such as are ready to
perish falls upon them. Besides that,
the members of the society are almost
all engaged in some of the great re
forms, e.g. , anti-slavery, temperance,
prisons, &c. But we have no or
ganised ecclesiastical action in these
matters ; I wish we had ; but I have
no time for all things of that sort.
I once hoped to have a committee on

each of these topics, to report an
nually to the society the condition of
each of these reforms. Then such
as liked one and not another could
work in their own way. But per
haps this is better done as it is ; each
man connecting himself as he sees
fit, without any ecclesiastical organ
isation about it."
From an interesting letter, written
by one of the leading members of the
Twenty-eighth Congregational So
ciety, we take the following accounts
of the manner in which Parker ful
filled various departments of his
pastoral office : — " The subject of a
Sunday-school often occupied his
thoughts, and he made two different
attempts to form one. The first
effort was to gather in poor and
ignorant children from the streets,
and teach them reading and the
general principles of morality and
religion. But the preponderating
influence of the Catholic priests over
the foreign population, the only class
needing this charity in Boston, ren
dered all efforts to keep the children
together fruitless. Next he attempted
a school for the children of the con
gregation. The young men and
women professed themselves perfectly
ready to assist him in his plan, but
generally incredulous of its value or
necessity. He took the superintend
ence of the school himself, always
either making some original remarks
or reading a story to the children.
But a few months' experiment con
vinced him that the teachers were
right, and that this class of children
had sufficient direct instruction from
other sources.
"On Saturday afternoons, for
several years, he invited the ladies
of his congregation to meet at his
house for conversation on themes of
moral and religious interest. He
always considered the culture of wo
men to be of the highest importance,
and often said that a body of highly
educated women could do more to

124

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

elevate a community than any other
influence. Nothing can exceed the
skill and courtesy with which he con
ducted these meetings. So tho
roughly did he put himself in relation
with his pupils, for such they might
well be considered, that he often
seemed to understand the action of
their own minds better than they did
themselves. He listened with patient
attention to the stammering, diffident
expression of thought from any earnest
mind, and, placing it in the light of
his own vast intelligence, reflected it
to her and others in grander propor
tions and clearer beauty than she had
imagined. The subject proposed one
winter was the formation of a perfect
character, and all the helps to it.
Another time it was the gradual de
velopment of the religious nature in
communities and individuals. An
other time it was education in its
broader sense. Although he allowed
free play to fancy and wit in the
illustration of all these themes, he
never suffered the conversation to be
aimless or profitless and without re
sult ; but at its close he gathered
up the scattered thoughts of the com
pany, and wove them into a concise
and full expression. This wonderful
power was still more strikingly dis
played at Mr. Alcott's. For two or
three hours the stream of thought
would seem to flow at its own way
ward will, without direction or aim.
No other member of the company,
perhaps, could have reported more
than sparkling fancies, or pithy,
orphic sayings ; but Parker would
surprise all by briefly reviewing the
whole course of the conversation,
placing the remarks of each speaker
in their proper relation to those of
all the rest, and giving them the
pleasing consciousness of having said
far wiser and profounder things than
they had dreamed of. Little record
of these genial and profitable occa
sions can be made. Surrounded by
loving friends and disciples, he could

here forget something of the stern
battle in which he was forced to
mingle, and the whole sweetness and
warmth of his nature had free play.
We remember once, in speaking of
the life of Jesus, the stress which he
laid on the mental isolation in which
he was forced to live. Although the
multitude followed him, not one
seems even to have attained to a full
understanding of the grandeur and
loftiness of his idea. We cannot
estimate, he said, what he would
have accomplished surrounded by
those who could fully receive his
mission and work with him. Once
he said, ' It is the greatest of all
blessings to a man to meet his
superior.' " Common every-day life,
in all its seriousness and profundity,
came up at these conversations.
" Mr. Parker," said one of the less
astute and sensitive of the company
one afternoon, "what is that feeling
which makes one person so devoted
to another that she will cling to him
through everything, even drunken
ness?" " I cannot tell you." "But
you believe in it, do you not?"
"Indeed I do." We learn from in-
other source that Parker took great
pleasure in these meetings, and when
out lecturing would hurry home from
long distances in order that he might
be present at them.
" His valuable library was always
freely open to the use of his congre
gation, as of all other friends ; and
the book was always selected for the
young borrower with discriminating
care, and with words of criticism, or
recommendation, which added won
derful interest to the perusal. Yet
he lost much fewer books than most
who lend them ; for they were evi
dently so dear to him, yet so freely
loaned, that the most careless did
not like to neglect the trust. It did
annoy him to have a book kept a
long time, and returned unread; but
while it was faithfully used he was
quite willing to spare it.

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

12S

' ' He never forgot individual claims,
any more than public duties. His
power of consolation was great and
never-failing. It is not time, nor
occupation, nor forgetfulness, which
can console us for a real sorrow. It
is only that time and a healthy re.
action put the grief in its right place,
enable us to see the great eternal
troths which a passing cloud ob
scured, show the wise Providence
ordering all things well, when all
seemed ill to us. Of this, which we
must often slowly and painfully learn,
his ever-living, ever-acting faith
helped us to consciousness at once.
Tender and sympathetic as a mother,
he was yet wise and strong, and
demanded life and right action from
others. Did life seem valueless, be
cause the one who blessed it was
gone, he made us feel that all life is
one ; that this life and eternity are
close together, and that we work
with those who have passed beyond
the veil as truly as if they are here.
Tmsting wholly in a perfect God,
how could he doubt his perfect pro
vidence? 'No man ever dies when
it is a misfortune to him,' he often
said. His scheme of the universe
admitted of no accident ; an imma
nent God must order all things well.
" He usually prefaced his remarks
at a funeral by a statement of the
cardinal doctrines of his .faith, the
two great truths of religion dear to
every human heart, and sufficient to
sustain it in all trials — the loving
fatherhood of the perfect God, and
the immortality of the human soul.
Often, when some peculiar circum
stances in the life or death of the de
parted one seemed to render all
attempt at consolation but mockery,
his clear and full enunciation of these
truths, and the beautiful application
of them to special circumstances
which he never failed to make,
seemed to take the sting from death
and the victory from the grave.
" Not less impressive and beautiful

was his performance of the marriage
service ; always a solemn and touch
ing sight to him. His appreciation
of the mysterious holiness and blessed
ness of the conjugal union, and of the
joys of the family relation, was so
great that his parishioners sometimes
complained that he never gave thanks
for anything else ; and his single
friends petitioned that their joys,
however inferior, might sometimes
be remembered. Yet, perhaps, no one
ever did higher justice to the maiden
aunt. Speaking of the straggles of
earnest young men to gain education
and a wider sphere of life, ' it is the
maiden aunt, often,' he said, 'who,
when father and mother forsake him,
like the Lord, has taken him up.'
He also had great admiration for,
and placed much reliance upon, ' the
noble phalanx of old maids' which
the congregation included. "
Another thing attempted was Sun
day afternoon meetings for free dis
cussion of what pertains to religion.
Parker hoped much good from this
experiment, but it was soon made a
vanity and a vexation of spirit by a
few outsiders who talked much while
they had little or nothing to say ;
and, as they would not desist by en
treaty, and the policeman could not
be called in by advocates of free
speech, the abuse of freedom killed
the attempt to give it.
Next Parker tried lectures on the
Bible on Sunday afternoons, which
were continued during the winter
months several years. He ga.ve six
general lectures on the origin and
history of the Old and New Testa
ments, and then turned to the criti
cism and interpretation of the latter.
With Tischendorf's edition of the
original text in his hand, he trans
lated the three Synoptic Gospels, the
four undoubted Epistles of Paul, the
Acts, and the "Johannic" writings
— Revelation, Gospel, Epistles — ex
plaining each book, verse, and word
as he proceeded. He intended to

126

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

treat all the other canonical and
apocryphal books of the New and
Old Testaments in the same way.
But either the matter was too
learned, or the manner was too dull,
for it did not succeed well, bringing
a class of but a few scores of persons.
The experiment was abandoned when
the Society left the Melodeon, and
had no place for an afternoon meet
ing. He meditated other schemes which
he thought might be made helpful to
select classes of young men and
women, but failed of the opportu
nity to carry them into practice.
He found, as all ministers do, how
much less favourable to the organ
isation of a society is a city than a
village or small town. In the latter,
the religious organisation affords al
most all the excitement, recreation,
and social enjoyment which can be
had by serious minds ; but in cities
there are so many things going on
that men are not only attracted, but
distracted. Then the organisation
of philanthropic societies, Sunday
schools, and the like, was not what
Parker was invited to Boston for.
He was invited as the prophet and
preacher of the new reformation,
which asserted the supremacy of the
human soul over all outward autho
rity. This work he achieved during
life with a success unparalleled. All
else was above and beyond what he
was expected to accomplish, and,
therefore, all honourable success.
In the letter to Rev. J. H. Allen,
as well as from our references, the
reader will have gathered that the
society over which Parker was
minister was not rich. They had a
great deal to do, but little to do it
with. The salary they had under
taken to pay Parker was 450/. per
annum ; but he, hearing, the second
year of his ministry at Boston, that
the society was 90/. in debt, wrote
a note to the treasurer, bidding
him to take that amount off his

salary for the succeeding year, beg
ging him to present this proposal to
the rest of the committee as one
cheerfully made on his part, at the
same time asking them not to men
tion it to other members of the
society. Nor was this the last time
he made similar pecuniary sacrifices.
Indeed, a reliable authority assures
US, that Parker's ministry cost him
more than it brought him, even in
money. Assuredly it was not of
such as Theodore Parker that Micah
wrote, "The priests teach for hire,
and the prophets divine for money,
yet will they lean upon the Lord, and
say, Is not the Lord among us ? "
Never was there a minister who was
less of a self-seeker.
He preached for more than a year
at Boston before he went to reside
there. He was anxious to remain
amid the country scenes at West
Roxbury, which had become so dear
to him, but the distance — ten miles
— and the various new duties which
arose for him to attend to in the city,
made this impracticable. Accord
ingly, in January, 1847, he removed
to the house in Exeter Place, Boston,
which he occupied for thirteen years,
until his last sickness took him away
never again to return, and where
Mrs. Parker continues (1877) still to
reside. It is a house of four stories,
and when he first went he had the
top one, with the exception of a
small adjoining room, thrown into
one room, and fitted for a study.
He had completely lined the^walls
with plain book-shelves, also large
stands full of books placed in the
centre of the apartment, and heaps
thereof were often piled on the floor
and desk. The latter was of the
ordinary office pattern — a pedestal,
with drawers, knee-hole, and exten
sive leaves. On the top ledge there
stood a Parian head of Christ, and a
bronze statue of Spartacus ; and
there were further decorations in the
shape of the wooden and metal bears

THE SECOND PASTORA TE.— BOSTON.

127

lying about — of which more anon.
Flowers also usually showed their
graceful presence, conveyed there by
the hands of those he loved, a vase
of them generally standing near the
bust of Jesus, and others in the
southern windows. Round the frame
of the window near his desk there
grew two ivy plants, which grace
fully intertwined their leaves along
the top. These were watered and
trained by Parker himself, who
used to make this his first work
every morning upon entering the
room. But if this upper story was
his study, it was far from being his
library, for by-andby it took the
whole house to be this. Gradually
book-shelves came to be fixed all
over the walls of the little adjoining
room, then carried down stairs, one
flight at a time, until three flights
had been- descended, covering the
walls of every room along the way,
including the large parlour on the
second story, and terminating only
at the dining-room, close to the
front door. Never surely was there
such another residence for books.
The attics, the bath-room, the closets,
were all turned into receptacles for
them. Pamphlets and unbound
magazines filled chest after chest of
drawers ; miscellaneous literature was
stored in properly labelled boxes ;
and cupboards and recesses were also
full of printed material. It was only
thus he could arrange his 13,000
volumes and his loads of unbound
publications. The house was as hospitable to
men as it was to books. The table
was always prepared, in the expect
ancy of guests ; the parlours were
arranged for social converse, and
seldom long out of this use ; the
spare bedroom was always open for
an occupant ; and the study is said
to have been the scene of more con
fidential consultations and confessions
than ever was priest's confessional.
He was invariably courteous to all

who called upon him, and constantly
had to devote time' and attention to
the cares and trials of strangers which
he much needed for his own imme
diate work.'-. Boston being one of
the chief American seaports, tra
vellers and exiles from all lands were
constantly arriving at it, and these
were sure to soon report themselves
at the house of Parker, of whose
humanity and love of liberty they
heard. In the exiles, more espe
cially, he generally found cultivated
and enlightened men, who had left
their country for patriotic reasons.
For many he obtained employment,
or relieved them to the extent of his
means. But he generally, to some
extent, repaid himself by " picking
their brains " of some speculation of
comparative philology, some piece of
information as to the state of religion,
some vital statistics, or some new
fact in science relating fo their re
spective countries. Sometimes he
would have to converse in six or
seven different languages in the same
company — so various were the na
tionalities of his guests. In its proper
department we shall have to show
that at times even slaves escaping
from bondage also found a temporary
home in Parker's house.
With respect to his domestic habits,
he seems to have bee'n accustomed to
rise about seven or eight, and after
breakfast to read a chapter from the
Bible for the family. He then made
his way upstairs to his study, thank
ful if no interruptions came, but most
tolerant of them if they did. In
study, receiving visitors, going out to
pay visits, &c, the day would wear
away. Frequently, when downstairs
during the day, he would indulge in
a bit of rollicking fun with some of
the inmates of the house, and this
not only with Mrs. Parker or Miss
Stevenson — a maiden lady who re
sided with them — but also with the
domestics. For,unlike manymasters,
he recognised in his servants fellow-

128

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

creatures with whom he was called
upon to be fatherly and social. At
times he would snatch a pleasant hour
downstairs in the evening between
nine and ten, when he would cut the
leaves of a fresh book, while agree
able table-talk was indulged in. But
he liked to get the family off to bed
by ten o'clock, when he himself would
re-ascend to the study, and commune
with authors and his own thoughts
till the deep starlit hours. He would
then retire, but not always to sleep , for
he suffered much from sleeplessness.
In a letter he sent Miss Cobbe in
Dec, 1857, Parker thus describes
his home surroundings in Boston.
First he describes himself: — "The
London Times says of Lord Brougham
' Nature certainly did not make him
a handsome man .' I fear the oracle
would not be more complimentary to
me ; but when I get a photograph
which is decent, I will certainly send
it." He goes on: — "We have a
moderate little property, partly my
wife's inheritance, partly my earnings,
a good house, a large collection of
books. Her name was Cabot Her
domestic name is Bear, or Bearsie ;
and various symbols of ' Beauty and
the Beast ' appear in the house. As
usual, she is nearly the opposite of
her husband, except in the matter of
philanthropy. A young man of the
name of Cabot, one-and-twenty years
old, lives with us. We have brought
him up from infancy ; his mother
died when he was five or six. An
unmarried lady, a little more than
fifty years old — Miss Stevenson — a
woman of fine talents and culture,
interested in all the literatures and
humanities, is with us. These are
the permanent family, to which
visitors make frequent and welcome
additions. You are very dear to us
all. "I ought to say that my wife is
three years younger than I. She is
tall, with blue eyes and brown hair,
a little white beginning to steal in
insidiously. My eyes are also blue,

my head is bald, and my beard grey.
I am five feet eight inches high, and
weigh about one hundred and fifty
pounds. All my forebears were great,
tall, stout men, six feet without their
shoes, weighing two hundred pounds
and more. My mother was a slight,
delicate woman, with a fine organisa
tion." To Parker's own description of his
personal appearance we will add that
given by his friend and biographer,
Mr. Frothingham : — " Theodore
Parker looked the man he was —
sturdy, strong in legs and arms, with
a muscular grip of the hand that
knit one "to him at once, and a
planted foot that asserted a whole
man's title to stand on the planet.
The lower portion of his face was not
good— strong and firm, but a little
grim in expression. His lip curled
easily ; and a slightly Socratic nose
had possibilities of sarcasm which the
stranger might find repellent The
glory of the head was the massive
dome, smooth and lofty, which sug
gested the man of thought ; and
underneath it the clear, frank, blue
eye, that invited confidence, but had
in it the gleam of a sword to pierce
through hypocrisy and cleave false
hood to the ground. Not a handsome
man, seraphic, poetic ; not the ideal
of the philosopher, the saint, or even
the prophet ; a man of the people
rather ; a working-man, to look at
him, but a working-man with such
tools as prophets, philosophers, and
saints use ; a trae American if there
ever was one; the best working plan
of an American yet produced."
In the letter to Miss Cobbe, as also
in one or two other references, the
reader will have marked Parker's
playful fancy of calling his wife
"Bear,' or Bearsie," — the very oppo
site of what she was in nature and
manners. He first applied it to her at
Berne, in 1844, because of her delight
in Bruin, the tutelar deity of the city,
enshrined in his capacious pit. But

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

129

it also came from more than a mere
passing whim. While he took pleasure
in animals of every description, the
bear was his especial favourite, and
he was never tired of watching its
unwieldy movements. He said bears
were great humorous children, with a
wary Scotch vein in them. His house
was full of figures of bears, in plaster
and ivory and wood, from Berne, and
in seal-metal. Few things gave him
greater delight than to be presented
with an odder figure of a bear than
usual. In the latter part of hjs life
he wore a bear-pin in his scarf, pre
sented him by Miss Cobbe. He was
a connoisseur in bears,as some are in
bric-a-brac. He once collected
materials for an article on them, and
for the purpose found out and studied
all the bears known to be living in
the district for miles around. Carica
tures of public characters represented
as bears were hung upon the walls
of his study, his letters sent home
frequently describe bears that he
came across, and if he got into a
zoological garden, leaning over the
bear-pit, talking with and feeding
Bruin, he could hardly be got home
to his dinner !
Recent English travellers to Boston,
who visited Parker's house, inform us
that Mrs. Parker still keeps the study
and house much as it was during her
husband's lifetime, bears included.
A dear friend of the writer's, when
preparing to devote his life to the
philanthropic work of saving drunk
ards, was advised by another friend
to cultivate a love for flowers, because,
was the reason given, it will better
enable you to love men. No doubt
there is a sympathetic connection
between love of all kinds, and Parker
seems to have instinctively had the
feeling in all its ramifications. With
him knowledge was surmounted by
love. Not more did he surpass most
men in his knowledge of flowers than
in his love for them. The late George
Dawson loved flowers but hated

botany : Parker loved both. In the
country, in the city, in the pulpit, on
shipboard, everywhere he had the
delightful companionship of flowers,
and found the deepest joy in consider
ing these beautiful emblems of the love -
and care of God. Even faded flowers,
with their drooping or shrivelled
petals falling off to give place to the
seed-yessel, had their lesson of Provi
dence to relate, as had those unfold
ing and ripening into beauty. His
discovery that the hepatica grows out
of the dead leaves of the past year
made it a favourite with him ever
after. When he preached, a vase of
flowers always stood on his desk —
the wild flowers when they could be
had, cultivated ones always. Fre
quently their beauty and fragrance
were referred to in his prayer or
sermon, and after being thus used in
the^service of the morning, they were
always carried to the chambers of the
sick or sorrowing— the materials of
another divine service — in the after
noon. But while loving all flowers,
wild ones were his especial delight.
He knew where to find all the lowly
beauties of the New England woods
and meadows, watched for their
annual return, and could go to
fetch them on the very day of their
blooming, The journal frequently
contains hints to this effect — this for
example : — " I found the wild rose in
blossom to-day for the first time this
season, and the white azalea, and sent
them off to a friend to whom I love
to consecrate the first flower of each
pretty kind that I gather, and have
done so for many a year." To go
yearly to Lexington and gather the
earliest violets upon his mother's
grave was with him a religious exer
cise. So fearful was he of injuring
the growth of wild flowers that he
was careful never to cull too many,
would always give this advice to his
friends, and to those whom he doubted
he would not make known the haunts
of the scarcest kinds. K

13°

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Thus kindly " considering the lilies
of the' field," he was also led to
"consider the fowls of the air."
When the streets were covered with
snow, and the city pigeons could no
longer find food therein, he provided
a little corn-crib in his exalted study,
and fed them at his window-sill. He
soon had a crowd of them daily, and
it was a rich enjoyment to him to
hear them cooing, quarrelling, and
hustling each other, while they ate
his welcome grain. One time he was
at a boarding-house and heard a
mother tell how pleased her little boy
was in the kitchen with a grasshopper
which she had fastened to the table
for him,and which was making frantic
struggles to escape, Indignant at this
thoughtless cruelty, he at once went
into the kitchen, unloosed the insect,
and delightfully watched it skip over
thegrassaway. Hewasaministereven
to insects and other dumb creatures.
The following extracts from the
journal will bear out what we are
saying, and also show .how all this
ultimated in a profounder love for
human beings :— " What a place the
city is for outward action I But it is
no place for thought, least of all for
poetic, creative thought This sum
mer I hope to fill up my little cistern
by intercourse with nature. How I
long to sit down in the woods on my
favourite rock, to gather the lady's
slippers and polygalla — to get a
forget-me-not, and to swim. Oh, the
apple trees, they are in blossom now!
How grateful I feel for them ! I
hardly dare think how happy I am
with them. But there is one thing
which affects me more — a blossoming
soul, especially a young woman, a
girl. I thank God that one dear
friend has children, and I can play
with the little rogues. I love to have
them call me Mr. Parkie— a tender
diminutive, which does my dry heart
good." "Spring in Boston — May
19th. — It has been one of the beautiful
days we sometimes have in May : it

is summer come in without singing aj
the door. The thermometer says 900
in the shade, yet all the morning the
weather was perfect. Oh, how bright
the sky was, and so deep the blue.
Then the grass on the common was
so green, the children so happy, and
the dogs so delighted with their swim
in the frog-pond. It did me good to
see such a day; I feel in love with all
creatures, and such as I love most I
feel quite tender to. I long for their
presence ; for when I have anything
so good as existence lo-day I want to
share it with one I love."
Frequently in. his letters he was
expressing surprise to find that- so
many persons loved him. " I be
lieve, " said he in one, "no man was
ever more blessed with the affectionate
friendship of men and women than I
am. I often wonder at it. For to
my theological and political foes I
appear as one of the most hard and
unfeeling of this world's wretches."
But this love from others came because
he loved others. As Miss Cobbe says,
" The strong, clear head was second
to the warm, true heart. Parker
loved his friends with a devotion of
which men in our day so rarely give
proof that we claim it as a privilege
to know its happiness, albeit such
love becomes the manliness of a man
as the womanliness of a woman. His
tenderness to his wife, and to all
around him, broke out in a thousand
littlegentlecares and delicate thought-
fulnesses continually. No man was
ever more beloved in the happy circle
admitted to the intimacy of his home,
and every mail brought him, from far
away lands, letters of gratitude and
affection. He was also a man of fine
poetic taste and love of art, and of the
most refined and winning manners.
There seemed no one human pursuit
of an elevated kind in which he
could not take interest. The element
of pure joyous wit was overflowing
in him. We have seen letters to his
intimate friends as full of pure drollery

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

131

as Sydney Smith could have penned.
Never far away were words of love
and faith." "
He was full of sentiment, too.
The birthdays- of his friends were
remembered and celebrated in some
little way, and wrreB-iis ' own : can
round, congrtBtrkrtions . ahd presan^sj
were numerousX <Jn one^Nlfie'ljirth-
days, when'hfe rHrcTa family gathering.
of sixteen — all ages, from eighty-five
to four — a presentation pianoj,came,
and not ane-jfuhe compai
play upon i\. >Tne occurrjencte kcY b
the following reflections being re
corded in the journal. " It speaks to
me continually- of the old sad times,
when men whd aspired to teach man
kind paid for'it with their lives. I
will try to be a nobler man, to deserve
all the kindness which shows itself
more tenderly than in gifts. What a
comfort it is to have about you the
mementoes of dear ones when they
are absent I I am surrounded by the
gifts of tender friends. I wipe my
pen on the gift of one ; the pen itself
a remembrance of another ; a third
gave me the lamp which shines on
my writing to-night The spectacles
beside me are the gift of a fourth per
son ; the little delicate glass-wiper
came from a dear old lady ; the port
folio is from one hand now still in the
grave ; the presse-papier is also a gift ;
the knife in my pocket, and the
pencil, the basket which holds my
letters, the seal I stamp them with,
are from a most welcome and dear
soul ; even the chair I sit in and the
ornament beside me are from that
fountain of friendship ; the little por
celain vase which holds remem
brancers, the sweetest and daintiest
flowers in their season, is from the
same friendship ; and tender memen
toes of affection there are too dear
almost to name. But what are all
these things to the living person?
They are steps in the ladder of love.
Affection mounts up, and if the throne
be vacant — what emptiness ! "

He was a friend and helper to all
he came in contact with who needed
either: He did not wait for even:
application from; such, but sought
them Out,- and offered his aid in a
spirit so brotherly that he overcame
all>rfsposition to refuse. From his
teenth year there was never a time
when he was not giving to some young
person the means of education. He
helped many a youth struggling to
wards oiKhrough college who never
"jhew vktenqe - trjfe )hfip came, the
'resident of TIarvard College having
a standing intimation of his willing
ness to furnish money for that generous
purpose. "Established in Cam
bridge," writes the son of his valued
friend, the Rev. S. J. May, "he at
once extended to me that friendship
father and mother valued so much,
and made me familiarly welcome to
his quiet, pleasant home, and con
scious that he was watching over me
with an unintrusive fatherly care. He
constantly inquired as to my progress
in study, discussed matters on which
I was engaged, and advised me both
in reference to them and to the
homelier subjects of my health and
comfort. I can hear him coming
down stairs, with his tread so firm,
yet light, two steps at a time, from
his study, humming or whistling some
little quiet strain ; and then came his
hearty hand-shake and sweet smile,
and cordial greeting, in that voice
with something suggesting gruffhess,
yet so gentle as to be musical. There
never was a kinder voice. His meals
used always to be exceedingly simple
and light. But I remember that
when he had discovered that I had
planned a system of diet too meagre
he remarked it, and gave me good
counsel in regard to more generous
food. Discovering that I was sleeping,
for economy's sake, upon a husk mat
tress, he thrust into my hand, as he
was going up stairs, a cheque, and bid
me go get a hair mattress at once.
Every year he sent a considerable

132

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

cheque to help to pay my college
bills." The writer further relates
how he did the same for many more,
and how he made him a present one
Christmas of a costly dictionary of
mythology and biography. While at
West Roxbury, he corrected the com
positions and superintended the studies
of young people of his congregation,
and many a young girl was helped
thereby to a superior education in a
place where there were no state nor
mal schools within reach.
Dearly as he loved his studies, he
always felt that the requests of his
fellow-creatures for help had a prior
claim upon him. Hence his study
became almost a public office, where
all kinds of inquiries were made, and
all sorts of aids sought. Even when
disturbed in the midst of a train of
thought, or the penning of some flow
ing period, the genial " What can I
do for you?" kindly uttered, made
even the most unlooked-for stranger
welcome. The variety of matters
his advice and help was sought for
was almost as large as the numbers
who came. Country ministers seeking
literary help, emigrants with general
letters ''to some Christian minister in
America," husbands and wives who
had quarrelled and were about to
part, but who received the advice
which subsequently kept them har
moniously together ; men of culture
and wealth, who would not for the
life of them have been seen at one of
Parker's public services come to him
in their hour of affliction ; aspiring
young people longing for more con
genial circumstances ; selfish intruders
with private anxieties ; scholars wish
ing to verify classical quotations; well-
meaning revivalists called to "con
vert" him, and who were courteously
allowed to pray and try ; bullies who
thought themselves referred to in a
speech or sermon, and who came to
horse-whip him, but who, subdued by
his calm presence, returned much
more peaceably disposed than they

came ; philanthropic doctors of di
vinity, deeply interested in the tem
perance reformation, desiring to shake
the hand of one who had so effectually
aided it ; young clergymen seeking
his aid in the recovery of faithless
husbands, the wives sometimes think
ing that Parker would be sure to be
able to convert the delinquents ;
anxious mothers seeking counsel
respecting unmanageable children
from the man whose greatest trial
was that he had no offspring ; public
men desiring to have his advice as to
the morality of some proposed course
of official action ; officers of societies
needing a skilful writer to. compose
their reports ; fugitive slaves escap
ing by the " underground railroad "
to Canada ; friends bringing early
flowers ; little flaxen-haired children
from the houses adjoining come to
play with the toys kept for the pur
pose by " Parkie ; " clergymen with
polemical manuscripts, which they
wished the great scholar to look over
before sending them to the press ;
young poetasters with verses to be
criticised, or young prose writers
wanting to get their lucubrations into
periodicals — these are samples, quoted
by Mr. Frothingham, of whole classes
of visitants, who never sought him in
vain. Here, for example, is the record of
a day on which he had intended to
write a sermon : — "I had been to the
Post Office, had sewed the sheets of
my Easter sermon together, and sat
down to make a brief of the matter,
when — i, in comes Mrs. K  , to
talk over her connubial affairs. She
stayed till about eleven, when — 2, in
comes Mr. McKay, and as we talked
of various things it was announced
that — 3, Dr. Papin was downstairs.
I went to see him, and — 4, R. W.
Emerson was coming up the stairs.
I left him in the study, and saw the
Doctor, who came seeking relief for
a poor woman ; then returned, and
we talked of the new Journal : saw

THE SECOND PASTORATE.— BOSTON.

133

Carlyle's letter about Margaret. Nos.
3, 4, and 2 successively went away.
I was descending the stairs, when,
lo !— 5, appears, George Ripley, and
we talked of the condition of civili
sation, the prospects of humanity.
Dinner came, one hour. Went to see
Mr.  : not at home ; visited other
people in the afternoon ; tea. At half-
past seven sat down to the sermon :
in a minute came — 6, Mr. F. C,
wanting to borrow twelve dollars,
which I lent hira gladly. Then sat
down to write : at a quarter past eight
came — 7, Mr. M— — . All chance of
work was now at an end, so I gave
up, and went down to the parlour. A
little before nine came a ring, and then
— 8, appeared, Mr.  , who was in
terested to kill a man that had done
a wrong to one of his friends, and
brought a letter of defiance; I burned
the letter after a long talk, but could
not wholly overcome the man's feel
ings of revenge. At ten he retired,
and, at a quarter before eleven, I also
to rest— not to sleep for a long time."
His friends could not help but see
that he was killing himself with over
work, and used sometimes to plan ex
cursions, in order that they might get
him away and give him rest for a few
days. The day before the one fixed for
starting on one of these, a poor black
woman, a perfect stranger, came to
him, and asked him to bury her child
on one of the days his friends pro
posed to have him away. Without a
moment's hesitation he gave up his in
tended excursion, and consented to the
request To the criminal and con
demned of prisons he also paid visits,
and gave ministrations.
Another remarkable feature in
Parker's pastorate was his voluminous
correspondence. He thus preached
to, and advised, hundreds of persons
living all over Christendom who never
saw his face. Indeed, his correspond
ence in itself appears a life-work.
Mr. Frothingham tells us, "The copied
letters and notes of all kinds, which

are but a portion of all he wrote, are
contained in seven bound volumes of
quarto size, and number nine hundred
and forty-eight Besides these are
manuscript epistles to intimate friends,
— to one, ninety letters and fifty-three
notes ; to another, thirty-nine letters,
long and full of various matter. The
correspondence with one dear friend
in Europe covers three hundred pages
folio. In addition to all this, private
notes in great numbers were sent in
response to the present biographer's
(Mr. Frothingham's) calh And these
are but a part ; for many were not
kept at all, many were lost, and many
are held back from all eyes but those
to which they were sent. They are
of every conceivable description, and
of every measure of length. Some
are treatises on politics, theology,
social ethics, philosophy, agriculture ;
and some are notes of three lines : but
whether long or short, they contain
the writer's peculiar quality. Each
had a purpose, and accomplished it.
They were written to statesmen, poli
ticians, governors, senators, presi
dents, men of letters, clergymen,
scholars, men of science, historians,
teachers, farmers, tradespeople, boys
at school, girls at home, friends in
sorrowi The five minutes before din
ner or bed, the spare half-hour on a
railway train, between the finishing of
one book and the opening of another,
were used in this cordial way. When
his intimates were absent, it was his
custom to send them almost daily some
word of greeting, always bright, often
humorous, never other than affection
ate. They lie before me now, scores of
these hurried missives, in queer hiero
glyphics of pen or pencil, often quite
illegible to unfamiliar eyes, but never
so to the sensitive feeling ; for the
lovingness burns through the shape
less, words and communicates itself.
If these papers could be printed, they
would do much more than convince
the world that Theodore Parker was
| one of the tenderest hearts that ever

134

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

beat, the truest of friends, the most
sympathetic of men ; they would illus
trate the beautiful mission of letter-
writing, the loving ministries of note-
paper, the sweet uses to which the
spare moments of the busiest day may
be devoted, the possibility of making
the pen the vehicle of pure feeling,
just sufficiently weighted with thought
not to be evanescent. "
Hardly less interesting than the
Tetters he sent to others were the
letters he received from others. As
intimated elsewhere, by almost every
mail he was receiving communications
from persons whom he had influenced
by his printed discourses, nearly all
of them men and women he had never
seen. As a sample of many such, we
quote a letter he received from a
young man out in the far West : — " I
wish I could express to you on paper
my feelings, the joy, the peace, the
satisfaction I feel in contemplating the
thoughts of the good God in His
works. It is not a great while since
the thought of God was the most
terrible that ever crossed my mind.
What hopeless agony I have suffered,
as in the dead of night I have thought
of the endless hell to which in all
probability I was hastening ! and yet
the grim and ghastly hell of the Chris
tian theology was preferable to its
idea of God. But, thank God, it is
past, though it is hard to have ' In
fidel ! ' hissed in my ears, to have
those whom I once considered my
bosom friends turn away. Yet I
gladly bear it, yes, ten times more,
than turn back to my former belief.
I have new thoughts, hewobjects, new
aspirations ; everything is new, new
heavens, new earth, with no dark
future beyond. But I look forward
to a future bright, glorious, grand ;
and I look forward with a peaceful
calmness that is surprising to me.
There is no fear, for I cannot fear what
is good. My mind is settled as to my
future object in life. It is my wish to
follow in your footsteps, and preach

to others the truth you have awakened
in my mind, and, God help me ! I
will do it faithfully and fearlessly."
To ordinary people it must ever re
main a puzzle how such a man could
find time to make use of the books
which he was constantly purchasing, >
not only in America, but having for
warded from England, France, and
Germany. But they must remember
that it is the privilege of genius to
accomplish the impossibilities of the
mediocre and even talented. Even
ordinarymen are surprised to find how
many apparent impossibilities trying
to accomplish them breaks down, and
Parker earnestly tried. He used to
say of time that it stretched like india-
rubber. Then his wonderful power
of getting at the reasoning and posi
tions of his author, by little more than
examining the pages, of a book, stood
him in wonderful service. He thus
read even when engaged in conversa
tion, and frequently, after being seen to
cut the leaves of a thick octavo volume,
and, turn them over one by one, and
then lay it aside as finished, his visitor
would say in surprise, " You have
not read it, surely ? " " Try me, and
judge." And no matter what he was
asked from the book he could answer
it accurately. He seems to have been
a double-minded man — to have had
one mind attending to one pursuit,
and another, at the same time, attend
ing to others. Psychologically he was
as wonderful as in other respects.
At the latter end of 1852 the
society had to give up the Melodeon
for their services, and as the new
Music Hall was not then ready, the
committee applied for the Masonic
Temple to hold their meetings in for
a few Sundays. It was refused " on
the ground that it would injure the
reputation of the house." Knowing
what he did of the feeling against him
in Boston, Parker was not unprepared
for this. For want of a hall he had
now to spend an enforced vacation of
several weeks, which he devoted to

THE PREACHER.

135

thinking out new sermons, and on the
Sundays attending the services at the
churches of all the denominations in
Boston. He did the latter in order
to understand, by personal observa
tion, what the various clergymen were
thinking about, and to note their ten
dency. In this way he also frequently
spent his annual vacation Sundays.
He thus took leave of the Melodeon
inhis journal. "November 14, 1852.
— Pleached the last sermon in the

Melodeon. It has been a good place
to us, and I feel sad at leaving it,
though all the elements were hostile.
I shall not forget . the dark rainy
Sundays when I first came, nor the
many sad and joyous emotions I have
felt there. Still, it was never quite
so dear to me as the little church at
Roxbury — my earliest one."
The Melodoon has since been pulled
down to make place for the Boston
Theatre.

CHAPTER XIII.
The Preacher.
" Father, I will not ask for wealth or fame.
Though once they would have joyed my carnal sense :
I shudder not to bear a hated name.
Wanting all wealth, myself my sole defence.
But give me, Lord, eyes to behold the truth ;
A seeing sense that knows the eternal right ;
A heart with pity filled, and gentlest ruth ;
A manly faith that makes all darkness light :
Give me the power to labour for mankind ;
Make me the, mouth of such as cannot speak ;
Eyes let me be to groping men and blind ;
A conscience to the base ; and to the weak
Let me be hands and feet : and to the foolish, mind ;
And lead still further on such as Thy Kingdom seek." Theodore Parker.

OF those who have become famous
as preachers or orators, how
few showed promise in their first
efforts. So many modem instances
are known that it is not necessary
to illustrate by quotation. Theodore
Parker's life affords another . Though
he excelled in debate' and conversa
tion when at Divinity Hall, his first
attempts at sermons were dry, scholas
tic, poor. His tutor, Henry Ware,
junior, spoke strongly about them, and
declared that they were not worthy of
him. This pained him deeply. He
told it to his class-males with tears ;
it cost him sleepless nights., broken by
sobs, and led him to despair, thinking
he had staked all — time, savings,
health, hope — upon a profession in
which he was not likely to succeed.

Nor did he altogether get rid of this
feeling for years.
Probably one thing which went
against successful attempts at Divinity
Hall was the feeling that he was sham
preaching — preaching as an exercise —
preaching for preaching's sake. He
was most heartily glad when this kind
came to an end. "Sunday, May 8. —
Preached for the last time in the
chapel, once more, and all is over for
school exercises ; then I hope to preach
to real live men and women. " Soon
afterwards he had an opportunity of
gratifying this hope, but not with all
the success he could have wished.
"Monday, July 4. — Last night I
preached publicly in Mr. Newell's
church. This is the first time in my
life that I have preached to a real

136

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

live audience. I felt much embar
rassed, though perhaps it did not show
forth. Lydia, my own Lydia, and
her aunt came over with me. I was
less pleased with myself than they
were with me. To say the truth, I
did not feel the sermon so much as I
usually do, for the hour usually spent
in preparing for the service was con
sumed in 'doing the agreeable,' and
so I did not get into the sermon so
much as commonly."
Next, the disproportion between
what he was and what he ought to
be, in order to make an effectual
preacher, began to trouble him. " I
left the Theological School with re
luctance, conscious of knowing so
little of what I must presently teach,
and wishing more years for research
and thought. My first sermons were
only imitations, and even if the
thought, perhaps, might be original,
the form was old, the stereotype of
the pulpit. I preached with fear and
trembling, and wondered' that old and
mature persons, rich in the experience
of life, should listen to a young man,
who might indeed have read and
thought, but yet had had no time to
live much and know things by heart."
Thus he wrote near the close of his
life. When beginning preaching he
wrote to a friend : — " Howdisqualified
we are for contact with the real world
I felt when first shown a real live man ;
and when brought to speak with him
I was utterly at a stand, and scarcely
knew what to say. Thus, indeed, we
comeaway from our three years' studies
at Divinity College with some little
knowledge of science, literature, phi
lology, peradventure some small ink
lings of theology and metaphysics,
nay, even a little knowledge of the
science of things in general, and with
beards on our chins, but with no other
marks of manhood. Now, I maintain
that, besides a great deal of knowledge,
one needs as much skill to make it of
any use to him." He was given to
trembling — what is sometimes called

' ' platform-fever "—when he first began
to preach in public. Miss Cabot wrote
him, when at Barnstable, saying that
her aunt thought it would be a good
thing for him to stay in that out-of-
the-way place until he had got over
this liability to trepidation. He wrote
back, " You must tell your aunt that
if I were to stay a thousand years I
should not outlast that vile tremor ;
it is an infirmity that will cling to me.
I can no more help it than a lady can
help from fainting in a crowd. Nor,
again, do I wish to entirely avoid it,
as it is a source of earnest feeling, and
so of strength, for it never lets memory
slip, or the tongue falter." How far
he succeeded in afterwards overcoming
the feeling we cannot say. Orators,
practised and veteran even as John
Bright, have confessed that they have
never wholly succeeded in masteringit.
Parker's second public preaching
was at the church of his old friend
Dr. Francis, at Watertown, three
weeks after he had preached for Mr.
Newell. The second appearance tried
him much more than the first, for he
had it hanging over him for a month
previous. " Not only by day, but in
the deep watches of the night, have
painful visitations come over me.
Well, heaven be praised that I have
once preached to a real live audience,
to -feeling beings, and those my very
friends and neighbours; I am re
solved to cast forth my seed- com into
the ever-busy working universe, that
it may bring forth as the Lord pleases.
With Him is the result, not with me. "
His forenoon subject on this occasion
was " The Necessity of a Heavenly
Life," and his afternoon one, " Reli
gion a Principle and Sentiment."
Those who heard the discourses sub
sequently spoke highly of them, and
Parker himself records, "I have heard
enough of compliments, which come
from partial judges." The following
Sunday he preached for Mr. Putnam
before large congregations, and those
who had heard of him as only a re-

THE PREACHER.

'37

markably learned young man were
surprised and pleased to find that he
also had popular pulpit power.
The first time he preached at Barn
stable the primitive arrangement of
the rude meeting-house troubled him.
There was no pulpit, in the ordinary
sense, the people sitting close up to
the edge of the preacher's table. " I
felt somewhat awkward at first," he
wrote, "as you may suppose, but I
remembered the command, ' Now
show what ye be,' and made an effort.
I never felt in better spirits for speak
ing, and not only delivered the written
Word, but added much that was
better and more reaching extempo
raneously." This showed improve
ment. The next Sunday — "The ser
mon was a. new one : the greatness
of Christ's character, its sources and
its uses. I never felt one of my ser
mons more, nor was ever in a happier
mood for delivery. Everything went
right, and some of the least bad parts of
the discourse were extemporaneous. "
None of his Barnstable hearers spoke
to him abdut the sermons, but his
landlady informed him that the mag
nate of the congregation had been
saying of one of them that it was
" the greatest sermon he had ever
heard." The fact that he received
six different calls during the time of
his candidature shows that Parker
must have made rapid improvement
after leaving College, and soon grown
a most acceptable preacher.
The references already made to his
career in other capacities make it un
desirable that we should attempt to
trace his growth in this faculty through
the time already covered. It will
suffice to say that he grew in power
therein each year, from his first ser
mon at Cambridge to his last one at
the Melodeon. What we have to say
further of him, as a preacher, will be
in connection with his ministry at the
Boston Music Hall, for it was whilst
there he made his grandest efforts,
was heard by the greatest crowds,

and became best known to the outside
world. The Boston Music Hall, situated
in Winter Street, is a magnificent
building inside, but, because of being
so enclosed, can be seen little of out
side. Even the approach to it is not
imposing. It belongs to the Harvard
Musical Association, and was erected
at a cost of 22,500/. It has two
galleries running all round, excepting
one end, where stands the orchestra-
platform, arranged for 500 vocalists,
and in the centre of which stands a
bronze statue of Beethoven, seven feet
high. The hall has forty-two doors
opening into it, is perfect in acoustic
properties, and will seat nearly three
thousand persons. It is well lighted,
and, though simply, elegantly deco
rated. The speaker's stand was an
ordinary movable desk placed on the
front of the orchestra, and at the back
there was a screen, behind which the
organ from the Melodeon was erected.
Parker'scongregation removed from
the Melodeon here on November 21,
1852, not without regrets, and fears
that the vast building would enr
danger the sociality and friendly
feeling which had prevailed at the
smaller hall. The first Sunday
Parker preached in the new hall
he wrote in his diary : — "There was
a great audience, which made me
feel smaller than ever. That is the
sad part of looking such a crowd in
the face. Whence shall I have bread
to feed so many ? I am but the lad
with five barley loaves and two small
fishes. Yet I have confidence in
my own preaching. " His confidence
soon enabled him to make his power
felt. That desk, with its vase . of
wild or cultivated flowers, soon be
came to him a throne from which,
Sunday by Sunday, he influenced
three thousand minds and hearts,
and through the printing-press thou
sands upon thousands more. His
weekly congregation was the most
remarkable, on the whole, which

138

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

ever assembled under any man's min
istrations in America. George Whit
field before, and Ward Beecher,
Talmage, and Moody since, have
attracted as large crowds with re
vivalism and sensationalism, but, an
other example of a preacher, flatly
denying the popular theology, and
appealing to men's minds as well as
their hearts, and never to their fears,
and yet for seven years attracting
such a vast audience, is not to be
found in the whole world. Without
the beating-up of congregational mis
sionaries, without the u»ual church
organisation, without rites, symbols,
ceremonies, upholstery, millinery,
mysteries, liturgies, fine singing,
chanting, invocations, responses, he
held that vast congregation together,
his own praying, preaching, and
living the only attractions. *
The service was of the simplest
congregational form. Hymns were
sung from a collection specially com
piled for the purpose. His own
favourite hymn was the one com
mencing —
" Give to the winds thy fears ;
Hope arid be undismay'd !
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears-
God shall lift up thy head !
" Though comprehended not,
Yet Earth and Heaven tell
He sits a Father on the throne :
God guideth all things well 1"
This he frequently gave out to the
congregation. Extracts from other
two of his favourite hymns will be
found at the head of the subsequent
chapter on " The Self-Immolator."
He read lessons from the Bible,
but with great freedom of rendering
and exposition, and he read other
devotional literature as well. In this
he had the courage of his logic, for
how many, even Unitarian ministers,
say the Bible is a purely human pro
duction, that other writings are in
spired in degree as well as it, and
yet allow themselves to be so led by
conventionalism as not to dare to

read an extract from any other book
in their services, any more than if
they, believed the Bible to be in
fallible and a miraculous production
ever so. Such ministers little think
what an appearance of lack of courage
and consistency they present to un.
conventional thinking men. Parker
showed similar common sense in the
matter of texts. Sometimes he preach
ed without one ; and, while generally
taking texts from the Bible, he also
took them from the Constitution of
America, the Apocrypha, &c, when
such writings afforded better ones for
his purpose.
Then as to his public prayers.
Starting from the standpoint that God
is All Perfect, his prayers could not
be petitions begging of Him to do
this or that, and telling Him what
he ought to do. So far from this,
they weie chiefly made up of Thanks
giving — for His mercies in the worlds
of matter, man, and spirit, for our
human faculties and relationships,
and for our future hopes ; of Con
fession — of sins and shortcomings ;
and of Aspirations — after higher and
better life. More than half the time
he was praying tears were to be seen
rolling down his cheeks. Miss Cobbe
writes : — " One of the most religious
women we ever knew said to us,
' It was good to see Mr. Parker in
his church on Sunday before we heard
him. It made us all know that he
felt the presence of God. We saw it
in his face, so full of solemn joy as
he rose to lead our prayers.'" " Is
it not sometimes a burden to the
preacher to go through the devotional
exercises of the Sunday?" a friend
one time asked of him. " Never to
me," was the reply. "The natural
attitude of my mind has always been
prayerful. A snatch of such feeling
passes through me as I walk the
streets, or engage in any work. I
sing prayers when I loiter in the
woods, or travel the quiet road ; these
founts of communion, which lie so

THE PREACHER.

139

deep, seem always bubbling to the
surface ; and the utterance of a prayer
is, at any time, as simple to me as
breathing." " When I was a boy,"
he wrote one time in a sermon, "I
heard men pray great prayers, and
deep ones. To me it seemed as if
an angel sang them out of the sky,
and this man caught the sound, and
copied it easily on his own string.
I wondered all men prayed not so —
that all could not. Before I was a
man I learned that such inspirings
come not thus, but of toil and pain,
trial and sorrow ; that it was not by
gathering flowers in a meadow of
June they got their treasures, but by
diving deep into a stormy water that
they brought up with pain the pearl
of the twisted shell." Thus minted,
no wonder his prayers were so celes
tial and uplifting. To us the forty
published prayers, selected from those
offered in the course of his Boston
ministry, are matchless. We know
of nothing approaching to them in
the whole realm of devotional litera
ture, and we speak thus after person
ally using them in the family or in
the pulpit for many years. They can
be had in a neat little volume, along
with Parker's "Ten Sermons of Re
ligion, " from the British and Foreign
Unitarian , Association, for two shil
lings, and we need hardly add that
we would earnestly advise every
reader to procure them.
Of Parker's sermons we shall at
tempt no description, feeling how
inadequate the best must be. Many
of these, too, are now published, and
the reader will do best to procure
them and judge them for himself.
Crammed with thought, seldom less,
and sometimes more than, an hour
in length, taking the intelligence of
the audience for granted, and often
tasking it severely, affording regular
hearers a liberal education, not only
in theology, or even in religion alone,
but also in politics, history, science,
art, everything that interested rational

minds — such is the description given
of the sermons by a former bio
grapher. To us they appear the
noblest discourses preached from the
standpoint of the ancient — " What
ever concerns man concerns me" —
which the world has seen. " He
had," writes Mr. Frothingham, "not
rhetorical gifts, His eyes were won
derfully clear and searching ; but
their effect was marred by the inter
position of glasses ; and his coun
tenance otherwise was not expressive.
Neither was his figure imposing, nor
his gesture fine, nor his action grace
ful. He moved but little as he spoke ;
his hand only occasionally rose and
fell on the manuscript before him, as
if to emphasize a passage to himself ;
but his person was motionless and
his arm still. The discourse was
read, save on rare occasions, or in
interpolated paragraphs, in a voice
not musical or sympathetic in its
ordinary tones, with little training or
natural modulation. His audiences
were held by the spell of earnest
thought alone, uttered in language
so simple that a plain man remarked
on leaving church, ' Is that Theo
dore Parker? You told me he was
a remarkable man ; but I understood
every word that he said.' He was
not like the doctor of divinity who
made a point of having in every ser
mon one sentence that no one in the
congregation could comprehend. His
rule was to have no sentence that
was above the comprehension of the
simplest intelligence. The style was
never dry ; the words were sincere,
the sentences short and pithy ; the
language was "fragrant with the odour
of the fields, and rich with the juices
of the ground. Passages of exquisite
beauty bloomed on almost every page.
Illustrations, pertinent and racy,
abounded ; but the steady methodical
movement of thought forbade ' all
attempt to carry the heart in opposi
tion to the judgment."
Here we may introduce what

140

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

James Russell Lowell, the gifted
author of " The Biglow Papers," has
written of Parker's preaching. Says
he in his Fable for Critics : —
" Every word that he speaks has been fierily
furnaced
In the blast of a life that has struggled in
earnest.
There he stands looking more like a
Ploughman than Priest,
If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at
least :
His gestures all downright, and same, if
you will,
As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a
drill ;
But his periods fall on you stroke after
stroke,
Like the blows of the lumberer felling an
oak ;
You forget the man wholly, you're thank
ful to meet
With a preacher who smacks of the field
and the street,
And to hear, you're not over particular
whence,
Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's
sense."
Parker said himself of his preach
ing : — " I always think that I am
addressing, not the highest minds, but
the simplest and most uneducated
among my congregation ; and I strive
to say everything so that they may
understand me." But whatever it
came from there is an almost unex
ampled clearness and didactic lucidity
in Parker's style. In all our reading
of him we never met to our recollec
tion with an involved sentence, or one
difficult to understand.
His audiences were not altogether
favourable. The vast proportion
were strangers, contributing nothing
to the funds (these being raised by
the few), having no personal connec
tion with the work, but coming for
the great intellectual, and, it may be,
spiritual, treat which was afforded.
Many came in other than church-
going clothing ; some read newspapers
while waiting for the appearance of
the preacher ; others gave indications
that they wanted neither hymns, les
sons, nor prayer, only the sermon.
There were 7,000 names on the con

gregational register, but there does
not appear to have been that organ
isation which was desirable. Even a
weekly collection, and the money
given to benevolent institutions, would
have given the people a greater per
sonal interest in the services.
At this point the reader will peruse
with interest the following description
of an attendance at one of Parker's
services written by an Englishman
visiting Boston in July, 1858 — Mr.
Robert Leighton, of (we believe)
Liverpool : — " It was Sunday, and
Theodore Parker was to preach in
the Music Hall. I inquired the way
to that place, but might have found
it without asking, for a living tide
from all quarters of the city flowed
thither. 1 fell into the stream, and
was carried right into the hall. It
was an out-of-the-way entrance ; but
the inside is spacious, plain, and sub
limely simple. It is lighted by semi
circular windows at the top of the
walls, has two narrow galleries, and
in the body long rows of neat little
oval- backed blue stuffed chairsJ
joined together. On the platform
was a very plain desk, on one end
of which stood a vase of white water-
lilies, on the, other a vase of mixed
flowers, and the desk surrounded by
detached little chairs, all occupied by
special friends and admirers. The
audience had an intellectual cast
more than common, and many of
them sat reading the morning papers
till the service should begin. I sat
anxiously looking for the advent of
Theodore ; and when he does come,
he bears not the smallest resemblance
to my Theodore. Who could have
dreamt that he was that bald-headed,
white - bearded, snubby - featured,
Socrates-looking little old man ? Ah !
but only look at that large, long,
bald head, sloping up to the organ
oi firmness. What a world of power
is there 1 If he has the features of
Socrates, he has also the brain. The
appearance of age is still more in-

The preacher.

i4i

creased when he opens his mouth,
and speaks as if he wanted his teeth.
But all seeming defects soon vanish.
He gives out Longfellow's ' Psalm
of Life,' and reads it with a force of
meaning with which it was never read
before ; when that is sung, he prays
in a style quite different from other
preachers, wholly devoid of the hack
neyed and cant phrases, and links
earth and heaven with a chain of
noble thought, in language unsur
passable for beauty and strength.
His lecture was on the Evangelical
Christ, showing what a monster the
Churches have made of the purest and
manliest man, and how admirably
they have succeeded in obscuring the
whole purpose of his life. But to
convey a true idea of the effect of
that sermon would be an undertak
ing that not even Parker himself
might attempt. What conciseness !
What force ! What far - reaching
thought and clenching argument in
single sentences ! It was like the
elements all alive at once, moved by
a god. Thought after thought flashed
lightning ! Period on period came
in thunder ! Where were the snubby
features and the little man now ?
Under the shadow of those beetling
brows, and, by a spell-bound audi
ence, quite unseen. Time after time
I thought all present would break
into peals of applause ; but the
sacredness of the day, or habit per
haps, restrained them. They looked
applause, however, and eyes that
never saw each other before now
met with beams of recognition. His
sermons are written, but he scarcely
appears to read ; and his action ap
pears to rise wholly out of the fervour
of his eloquence. Sometimes his
hand comes down with terrific force,
but it is always accompanied with
corresponding thoughts and words.
In illustration of a passage, he had
occasion to pluck a water-lily, which
sanctified the whole vase ; and at the
conclusion »hey were all carried away

as relics by the audience. I may add
that without exception it was the
greatest treat I ever heard in the way
of a sermon. People were loth to
leave the scene of so much admira
tion ; and even in the street they
hung about for some time after."
After his death a leading member
of his congregation and a close friend
wrote a description of the services,
from which we make the following
extracts :— " Others thought of him
as the great theologian, the bold re
former, the accomplished scholar;
he thought of himself as the minister
of the Twenty-eighth Congregational
Society, the shepherd of a flock of
earnest souls who looked to him for
help, and consolation, and guidance
in all their private griefs and difficul
ties as eagerly as they listened to his
deep and bold lessons on all great
public questions. He knew that
every Sunday a crowd of unknown
persons were there to hear him, but
to him there was always a central
group of well-beloved faces, in whose
eyes he read all the trials and strag
gles of the week. There was his
' glorious phalanx of old maids, on
whose aid he could confidently rely
for every work of charity or mercy.'
There was his St. M  , her face a
constant benediction ; his beloved
John, ' who idealised his life after a
day of hard toil by providing for the
wants of every poor child in his
neighbourhood;' there was the faith
ful clerk, who was, he said, more
important to the society than himself;
there were the grey heads, so precious
in his sight ; the young men, in whom
he saw- the hope of the country and
the world ; and the young maidens,
in whose culture and well-being he
ever felt the most paternal care. JVho
can forget how he would come into
church, and sit there, partially
screened from sight by the desk,
and look around on the faces of his
congregation? Then he gathered
up from the multitude all the joys

142

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

and sorrows of the week — the tear-
dimmed eye of the mourner ; the
earnest struggling of a soul wrestling
with temptation ; the. new joy of
happy lovers, or a mother rejoicing in-
her firstborn child — all sent up their
incense to him, and he gathered their
fragrance into his heart, and bore it
up to God in his prayer. Nor did
he fail to bring his own life into the
same holy presence. Who has not
at times felt some deep sorrow or
penitent tenderness of his own private
heart veiled in the universal language
of his prayer ? Those early days of
his ministry at the Melodeon can
never be forgotten by those favoured
to share them. The dark, dingy
building, with its dirty walls and
close atmosphere, became a holy
temple, for it enshrined a living soul.
The cold, rainy Sundays which suc
ceeded one another so constantly
could not keep us away. ' How
could we bear the burden of the
week,' said many a listener, 'with
out the inspiration of that hour of
prayer, of that lesson of wisdom and
truth?' The constant offering of
flowers on the desk was a beautiful
emblem of the faith in and love of
nature which so characterised his
teachings. As spring advanced, we
often first saw the dear remembered
friends in field and grove on the
desk ; the violets and barberry-blos
soms, the purple rhodora, the sweet
wild-rose, the lilies of the valley
(now sacred to us from his last look
on them), the fragrant magnolia, the
stately laurel, the blue gentian, in its
autumn loveliness, all came as offerings
from one or another friend. Nothing
was too precious or too lowly to be
laid at that shrine ; and as the great
teacher gathered lessons of divine
wisdom and truth from the lilies of
the fields and the grass of the plain,
so did he never fail to point some
moral or enforce some lesson of love
and truth by reference to these beau
tiful emblems of God's presence and

power. How many incidents might
be told of those early days, when his
words were so strange and new to
many ! 'Well, I never heard before
that toads were prophets, and grass
was revelations, an old lady was
heard to mutter angrily as she went
out of meeting one day. But to
him all beings did preach, and all
nature did reveal the troths of the
religion he believed and taught. One
of Mr. Parker's noblest efforts was
his sermon on John Quincy Adams.
The house was densely crowded, and
all were held in rapt attention by the
tribute, full of glowing heat, and yet
of manly truth, which he paid to the
great departed. As he spoke of the
only blots on the fair fame of his hero,
the snow, which covered and dark
ened the roof, fell with a tremendous
crash, which sent a thrill through the
audience and preacher. Mr. Parker
recovered himself instantly and added,
' So may the infamy slide off from
his character, and leave it fair as open
daylight ! ' As he closed, the wind,
from some unknown cause, sounded
through the organ pipes a wild, sweet
strain, which seemed, to our excited
minds, like an amen from the spirit
of the brave old man, who accepted
the bold and true words which had
been spoken of him. We could never
fail to be reminded of the whole week
on Sunday ; our errors, our short
comings, our dangers, our blessings,
our hopes, trials, and fears, all came
up in review before us, and the words
which weie spoken for all seemed
most special to each one. Once,
when preaching on the forgiveness of
sin, and showing how the infinite love
of God had provided means of re
covery for the most guilty soul, a man
in the gallery suddenly cried out,
' Yes, I know it to be so ! I feel it
to be so I ' Mr. Parker paused in
his sermon and. addressed him in
words of strong faith and assurance.
'Yes, my friend, it is so ; and you
cannot wander so far but God can

THE PREACHER.

143

call you back.' The special ev-nt
of the day of which his congregation
were thinking seemed to him the ap
propriate subject on which to give
them words of religious advice, com
fort, or warning. Sometimes he
waited a week or two for the excite
ment to subside, that he might speak
from and to a calmer mood, but he
never left such occasions unimproved.
In this he resembled the early Puri
tans, to whom he had, indeed, much
likeness. Who does not remember
the strength and wisdom of his words
on occasions like those of the trial of
Professor Webster, the fugitive slave
cases, important elections, and the
commercial crisis? He never rested
till he had withdrawn these startling
facts from the list of exceptional ac
cidents, and shown how they resulted
from sufficient causes, and were co
ordinate with the whole providence
of the Divine government'. He did
not -suffer us to believe that a man,
good and pure in heart, became sud
denly a murderer from the force of an
untoward circumstance, but showed
us how the yielding to minor tempta
tions had weakened the power of re
sistance to this fatal one. And how
tender was his pleading and his trust
in God for the poor sufferers ! Many
of us then, for the first time, realised
that God had consolation in store,
even for such misery. In the services,
he was a great lover of decorum and
order. He always wore at church
the plain black dress which he
thought befitting the service. The
Bible and hymn-book were laid in
their places — everything was in order
before he began to speak. But he
loved freedom and individuality also,
and he would not suffer them to be
sacrificed to his own comfort How
gentle was his remonstrance against
the noisy slamming of the forty-four
doors of the Music Hall towards the
close of the sermon ! how patiently
he took it for granted that only im
portant engagements led people to

such a violation of good manners to
wards those who held their doors
invitingly open to them ! He said
to us once, ' I do not like to see
people reading books and newspapers
before the services commence. It
troubles me very much, and I have
often been tempted to ask people to
abstain from it ; but I remember how
precious a half.hour's reading was to
me often when I was a young man,
and I feel that I ought not to ask
anybody to give.it up for the sake of
my comfort when it is not wrong
in itself."'
We add two or three further inci
dents which occurred in connection
with the services at the Music Hall,
which will further show how Parker
possessed the true orator's faculty of
turning the occurrences of the moment
to effective account. One Sunday a
terrier-dog had got into the hall, and
in the midst of the prayer uttered a
loud bark. This incident gave the
next thought of prayer : " We thank
thee, O Father of all, who hast made
even the humblest dumb creature
to praise thee after its own way I "
Preaching one winter's day on "Ob
stacles," when describing the man to
whom obstacles are helps, he said,
" Before such a man all obstacles
will" — just then a mass of frozen
snow on the roof fell down with a
noise like thunder, shaking the build
ing and startling the audience with
fear — " slide away like ice from the
slated roof," said the preacher's re
assuring voice. During the agitation
caused by the adoption of the Fugi
tive Slave Act, a slave named Shad-
rach was arrested in Boston, but
released by a spontaneous movement
of the citizens. The event occurred
on the Saturday, and Parker's con
gregation, who were deeply interested
in the affair, were still in anxiety as to
his safety when they came together
the following day. At the close of
the sermon, he said, ' ' When I came
amongst you I expected to have to do

144

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

and to bear some hard things, but I
never expected to have to protect
one of my parishioners from slave-
hunters, nor to be asked to read such
a note as this : — ' Shadrach, a fugi
tive slave, in peril of his life and
liberty, asks your prayers that God
will aid him to escape out of bondage. '
But he does not need our prayers.
Thank God ! we have heard of him
safe, far on his way to freedom."
The excitement of the audience was
intense. For a moment there was
perfect stillness, and it seemed as if
the hearts of the audience would
burst with the pressure of feeling.
Then one spontaneous shout of ap
plause re-echoed through the building
and gave the pent hearts the relief
they so much needed. A similar in
cident had previously occurred when
Parker announced his intention to
resist the iniquitous Fugitive Slave
Act, even to force, the hearts of his
hearers being thereby so stirred that,
Sunday though it was, and no such
thing having been done at a religious
service in Boston for years, the vast
congregation received the announce
ment with loud clapping of hands.
Then less exciting but not less touch
ing incidents sometimes occurred. On
two successive Easter Sundays he at
tempted to read the story of the trial
and crucifixion of Jesus. He failed to
get through ; so overcome was he by
his emotions that he had to sit down
and give way to his tears.
It has been thought by some that
Parker's source of attraction was his
theological "heresies;" by others
that it lay purely in his great intel
lectual ability. Both views are mis
taken. It is true that his "heresies "
got him the " chance to be heard in
Boston," but being too radical for
the conservatives, and not sufficiently
" advanced " for the ultra-radicals,
his heresies gave him no advantage
as regards maintaining the hearing he
had there. Had he been only an or
dinary Unitarian, and displaying the

same intrinsic powers, it is probable
he would have had a more influential,
if not a larger, following. With re
gard to the other attempted explana
tion of his success, he had just as
much wealth of feeling as of intellect ;'
never was there a preacher who had'
more, and had he not had it he could
not have kept the great congregation
together in the way he did ; for hu
man beings as a whole are far more
under the dominance of emotion than
of intellect.
One explanation of his great sue-'
cess in preaching was his intense'
love of all connected with it. " I'
delight in writing and preaching.
No poet has more joy in his song
than I in my sermons. " He would
have welcomed two Sundays in the
week, so many subjects had he ever
waiting to be preached upon. His
vacations were always as short as
possible, and it was a most excep
tional thing with him to repeat an
old sermon. On rainy days he did
not, as ministers frequently do, save
his sermon and put the smaller con.'
gregation off with a talk ; he thought
that the people who came out in
storms had a right to the best. If
illness, over-occupation, or absence
from home prevented him from pre
paring a fresh sermon, he declared to
the congregation that he had brought
them an old one ; the opposite of the
ministerial course usually taken.
But he was too fond of coining the
material of his own mind and soul
into sermons to preach old ones
often. As to his method of preparing his
sermons and other compositions, no
thing was commenced until an outline
or scheme of it had first been worked
out. He would lay out subjects for
years with a view to preaching upon
them, and sometimes he nyould ad
here to a plan of sermons extending
to four years. When reading and
meditation, taking copious notes
meanwhile, had furnished him with a

THE PREACHER.

MS

view of the whole subject, so that he
saw not only the end from the begin
ning, but the details and subdivisions
of each head, he began to write. Or,
if he intended, in the case of speeches
and sermons, to address his audience
extemporaneously, if the subject was
not already, by frequent speaking and
arranging, made familiar, every
point was premeditated, and occa
sionally one or two leading sentences
put down, just where he felt instinc
tively that he might need a stepping-
stone. He was not obliged to recur
to his brief during speaking, because
he had assigned to each thing--*-
the facts, the statistics, the allusions,
the helping phrases — its post in the
memory. The same system and com
prehensiveness which insisted upon a
perfect brief made it non-essential at
the moment of speaking. But he
never undertook to lay his track until
he had made a most careful and me
thodical survey of the route which he
must travel. He was all the time
making statements and organizing
thought. Commonly he walked in
quiet places, often by night, to make
his compositions. - Boston Common
was part of his study, as were the
woods at West Roxbury ; the great
oak there was part of his library. So
he wrote to George Ripley. He
generally wrote his sermons at the
beginning of the week, and left a page
or two for afterthoughts to be writ
ten on the Saturday night. Then,
when all was done, and the last tear
shed over it — for he seldom got
through without moistening his ink a
little that way — he put all signs of
his week's toil aside, and girded up
his soul for the other duties of Sun
day, which were also great joys.
He thought every subject had a
religious side. With George Her
bert— " If done beneath thy laws
E'en servile labours shine ;
Hallowed is toil, if this the cause ;
The meanest work divine."

His sermons were on all kinds of
life concerns, "from those of the
soul to those of the kitchen." Each
subject he treated in accordance with
its nature ; he had not, as is the rule,
one pulpit conventional way of dealing
with all. Such discourses of his as
those on " Crime," " Intemperance,"
' ' the Dangers and Duties of Women, "
"the Merchant," "the Dangerous
Classes," "the Perishing Classes,"
"Great Cities," &c, cost him vast
labour in research for facts and statis
tics, as well as of thought and general
isation upon the data collected. In
the various political discourses which
the exigencies of the times called
forth, and which are as deep as they
are captivating, combining history,
philosophy, and prophecy, he put
an immense amount of conscientious
labour. In some of them with what
wonderful prescience he foretold the
late American War. Over and over
again he used words like the follow
ing, which were written in 1859 : —
" We are coming upon a great crisis
of American history, and a civil war
seems at no great distance. The slave
holders will be driven, by the logic of
their principles, to demand what the
free men'of the North will not consent
to : then comes the split — not with
out blood ! " Two years after that
was written, the Southern States se
ceded, and the civil war began.
His wonderful biographical dis
courses were prepared with the
greatest elaboration and care. It is
recorded that, while preparing the
one on John Quincy Adams, he re
viewed the statesman's whole career :
read every speech; analysed every
argument ; scrutinised every act ;
went behind every piece of public
policy; and laid out the history so
simply that the least-instructed intelli
gence could understand it. Prepara
tory to composing the one on Daniel
Webster he did more than this : he
gleaned from all credible sources of
information in regard to Mr. Webster's L

146

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

private life and character ; probed the
secrets of his ancestry ; read the
principal works of distinguished ora
tors, jurists, and statesmen in Eng
land ; studied again the orations of
Demosthenes and Cicero, in order to
settle precisely in his mind the
rank of the great American as lawyer,
statesman, orator, and man. After
Webster's death, a few hours' medita
tion in the country enabled Parker to
melt together the materials which he
had thus been gathering in expectancy
of this for yearsj and to ron them
molten from his own soul, first into
the written sermon, and afterwards
into the souls of the great congrega
tion drawn by his announcement of
such a subject. Here is his own re
cord of the discourse. " October 31.
— Preached sermon on Mr. Webster
— a sad and dreadful day to me : it
was so painful to criticise him as I
needs must. The preaching of the
sermon occupied two and a half
hours ; it would have required three-
quarters of an hour more to preach
all that was written. At eleven
o'clock, Wednesday, not a line of it
was written ; at two p.m. Saturday,
not a line unwritten. " The delivery
of the discourse appears to have been
a remarkable event even at a Music
Hall service. The audience listened
with breathless intensity, and when
Parker, who, before the statesman's
unfaithfulness to the "higher law,"
had greatly loved and admired him,
exclaimed in a choking voice, " Oh,
Webster ! Webster ! my king, my
king ! . would that I had died for
thee ! " tears bedimmed every eye.
Large as was the audience he ad
dressed weekly at the Music Hall, it
was hardly so large as that he ad
dressed by means of the press through
out America, and almost throughout
Christendom. Not only did the
newspapers extensively report the
discourses, but some of the printed
ones sold to the extent of 10,000
within ten days. Some were trans

lated into foreign languages, with
what effect upon him the following
extract from the journal will show: —
" Christmas, 1847.— To-day I re
ceived from Archdeacon Wolff, at
Kiel, the translation of my Dis
courses, &c. The work awakened
such heart-beatings as I have not often
had for a cause seemingly so slight.
I read the lines of his preface, in
which he speaks so tenderly of me,
not without many tears. Is it possible
that I am to be henceforth a power
in the world to move men, a name
which shall kindle men to goodness
and piety, a name of power ? I think
little enough of fame. But to be a
man who can lead mankind a little
onward, that thought would charm
me. Well, at reading that, remem
bering, too, how I have been treated
here, I must confess I . wept ; and
since have felt the better for my tears;
God grant I may be more and better
as the years go by ! "
These reprints of his utterances soon
exercised a wideinfluence, as the letters
received by him from all quarters of the
world, from persons of both sexes and
every state of life, most clearly shoWi
Something in them seemed to create
a desire in readers to communicate
with the preacher. "People who
desired to know what were the facts
about theology and religion, troubled
by creeds, unloosed from their old re- "
ligious moorings, students, labourers,
shopkeepers, Catholics, Methodists,
and members of all sects — people
with special questions about retribu
tion, God, non-resistance, miracles,
free-will, many who were in dis
tress or uncongenial circumstances,
suffering from intemperance, pining
for want of remunerative labour, and
all people who longed to be of ser
vice to their kind. It was as if a
great crowd hurried to where a clear
and steadfast voice hailed them to
come over where it spoke, by the
only safe and speedy way." It was
thus that he got to know and feel so

THE PREACHER.

H7

deeply the crushing and demoralising
effect of the popular orthodoxy. He
had in these communications more
than sufficient warrant for the strongest
things against it he ever uttered. Of
what other preacher can it be said, as
it can of Parker, that he received
letters, called forth by his preaching,
sufficient to make an interesting and
goodly-sized printed volume?
Long before the appearance of the
Rev. O. B. Frothingham's most ex
cellently planned and exquisitely
written biography of Parker, we
had come to the conclusion that,
considered as a whole, he was the
greatest preacher which modern times
have seen. It was, therefore, with
gratification that in the work named
we saw our view shared and enforced
by Mr.Frothingham,himself, perhaps,
the most intellectual preacher which
America now possesses. His estimate
of Parker's preaching, and his com
parison of it with that of other well-
known eminent modern preachers, is
so ably discriminating and interest
ing, that we trust he will forgive us
for giving our readers the opportunity
of reading it.
Says Mr. Frothingham :— " Utter
fidelity to his calling made Theodore
Parker the great preacher that he
was ; probably, all things considered,
the greatest of his generation. He
was greater than Spurgeon, whom
five or six thousand men flock to
hear ; but who lacks learning, know
ledge of men and things, breadth and
poetic fervour of mind, culture of
intellect, and delicacy of percep
tion — an earnest, zealous, toilsome
man, powerful through his sectarian
narrowness, not, as Parker was,
through his human sympathy. He
was greater beyond measure than
Maurice, Robertson, Stopford Brooke,
or any of the new Churchmen ; the
delight of those who want to be out
of the Church, and yet feel in it.
He was greater than Channing in
range of thought, in learning, in

breadth of human sympathy, in vitality
of interest in common affairs, in
wealth of imagination, and in the
racy flavour of his spoken or written
speech. Channing had an equal moral
earnestness, an equal depth of spiri
tual sentiment, a superior gift of look,
voice, expression, manner, perhaps
a more finely endowed speculative
apprehension, a subtler insight ; but
as a preacher he addressed a smaller
class of his fellow-men. His was an
aristocratic, Parker's a democratic
mind. Channing was ethereal even
when treading most manfully the
earth, and seraphic even when urging
the claims of negroes : Parker, when
soaring highest, kept both feet
planted on the soil, and, when un
folding the most ideal principles, re
membered that his brother held him
by the hand for guidance. Channing
always talked prose even while dilating
on transcendental themes : Parker,
even when discussing affairs of the
street, would break out into the lan
guage of poetry. Channing could
sympathise with great popular ideas
and movements, but was too fas
tidious to be ever in close contact
with the people : Parker was a man
of the people through and through ;
one of the people, as much at home
with the plainest as the most cultured,
more heartily at home with the
simple than with the polished; hence
his word ran swiftly in rough paths,
while Dr. Channing's trod daintily in
high places." Mr. Frothingham next
shows in how many features Parker
was the superior of Henry Ward
Beecher, who has generaUy been
thought of as the greatest preacher of
America, and then proceeds to say of
Parker's printed sermons : — "Take
up any of his volumes containing the
sermons he thought worthy of per
manent preservation — the volume of
' Ten Sermons on Religion ;' the
' Theism, Atheism, and Popular
Theology, ' which is made up of pulpit
addresses ; read the pamphlet ser-

148

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

mons on ' Immortal Life ;' on ' The
Perils of Adversity and Prosperity ;'
' What Religion will do for a Man ;'
' Lesson for a Midsummer Day ;'
'The Function and Place of Con
science ;' ' The Sermon of Poverty,'
' Of War,' ' Of Merchants ;' ' The
Chief Sins of (he People;' 'The
Power of a False Idea ;' and you
have many a long hour full of edifica
tion, instruction, and delight. They
are sermons — always sermons ; not
essays or disquisitions. The paren-
etical character runs through every
thing the man wrote, as the moral
element ran through the man. As
sermons intended to reach the con
science as well as the understanding
of miscellaneous and heedless audi
tors, who must have a thought ex
pressed in several forms, and re
iterated more than once, in order to
catch or retain it, (hey are almost

perfect, and are destined to do a
most important work in educating
and inspiring thousands whom the
preacher's voice never reached, who,
perhaps, were not bom when he fell
asleep. More may be learned from
his political speeches and addresses
than from many volumes of contem
poraneous history. His speculative
discourses throw light on abstruse
problems of philosophy ; his ordinary
sermons are rich in practical wisdom
for daily life, and will be read when
hundreds qf sermons now popular are
forgotten, and even when the litera
ture of the pulpit has fallen into that
neglect it, for the most part, de
serves." Parker wrote nearly a thousand
sermons — an average of about forty-
five per year — during the course of
his twenty-two years' ministry.

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

149

CHAPTER XIV.
The Preacher and Theologian*
(Autobiographical Extracts from " Theodore Parker's Experience
as a Minister." )
" In darker days and nights of storm,
Men knew Thee but to fear Thy form ;
And in the reddest lightnings saw
Thine arm avenge insulted law.
" In brighter days, we read Thy love
In flowers beneath, in stars above ;
And in the track of every storm
Behold Thy beauty's rainbow form.
" And in the reddest lightnings' path
We see no vestiges of wrath.
But always wisdom- perfect love,
From flowers beneath to stars above.
*' See, from on high sweet influence rains
On palace, cottage, mountains, plains I
No hour of wrath shall mortals fear,
For their Almighty Love is here'."— Theodore Parker;

" f N my preaching," writes Parker
1 in the work above named, " I
have used plain, simple words, some
times making what I could not find
ready, and counted nothing unclean
because merely common. In philo
sophic terms, and in all which de
scribes the inner consciousness, our
Saxon speech is rather poor, and so
I have been compelled to gather from
the Greek or Roman stock forms of
expression which do not grow on
our homely and familiar tree, and
hence, perhaps.have sometimes scared^
you with ' words of learned length.'
But I have always preferred to use)
when fit, the everyday words in
which men think and talk, scold,
make love, and pray, so that generous'
hearted philosophy, clad in a com mon
dress, might more easily become
familiar to plain-clad men. It is with
customary tools that we work easiest
and best, especially when use has
made the handles smooth.
" Illustrations I have drawn from
most familiar things which are before
all men's eyes, in the fields, the

streets,the shop, the kitchen, parlour,
nursery, or school ; and from the
literature best known to all — the
Bible, the newspapers, the transient
speech of eminent men, the talk of
common people in the streets, from
popular stories, school-books, and
nursery rhymes. Some of you have
censured me for this freedom and
homeliness, alike in illustration and
in forms of speech, desiring ' more
elegant and sonorous language,'
' illustrations derived from elevated
and conspicuous objects;' ' from dig
nified personalities.' A good man,
who was a farmer in fair weather and
a shoemaker in foul, could not bear
to have a plough or a lapstone
mentioned in my sermon — to me pic
turesque and poetic objects, as well
as familiar-^but wanted ' kings and
knights, 'which I also quickly pleased
him with. But for this I must not
only plead the necessity of my nature,
delighting in common things, trees,
grass, oxen, and stars, moonlight on
the water, the falling rain, the ducks
and hens at this moment noisy under

150

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

my window, the gambols and prattle
of children, and the common work
of blacksmiths, wheelwrights, painters,
hucksters, and traders of all "sorts,
but I have also on my side the ex
ample of all the great masters of
speech — save only the French, who
disdain all common things, as their
aristocratic but elegant literature was
bred in a court, though rudely cradled
elsewhere, nay, born of rough loins —
of poets like Homer, Dante, Shak-
speare, Goethe, qf Hebrew David,
and of Roman Horace ; of philoso
phers like Socrates and Locke ; of
preachers like Lnther, Latimer,
Barrow, Butler, and South ; nay,
elegant Jeremy Taylor, 'the Shak-
speare of divines,' owes half his beauty
to these weeds of nature, which are
choicest flowers when set in his
artistic garden. But one need not go
beyond Jesus of Nazareth and the
first three gospels to leam great
lessons in the art of speech ; for in
him you not only reverence the genius
for religion, which intuitively sees
divine truth and human duty, but
wonder also at the power of speech
that tells its tale as deliverly as the
blackbird sings or the water runs
down-hill, Besides, to me common
life is full of poetry and pictorial
loveliness ; spontaneously portrayed,
its events wiU fill my mind as one by
one the stars come out upon the
evening sky, like them each one ' a
beauty and a mystery.' It is there
fore a necessity of my nature that
the sermon should publicly reflect to
you what privately hangs over it with
me, and the waters rained out of my
sky, when cloudy, should give back
its ordinary stars when clear. Yet,
for the same reason, I have also
fetched illustrations from paths of
literature and science, less familiar,
perhaps, to most of you, when they,
better than aught else, would clear a
troubled thought ; so in my rosary of
familiar beads, I have sometimes
strung a pearl or two which science

brought from oceanic depths, or fixed
thereon the costly gems where ancient
or modem art has wrought devices
dearer than the precious stone itself.
"Using plain words and familiar
illustrations, and preaching also on
the greatest themes, I have not feared
to treat philosophic matters with the
rigour of science, and never thought
I should scare you with statistic facts
which are the ultimate expression of
a great principle doing its work by a
constant mode of operation, nor by
psychologic analysis pr metaphysical
demonstration. Ministers told me I
was ' preaching over the heads of the
people;' I only feared to preach
below their feet, or else aside from
their ears. Thus handling great
themes before attentive men, I have
also dared to treat them long, for I
read the time not on the dial, but the
audience. J. trust you will pardon
the offence which I perhaps shall not
repeat, " To compose sermons, and preach
them to multitudes of men of one
sort but rnany conditions, thereto
setting forth the great troths of
absolute religion, and applying them
to the various events of this wondrous
human life, trying to make the con
stitution of the universe the common
law of men, illustrating my thought
with all that I can gather from the
world of matter, its use and beauty
both, and from the world of man, from
human labours, sorrows, joys, and
everlasting hopes — this has been my
great delight. Your pulpit has been
my joy and my throne. Though
press and State, market and meeting
house, have been hostile to us, you
have yet given me the largest Protes
tant audience in America, save that
which orthodox Mr. Beecher, who
breaks with no theologic tradition of
the New England Church, inspires
with his deep emotional nature, so
devout and so humane, and charms
with his poetic eloquence, that is akin
to both the sweetbriar and the rose,

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

ISI

and all the beauty which springs up
wild amid New England hills, and to
the loveliness of common life ; I have
given you my sermons in return,
at once my labour and delight. My
life is in them, and all my character,
its good and ill ; thereby you know
me better than I, perhaps, myself —
for a man's words and his face, when
excited in sermon and in prayer) tell
all he is, the reflection of what he has
done. "When you [The Twenty-eighth
Congregational Society] gave me ' a
chance to be heard in Boston,' I knew
that I had thoroughly broken with
the ecclesiastical authority of Chris
tendom ; its God was not my God,
nor its Scriptures my Word of God,
nor its Christ my Saviour, for I
preferred the Jesus of historic fact to
the Christ of theologic fancy. Its
narrow, partial, and unnatural heaven
I did not wish to enter on the terms
proposed, nor did I fear, since earliest
youth, its mythic roomy hell, wherein
the triune God, with His pack of
devils to aid, tore the human race to
pieces for ever and ever, I came to
preach another Gospel. But at the
beginning I warned you that if you
came Sunday after Sunday you would
soon think v«ry much ag I did on the
great matters you asked me to teach
— because I had drawn my doctrines
from the same human nature which
was in you, and that would recognise
and own its child. Let me arrange,
under three heads, some of the most
important doctrines I have aimed to
set forth.
" I. The Infinite Perfection
of God. — This doctrine is the corner
stone of all my theological and
religious teaching — the foundation,
perhaps, of all that is peculiar in my
system. It is not known to the Old
Testament or the New ; it has never
been accepted by any sect in the
Christian World ; for, though it be
equally claimed by all, from the
Catholic to the Mormon, none has

ever consistently developed it, even
in theory, but all continually limit
God in power, in wisdom, and still
more eminently in justice and in love.
The idea of God's imperfection has
been carried out with dreadful logic
in the Christian scheme. I have taught
that God contains allpossibleand con
ceivable perfection — the perfection of
being, self-subsistence, conditioned
only by itself; the perfection of power,
all-mightiness ; of mind, all-knowing
ness; of conscience, all-righteousness ;
of affection, all-lovingness ; and the
perfection of the innermost element,
which in finite man is personality, all-
holiness, faithfulness to Himself. The
infinitely perfect God is immanent in
the world of matter and in the world
of spirit, the two hemispheres which
to us make up the universe ; each
particle thereof is inseparable from
Him,while He yet transcends both, is
limited by neither, but in Himself
complete and perfect. I have not
taught that the special qualities I find
in the Deity are all that are actually
there ; higher and more must doubt
less appear to beings of larger powers
than man's. My definition distin
guishes God from all other beings ; it
does not limit him to the details of
my conception. I only tell what I
know, not what others may know,
which lies beyond my present con
sciousness. ' ' He is a perfect Creator, making
all from a perfect motive, for a perfect
purpose, of perfect substance, and as
a perfect means ; none other are con
ceivable with a perfect God. The
motive must be love, the purpose
welfare, the means the constitution of
the universe itself, as a whole and in
parts — for each great or little thing
coming from Him must be perfectly
adapted to secure the purpose it was
intended for, and achieve the end it
was meant to serve, and represent
the causal motive which brought it
forth. . So there must be a complete
solidarity between God and the two-

"52

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

fold universe which He creates. The
perfect Creator is thus also a perfect
providence ; indeed, creation and
providence are not objective acci*
dents of Deity, nor subjective ca
prices, but the development of the
perfect motive to its perfect purpose,
love becoming a universe of perfect
welfare. " I have called God Father, ,but
also Mother, not by this figure imply
ing that the Divine Being has the limi
tations of the female figure — as some
ministers deceitfully allege of late,
who might have been supposed to
know better than thus to pervert
plain speech — but to express more
sensibly, the quality of tender and
unselfish love, which mankind asso
ciates more with Mother than aught
else beside.
" II. The Adequacy of Man
FOR ALL HIS FUNCTIONS.-^ From
the infinite perfection of God there
follows unavoidably the relative per
fection of all that He creates. So, the
nature of man, tending to a pro
gressive development of all his mani
fold powers, must be the best possible
nature, most fit for the perfect accom
plishment of the perfect purpose, and
the attainment of the perfect end,
which God designs for the race and
the individual. It is not difficult in
this general way to show the relative
perfection of human nature, deducing
this from the infinite perfection of
God ; but I think it impossible to
prove it by the inductive process of
reasoning from concrete facts of ex
ternal observation, of which we know
not yet the entire sum, nor any one,
perhaps, completely. Yet I have
travelled also this inductive road, as
far as it reaches, and tried to show
the constitution of man's body, with
its adaptation to the surrounding
world of matter, and the constitution
of his spirit, with its inteUectual,
moral, affectional, and religious
powers, and its harmonious relation
with the world of matter, which

affords them a playground, a school,
and a workshop. So I have con
tinually taught that man has in him
self all the faculties he needs to ac
complish his high destination, and in
the world of matter finds, one by one,
all the material helps he requires.
" We all see the unity of life in
the individual ; his gradual growth
from merely sentient and passive
babyhood up to thoughtful, self-di
recting manhood. I have tried to
show there was a similar unity of life
in the human race, pointing out the
analogous progressive development
of mankind, from the state of igno
rance, poverty, and utter nakedness of
soul and sense, the necessary primi
tive conditions of the race, up to the
present civilisation of the leading
nations. The primitive is a wild
man, who gradually grows up to
civilisation. To me, the notorious
facts of human history, the condition
of language, art, industry, and the
footprints of man left all over the
torrid and temperate lands, admit of
no other interpretation^ Of course it
must have required many a thousand
years for Divine Providence to bring
this child from his mute, naked, ig
norant poverty up to the many-
voiced, many-coloured civilisation of
these times ; and as in the strata of
mountain and plain, on the shores of
the sea, and under ' the bottom
of the monstrous world,' the geologist
finds proof of time immense, wherein
this material Cosmos assumed its
present form, so in ruins of cities, in
the weapons of iron, bronze, or stone,
found in Scandinavian swamps, on
the sub-aquatic enclosures of the
Swiss lakes, in the remains of
Egyptian industry, which the holy
Nile, 'mother of blessings' — now
spiritual to us, as once material to
those whose flesh she fed — has covered
with many folds of earth and kept
for us, and still more in the history
of art, science, war, industry, and
the structure of language itself, a

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

153

slow-growing plant, do I find proof
of time immense, wherein man, this
spiritual Cosmos, has been assuming
his present condition, individual,
domestic, social, and national, and
accumulating that wealth of things
and thoughts which is the mark of
civilisation. I have tried to show by
history the progressive development
of industry and wealth, of mind and
knowledge, of conscience and justice,
of the affections and philanthropy,
,6f the soul and true religion ; the
many forms of the family, the com
munity, state, and church, I look on as
so many 'experiments in living,' all
useful, each, perhaps, in its time and
place, as indispensable as the various
geological changes. But this pro
gressive development does not end
with us ; we have seen only the be
ginning ; the future triumphs of the
race must be vastly greater than all
accomplished yet. In the primal in
stincts and automatic desires of man
I have found a prophecy that what
he wants is possible, and shall one
day be actual. What good is not
with us is before, to be obtained by
toil and thought, and religious life.
" III. Absolute or Natural
Religion. — In its complete and per
fect form this is the normal develop
ment, use, discipline, and enjoyment
of every part of the body, and every
faculty of the spirit ; the direction
of all natural powers to their natural
purposes. I have taught that there
were three parts which make up the
sum of true religion : the emotional
part, of right feelings, where religion
at first begins in the automatic, primal
instinct ; the intellectual part, of true
ideas, which either directly represent
the primitive, instinctive feeling of
whoso holds them, or else produce
a kindred, secondary, and derivative
feeling in whoso receives them ; and
the practical part, of just actions,
which correspond to the feelings and
the ideas, and make the mere thought
or emotion into a concrete deed. So,

the true religion, which comes from
the nature of man, consists of normal
feelings towards God and man, of
correct thoughts about God, man,
and the relation between them,- and
of actions corresponding to the natural
conscience when developed in har
mony with the entire constitution of
man. " But this religion, which begins in
the instinctive feelings, and thence
advances to reflective ideas, assumes
its ultimate form in the character of
men, and so appears' in their actions,
individual, domestic, social, national,
ecclesiastical, and general — human ;
it builds manifold institutions like
itself, wherein it-rears up men in its
own image. All the six great historic
forms of religion — the Brahmanic,
Hebrew, Classic, Buddhistic, Chris
tian, Mohammedan— profess to have
come miraculously from God, not
normally from man ; and, spite of the
excellence which they contain, and
the vast service the humblest of them
has done, yet each must ere long
prove a hindrance to human welfare,
for it claims to be a finality, and
makes the whole of human nature
wait upon an accident of human
history — and that accident the whim
of some single man. The absolute
religion which belongs to man's
nature, and is gradually unfolded
thence, like the high achievements of
art, science, literature, and politics,
is only distinctly conceived in an ad
vanced stage of man's growth ; to
make its idea a fact is the highest
triumph of the human race. This is
the idea of humanity, dimly seen but
clearly felt, which has flitted before
the pious eyes of men in all lands and
many an age, and been prayed for as
the 'Kingdom of Heaven.' The
religious history of the race is the
record of man's continual but un
conscious efforts to obtain this ' de
sire of all nations ;' poetic stories
of the ' golden age, ' or of man in
the garden of Eden, are but this

.154

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

natural wish looking back and fondly
dreaming that ' the former days were
better than these.' But while all the
other forms of religion must ulti
mately fail before this, fading as it
flowers, each one of them has yet
been a help towards it, probably in
dispensable to the development of
mankind. For each has grown out
of the condition of some people, as
naturally as the wild primitive flora
of Santa Cruz has come from the
state of this island — its geologic
structure and chemical composition,
its tropic heat, and its special situa
tion amid the great currents of water
and of air ; as naturally as the depen
dent fauna of the place comes from
its flora. Thus in the religions of
mankind, as in the various govern,
ments, nay, as in the different geo
logic periods, there is diversity of
form, but unity of aim ; destruction
is only to create ; earthquakes, which
submerge the sunken continents whose
former mountains are but islands now,
and revolutions, in which the Hebrew
and Classic religions went under, their
poetic summits only visible, have an
alogous functions to perform — hand
maids of creation both.
" For these three great doctrines —
of God, of Man, of Religion — I have
depended on no Church and no Scrip
ture ; yet have I found things to serve
me in all Scriptures and every Church.
I have sought my authority in the
nature of man— in facts of conscious
ness within me, and facts of observa
tion in the human world without. To
me the material world and the out
ward history of man do not supply a
sufficient revelation of God, nor
warrant me to speak of infinite per
fection. It is only from the nature of
man, from facts of intuition, that I
can gather this greatest of all truths,
as I find it in my consciousness re
flected back from Deity itself.
' ' I know well what may be said of
the ' feebleness of all the human facul
ties,' their ' unfaithfulness and unfit

ness for their work ; ' that the mind
is not adequate for man's intellectual
functkm, nor the conscience for the
moral, nor the affections' for the phi
lanthropic, nor the soul for the re
ligious, nor even the body for the
corporeal, but that each requires
miraculous help from a God who is
only outside of humanity ! There is
a denial which boldly rejects the im
mortality of man and the existence of
Deity, with many another doctrine,
dear and precious to mankind ; but
the most dangerous scepticism is that
which, professing allegiance to all
these, and crossing itself at the name
of Jesus, is yet so false to the great
primeval instincts of man that it de
clares he cannot be certain of any
thing he learns by the normal exercise
of any faculty ! I have carefully
studied this school of doubt, modem,
not less than old, as it appears in
history. In it there are honest in
quirers after truth, but misled by some
accident, and also sophists, who live
by their slpight of niind, as jugglers
by their dexterity of hand. But the
chief members of this body are the
mockers, who, in a world they make ,
empty, find the most fitting echo to
their hideous laugh ; and churchmen
of all denominations, who are so anx
ious to support their ecclesiastic the
ology that they think it is not safe on
its throne till they have annihilated
the claim of reason, conscience, the
affections, and the soul to any voice
in determining the greatest concerns
of man — thinking there is no place
for the Christian Church or the Bible
till they have nullified the faculties
which created both, and rendered
Bible-makers and Church-founders
impossible. But it is rather a poor
compliment these ecclesiastic sceptics
pay their Deity, to say He so makes
and manages the world that we can
not trust the sights we see, the sounds
we hear, the thoughts we think, or
the moral, affectional, religious emo
tions we feel ; that we are certain

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

155

neither of the intuitions of instinct,
nor the demonstrations of reason, but
yet, by some anonymous testimony,.
can be made sure that Balaam's she-
ass spoke certain Hebrew words, and
One undivide d third part of God was
' born of the Virgin Mary, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
descended into hell, and the third
day rose again,' to take away the
wrath whifih the pther two (undivided
third parts of God felt against all
mankind 1
" It is not for me to say there is no
limit to the possible attainments of
man's rejigious or other faculties. I
will not dogmatise where I do not
know. But' history shows that the
Hercujes' Pijlars of one age are
Sailed through in the next, and a
wide ocean entered on, which in due
time js found rich with islands of its
own, and washing 9. vast continent
not dreamed of by such as slept with*
in their temples of old, while it sent
to their yery coasts its curious joints
of unwonted cane, its seeds of many
an unknown tree, and eyen elabo
rate boats, wherein lay the starved
bodies of strange-featured men, with
golden jewels in their ears. No doubt
there are limits to human industry,
for finite man is bounded on every
side ; but, I take it, the Hottentot,
the Gaboon Negro, and the wild man
of New Guinea, antecedently, would
think it impossible that mankind
should build the Pyramids of Egypt
for royal ostentation, for defence
throw up the fortresses of Europe
and the wall of China, or for economic
use lay down the roads of earth, of
water, iron, wood, or stone, which
now so swiftly help to develop the
material resources and educate the
spiritual powers of Europe and
America. Still less would they con
ceive it possible for men to make all
the farms, the mills, the shops, the
houses, and the ships of civilised man
kind. But the philosopher sees it is
possible for toil and thought soon to

double, and then multiply manifold,
the industrial attainments of Britain
or New England.
"No doubt there may be a limit
to mathematic thought, though to
me that would seem boundless, and
every scientific step therein to be
certain ; but the barefooted negro
who goads his oxen under my win
dow, and can only count his two
thumbs, is no limit to Archimedes,
Descartes, Newton, and La Place ;
no more are these men of vast genius
a limit to the mathematic possibility
of humankind. They who invented
letters, arithmetic symbols, gun
powder, the compass, the printing
press, the telescope, the steam-engine,
and the telegraph, only ploughed in
corners of the field of human possi
bility, .and showed its bounds were
not where they had been supposed.
A thousand years ago the world had
not a man, I think, who could even
dream of such a welfare as New
England now enjoys ! Who shall
tell industrious, mathematic, pro
gressive mankind, ' Stop there ; you
have reached the utmost bound of
human possibility ; beyond it eco
nomy is waste, and science folly, and
progress downfall ! ' No more is the
atheistic mocker or the ecclesiastic
bigot commissioned to stop the human
race with his cry, ' Cease there,
mankind, thy religious search ! for,
thousand-million-headed as thou art,
thou canst know nought directly of
thy God, thy duty, or thyself ! Pause,
and accept my authenticated word ;
stop, and despair ! '
" I know too well the atheistic
philosopher's bitter mock, and the
haughty scorn of theologic despisers
of mankind, who, diverse in all be
sides, yet agree in their contempt for
human nature, glory in the errors of
genius, or the grosser follies of man
kind, and seek out of the ruins of
humanity to build up, the one his
palace, and the other his church.
But I also know that mankind heeds

I56

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

neither the atheistic philosopher nor
the theologic despiser of his kind ;
but, faithful to the great primeval
instincts of the soul, believing, creat
ing, and rejoicing, goes on its upward
way, nor doubts of man or God, of
sense or intellect.
" These three great doctrines I
have preached positively as abstract
truth, representing facts of the uni
verse ; that might be peaceful work.
But they must take a concrete form,
and be applied to the actual life of
the individual, family, community,
state, and church ; this would have
a less peaceful look, for I must ex
amine actual institutions, and criti
cise their aim, their mode of opera
tion, and their result. The great
obvious social forces in America may
be thus summed up : —
" I. There is the organised trading
power — having its home in the great
towns, which seeks gain with small
regard to that large justice which
represents alike the mutual interests
and duties of all men, and to that
humanity which interposes the affec-
tional instinct when conscience is
asleep. This power seems to con
trol all things, amenable only to the
all-mighty dollar.
"2. The organised political power,
the parties in office, or seeking to
become so. This makes the statutes,
but is commonly controlled by the
trading power, and has all of its
faults often intensified ; yet it seems
amenable to the instincts of the people,
who, on great occasions, sometimes
interfere and change the traders'
rule. "3. The organised ecclesiastical
power, the various sects which, though
quite unlike, yet aU mainly agree in
their fundamental principle of vicari-
ousness — an alleged revelation, in
stead of actual human faculties, sal
vation from God's wrath and eternal
ruin by the atoning blood of crucified
God. This is more able than either
of the others ; and though often de

spised, in a few years can control
them both. In this generation no
American politician dares affront it.
' ' 4. The organised literary power,
the endowed colleges, the periodical
press, with its triple multitude of
journals — commercial, political, theo
logical — and sectarian tracts. This
has no original ideas, hut diffuses the
opinion of the other powers whom it
represents, whose will it serves, and
whose kaleidoscope it is.
' ' I must examine these four great
social forces, and show what was
good in them, and what was ill ; as1
certain what natural religion de
manded of each, and what was the
true function~of trade, government,
a chureh, and a literature. When I
came to a distinct consciousness of
my own first principle, and my con
sequent relation to what was about
me, spite of the good they contained,
I found myself greatly at variance
with all the four. They had one
principle and I another; of course,
our aim and direction were commonly
different and often opposite. Soon
I found that I was not welcome to
the American market, state, church,
nor press. It could not be otherwise ;
yet I confess I had not anticipated
so thorough a separation betwixt me
and these forces which control society,
but had laid out work I could not
execute alone, nor perhaps without
the aid of all the four.
" When I first came before you to
preach, carefully looking before and
after, I was determined on my pur
pose, and had a pretty distinct con
ception of the mode of operation.
It was not my design to found a sect,
and merely build up a new ecclesias
tical institution, but to produce a
healthy development of the highest
faculties of men, to furnish them the
greatest possible amount of most
needed instruction, and help them
each to free spiritual individuality.
The Church, the State, the com
munity, were not ends, a finality of

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

157

purpose, but means to bring forth
and bring up individual men. To
accomplish this purpose I aimed dis
tinctly at two things : first, to pro
duce the greatest possible healthy
development of the religious faculty,
acting in harmonious connection with
the intellectual, moral, and affec-
tional ; and second, to lead you to
help others in the same work. Let
me say a word in detail of each part
of my design.
"I. According both to my expe
rience and observation, the religious
element is the strongest in the spiritual
constitution of man, easily controlling
all the rest for his good or ill. I
wished to educate this faculty under
the influence of the true idea of God,
of man, and of their mutual relation.
I was not content with producing
morality alone — the normal action of
the conscience and will, the volun-
tative keeping of the natural law of
right : I saw the need also of piety —
religious feeling toward the divine,
that instinctive, purely internal love
of God, which, I think, is not de
pendent on conscience. I was led to
this aim partly by my own disposi
tion, which, I confess, naturally in
clined me to spontaneous pious feel
ing, my only youthful luxury, more
than to voluntary moral action ;
partly by my early culture, which
had given me much experience of
religious emotions ; and partly, also,
by my wide and familiar acquaint
ance with the mystical writers, the
voluptuaries of the soul, who dwelt
in the world of pious feeling, heed
less of life's practical duties, and
caring little for science, literature,
justice, or the dear charities of com
mon life.
" I found this lack of the emotional
part of religion affected many of the
reformers. Some men called by that
name, were indeed mere selfish
tongues, their only business to find
fault and make a noise ; such are en
titled to no more regard than any other

common and notorious scolds. But,
in general, the leading reformers are
men of large intellect, of profound
morality, earnest, affectional men,
full of philanthropy, and living lives
worthy of the best ages of humanity.
But, as a general thing, it seemed to
me they had not a proportionate de
velopment of the religious feelings,
and so had neither the most powerful
solace for their many griefs, nor the
profoundest joy which is needful to
hold them up mid all they see and
suffer from. They, too, commonly
shared the sensational philosophy,
and broke with the ecclesiastic super-
naturalism which once helped to
supply its defects.
" Gradually coming to understand
this state of things, quite early in my
ministry I tried to remedy it ; of
course I did the work at first feebly
and poorly. I preached piety, un
selfish love towards God, as well as
morality, the keeping of his natural
law, and philanthropy, the helping
of his human children. And I was
greatly delighted to find that my dis
courses of piety were as acceptable as
my sermons of justice and charity,
touching the souls of earnest men.
Nay, the more spiritual of the min
isters asked me to preach such matters
in their pulpits, which I did gladly.
"I have taken special pains to
show that well-proportioned piety is
the ground of all manly excellence,
and though it may exist, and often
does, without the man's knowing it,
yet, in its highest form, he is con
scious of it. On this theme I have
preached many sermons which were
very dear to me, though perhaps none
of them has yet been published. But
after some ministerial experience, and
much study of the effect of doctrines
and ecclesiastical modes of procedure,
I endeavoured to guard against the
vices which so often attend the cul
ture of this sentimental part of reli
gion, and to prevent the fatal de
generacy that often attends it. When

i58

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

the religibus element is actively ex
cited under the control of the false
theological ideas now so prevailing,
it often takes one or both of these
two misdirections : —
" I. It tends to an unnatural mys
ticism, which dries up all the noble
emotions that else would produce a
great useful character. The delicate
and refined woman develops the
sentiment of religion in her conscious
ness ; surrounded by wealth, and
seduced by its charms, she reads the
more unpractical parts of the Bible,
especially the Johannic writings, the
Song of Solomon, and the more sen
timental portions of the Psalms ;
studies Thomas a Kempis, Guyon,
Fenelon, William Law, Keble ; pores
over the mystic meditations of St.
Augustine and Bernard ; she kneels
before her costly Prie-Dieu, or other
sufficient altar, pours out her prayers,
falls into an ecstacy of devout feeling,
and, elegantly dishevelled like a Mag
dalen, weeps most delicious tears.
Then, rising thence, she folds her idle,
unreligious hands, and, with volup
tuous scorn, turns off from the homely
duties of common life ; while not
only the poor, the sick, the ignorant,
the drunken, the enslaved, and the
abandoned are left uncared for, but
her own household is neglected, her
husband, her very children, go un
blessed. She lives a life of intense
religious emotion in private, but of
intense selfishness at home, and pro
fligate worldliness abroad. Her pious
feeling is only moonshine ; nay, it is
a Will-o'-the-wisp, a wandering fire,
which " ' Leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.'
She is a voluptuary of the soul, often
likewise in the senses ; her prayers
are worth no more than so much
novel-reading ; she might as well
applaud Don Giovanni with her laugh
at the opera as St. John with her
tears at church. This woman's re
ligion is internal glitter, which gives

nor light nor heat. 'Like a fly in
the heart of an apple, she dwells in
perpetual sweetness,' but also in per
petual sloth, a selfish wanton of the
soul. In his Pare aux Cerfs, Louis
XV. trained his maiden victims to
this form of devotion !
" 2. It leads to ecclesiastical ritu
alism. This is the more common
form in New England, especially in
hard men and women. They join a
church, and crowd the ecclesiastical
meetings. Bodily presence there is
thought a virtue : they keep the Sun
day severely idle ; their ecclesiastical
decorum is awful as a winter's night
at the North Pole of cold ; with ter
rible punctuality they attend to the
ordinance of bread and wine, looking
grim and senseless as the death's head
on the tombstones close by. Their
babies are sprinkled with water, or
themselves plunged all over in it ;
they- have morning prayers and even
ing prayers, grace before meat, and
after meat, grace ; nay, they give
money for the theological purposes of
their sect, and religiously hate men
not of their household of faith. Their
pious feeling has spent itself in secret
ing this abnormal shell of ritualism,
which now cumbers them worse than
Saul's great armour on the stripling
shepherd lad. What can such Pachy
derms of the church accomplish that
is good, with such an elephantiasis to
swell, and bark, and tetter every
limb ? Their religious feeling runs
to shell, and has no other influence.
They sell rum, and trade in slaves
or coolies. They are remorseless
creditors, unscrupulous debtors ; they
devour widows' houses. Vain are
the cries of humanity in such ears,
stuffed with condensed wind. Their
lives are little, dirty, and mean.
" Mindful of these two vices, which
are both diseases of the misdirected
soul, and early aware that devoutness
is by no means the highest expression
of love for God, I have attempted not
only to produce a normal develop-

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

159

ment of religious feeling, but to give
it the normal direction to the homely
duties of common life, in the kitchen,
the parlour, nursery, school-room,
in the field, market, office, shop, or
ship, or street, or wherever the lines
of our lot have fallen to us ; and to
the ' primal virtues,' that shine- aloft
as stars which mariners catch glimpses
of 'mid ocean's rack, and learn their
course, and steer straight into their de
sired haven ; and also; to the ' cha
rities that soothe, and heal and bless,'
and which are scattered at mankind's
feet like flowers, each one a beauty
the bee sucks honey from, and a seed
to sow the world with wholesome
loveliness ; for it is plain to me that
the common duties of natural life are
both the best school for the develop
ment of piety, and the best field for its
exercise when grown to manly size."
The Autobiographical Letter then
describes how the preacher has
preached against intemperance, covet-
ousness, ignorance, and in favour of
education, the present condition of
woman, and in favour of ouf bringing
her nearer to the advantages of man,
political unfaithfulness, war, and
slavery. But as we shall have to
speak of his views and proceedings in
connection with these matters when
we treat of him as "The Reformer,"
we pass over them here. He after
wards goes on : — "But I have preached
against the errors of the ecclesiastic
theology more than upon any other
form of wrong, for they are the most
fatal mischiefs in the land. The
theological notion of God, man, and
the relation between them, seems to
me the greatest speculative error man
kind has fallen into; Its gloomy
consequences appear : — Christendom
takes the Bible for God's word, His
last word ; nothing new or different
can ever be expected from the source
of all truth, all justice, and all love ;
the sun of righteousness will give no
added light or heat on the cold dark
ness of the human world. From

portions of this ' infallible revelation,'
the Roman Church logically derives
its despotic and hideous claim to bind
and loose 'on earth, to honour dead
men with sainthood, or to rack and
burn with all the engines mechanic
fancy can invent, or priestly cruelty
apply, and hereafter to bless eternally,
or else for ever damn. Hence, both
Protestant and Catholic logically de
rive their imperfect, wrathful Deity,
who creates men to torment them in
an endless hell, ' paved with the
skuUs of infants not a span long,'
whereinto the vast majority of men
are, by the million, trodden down for
everlasting agony, at which the elect
continually ' rejoice. Hence, they
derive their Devil, absolutely evil,
that ugly wolf whom God lets loose
into His fold of lambs ; hence, their
total depravity, and many another
dreadful doctrine which now the best
df men blind their brothers' eyes
withal, and teach their children to
distrust the Infinite Perfection which
is nature's God, dear Father and
Mother to all that is. Hence, clerical
sceptics leam to deny the validity of
their own superior faculties, and spin
out the cobwebs of sophistry, where
with they surround the field of reli
gion, and catch therein unwary men,
Hence, the Jews, the Mohammedans,
the Mormons, draw their idea of
woman, and their right to substitute
such gross conjunctions fbr the natural
marriage of one to one. There the
slaveholder finds the chief argument
for his ownership of men, and in
Africa or New England kidnaps the
weak, his mouth drooling with texts
from ' the authentic word of God ;'
nay, there the rhetorician finds reason
for shooting an innocent man who
but righteously seeks that freedom
which nature declares the common
birthright of mankind. It has grieved
me tenderly to see all Christendom
make the Bible its fetish, and so lose
the priceless value of that free reli
gious spirit which, communing at

i6o

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

first hand with God, wrote its grand
pages, or poured out its magnificent
beatitudes. "Christendom contains the most
intellectual nations of the earth, all
of them belonging to* the dominant
Caucasian race, and most of them oc
cupying regions very friendly to the
development of the highest faculties
of man. Theirs, too, is the superior
machinery of civilisation — political,
ecclesiastical, domestic, social- No
where on earth does the clerical mass
so connect itself with the innermost
of man. Christendom is the bold
leader in all intellectual affairs — arts
of peace and war, science, literature,
skill to organise and administer man
kind. But yet the Christian has no
moral superiority over the Jews, the
Mohammedans, the Brahmins, the
Buddhists, at all commensurate with
this intellectual power. For fifteen
hundred years the Jews, a nation
scattered and peeled, and exposed to
most degrading influences, in true
religion have been above the Chris
tians ! In temperance, chastity,
honesty, justice, mercy, are the lead
ing nations of Christendom before
the South Asiatics, the Chinese, the
islanders of Japan? Perhaps so —
but have these ' Christians ' a moral
superiority over those ' heathens '
equal to their mental superiority?
It is notorious they have not. Why
is this so, when these Christians
worship a man whose religion was
love to God and love to men, and
who would admit to heaven only for
righteousness, and send to hell only
for lack of it ? Because they wor
ship him, reject the natural good
ness he relied upon, and trust in the
' blood of Christ which maketh free
from all sin. ' It is this false theology,
with its vicarious atonement, salva
tion without morality or piety, only
by belief in absurd doctrines, which
has bewitched the leading nations of
the earth into such practical mis
chief. A false idea has controlled the

strongest spiritual faculty, leading men
to trust in 'imputed righteousness,
and undervalue personal virtue. Self-
denying missionaries visit many a
far-off land ' to bring the heathen to
Christ. ' SmaU good comes of it ;
but did they teach industry, thrift,
letters, honesty, temperance, justice,
mercy, with rational ideas of God
and man, what a conversion there
would be of the Gentiles ! Two-and-
thirty thousand Christian ministers
are there in the United States, all
'consecrated to Christ;' many of
them are able men, earnest and de
voted, but, their eyes hoodwinked
and their hands chained by their
theology, what do they bring to pass ?
They scarce lessen any vice of the
State, the press, or the market. They
are to ' save souls from the wrath of
God.' I have preached against the
fundamental errors of this well-com-
pacted theological scheme, showing
the consequences which follow thence,
and seldom entered your pulpit with
out remembering Slavery, the great
sin of America, and these theological
errors, the sacramental mistake of
Christendom. " But I have never forgotten the
great truths this theology contains,
invaluable to the intellect, the con
science, the heart and soul. I have
tried to preserve them aU, with each
good institution which the Church,
floating over the ruins of an elder
world, has borne across that deluge,
and set down for us where the dove
of peace has found rest for the sole of
her foot, and gathered her olive-
branch to show that those devouring
waters are dried up from the face of
the earth. To me the name of
Christianity is most exceeding dear,
significant of so great a man and of
such natural emotions, ideas, and
actions, as are of priceless value to
mankind. I know well the errors,
also, of the doubters and deniers,
who in all ages have waged war
against the superstitious theology of

THE PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

their times, and pulled down what
they could not replace with better.
I have not sat in the seat of the scorn
ful ; and while I warned men against
the snare of the priest, I would not
suffer them to fall into the mocker's
pit. I have taken exquisite delight
in the grand words of the Bible, put
ting it before all other sacred litera
ture of the whole ancient world ; to
me it is more dear when I regard
them not as the miracles of God,
but as the work of earnest men, who
did their uttermost with holy heart.
I love to read the great truths of
religion set forth in the magnificent
poetry of psalmist and prophet, and
the humane lessons of the Hebrew
peasant, who summed up the pro
phets and the law in one word of
Love, and set forth man's daily duties
in such true and simple speech ! As
a master, the Bible were a tyrant ;
as a help, I have not time to tell its
worth ; nor need I now, for my
public and private teachings suffi
ciently abpund in such attempts.
But yet, to me, the great men of the
Bible are worth more than all their
words ; he that was greater than the
temple, whose soul burst out its
walls, is also greater than the Testa
ment, but yet no master over you and
me, however humble men !
" In theological matters, my preach
ing has been positive much more than
negative, controversial only to create.
I have tried to set forth the truths of
natural religion, gathered from the
world of matter and of spirit : I rely
on these great ideas as the chief
means for exciting the religious feel
ings, and promoting religious deeds.
I have destroyed only what seemed
pernicious, and that I might build a
better structure in its place.
"Of late years a new form of
Atheism — the ideal, once thought
impossible — has sprung up ; perhaps
Germany is its birthplace, though
France and England seem equally its
home. It has its representatives in

America. Besides, the Pantheists tell
us of their God, who is but the sum-
total of the existing universe of mat
ter and of mind, immanent in each,
but transcending neither, imprisoned
in the two ; blind, planless, purpose
less, without consciousness, or will,
or love ; dependent upon the shifting
phenomena of finite matter and of
mind, finite itself; a continual be
coming this or that, not absolute
being, self-subsistent and eternally
the same perfection : their God is
only law, the constant mode of opera
tion of objective and unconscious
force ; yet it is better than the
churchman's God, who is caprice
alone, subjective, arbitrary, incon
stant, and with more hate than love.
I have attempted to deal with the
problem of the Pantheist and the
Atheist, treating both as any other
theological opponents : I have not
insulted them with harsh names, nor
found occasion to impute dishonour
able motives to such as deny what is
dearer than life to me ; nor attempted
to silence them with texts from sacred
books, nor to entangle them in
ecclesiastic or metaphysic sophistries,
nor to scare with panic terrors, easily
excited in an Atheistic or a Chris
tian's heart. I have simply referred
them to the primal instincts of human
nature, and their spontaneous intui
tion of the divine, the just, and the
immortal ; then, to what science
gathered from the world of matter,
and the objective history of man in
his progressive development of in
dividual and of social power. I have
shown the causes which lead to honest
bigotry within the Christian Church,
and to honest Atheism without ; I
hope I have done injustice neither to
this nor that. But it was a significant
fact I could not fail to make public,
that, while the chief doctors of com
mercial divinity in the great American
trading towns, and their subservient
colleges, denied the higher law, and
with their Bibles laid humanity flat

1 62

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

before the kidnappers in Cincinnati,
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston,
the so-called Atheists and Pantheists
over all the Northern land revered
the instinctive justice of the soul, and
- said, ' Thou shalt not steal, nor lie.
Thou shalt do no wrong ; 'tis nature's
self forbids!'
"Preaching such doctrines in a
place so public, and applying them
to life, I am not surprised at the
hostility I have met with from the
various sects. In no country would it
have been less, or tempered more
sweetly ; no, nor in any age ; for
certainly I have departed from the
fundamental principle of the Catho
lics and Protestants, denied the fact
of a miraculous revelation given ex
clusively to Jews and Christians,
denied the claim to supernatural au
thority, and utterly broke with that
vicariousness which puts an alleged
revelation in place of common sense,
and the blood of a crucified Jew in
stead of excellence of character. In
the least historic of the New Testa
ment Gospels it is related that Jesus
miraculously removed the congenital
blindness of an adult man, and be
cause he made known the fact that
his eyes were thus opened, and told
the cause, the Pharisees cast him out
of their synagogue. What this mythic
story relates as an exceptional mea
sure of the Pharisees, seems to have
founded a universal principle pf the
Christian Church, which cannot bear
the presence of a man who, divinely
sent, has washed in the pool of
Siloam, and returned seeing and
telling why.
"I knew at the beginning what I
must expect : that at first men
younger than I, who had not learned
over much, would taunt me with my
• youth ; that others, not scholarly,
would charge me with lack of learn
ing competent for my task ; and
cautious old men, who did not find
it convenient to deny my facts, or
answer my arguments, would cry

out, ' This young man must be put
down ! ' and set their venerable
popular feet in that direction. Of
course I have made many mistakes,
and could not expect a theologic
opponent, and still less a personal
enemy, to point them out with much
delicacy, or attempt to spare my feel
ings ; theological warfare is not
gentler than political or military ;
even small revolutions are not mixed
with rose-water. The amount of
honest misunderstanding, of wilful
misrepresenting, of lying, and of
malignant abuse, has not astonished
me ; after the first few months it did
not grieve me ; human nature has a
wide margin of oscillation, and ac
commodates itself to both Torrid and
Frigid Zones. But I have sometimes
been a little surprised at the boldness
of some of my critics, whose mistakes
proved their courage extended beyond
their information. An acquaintance
with the historic development of man
kind, a knowledge of Greek and
Hebrew, familiarity with the meta
physic thought of the human race, is
certainly no moral merit ; but ' in
theologic discussions it is a conveni
ence which some of my opponents
have not always paid quite sufficient
respect to, though they were not
thereby hindered from passing swift
judgment. Criticism is the easiest of
all arts, or the most difficult of all.
"It did not surprise me that other
ministers, Unitarian and Trinitarian,
should refuse to serve with me on the
committee of a college or a school,
to attend the same funeral or wed
ding, to sit on the same bench at a
public meeting, to remain in the same
public apartment, and trade at the
same bookstore, to return my saluta
tion in the street, or reply to my
letters ; that they should invent and
spread abroad falsehoods intended to
ruin me ; but I confess I have some
times been astonished that such men
' could not see any sign of honesty,
of love of truth, of philanthropy, or

THE LECTURER.

163

religion,' in my writings or my life,
but must set down all to ' vanity and
love of the praises of men. ' But ' it
is fit to be instructed, even by an
enemy. ' Let you and me learn from
ours to hate those theological doc
trines which can so blind the eyes
and harden the hearts of earnest,
self-denying men ; let us not imitate
the sophistry and bigotry we may
have suffered from, and certainly have
been exposed to.
" I have found most friendly re-
cngnition where I did not expect it.
Men with adverse theological opinions
have testified to the honest piety they
thought they found in my Writings,
and joined with me in various prac
tical works of humanity, leaving me
to settle the abstract questions of
divinity with the Divine Himself.
Indeed, I never found it necessary to
agree with a man's theology before I
could ride in his omnibus or buy his
quills. Besides, I have found kindly
and generous critics in America, and
still more in England and Germany,
who did me perhaps more than jus

tice, while they honestly pointed ou
what they must regard as my faults.
Though I have been written and
spoken against more than any Ameri
can not connected with political
parties, yet, on the whole, I do not
complain of the treatment I have
received ; all I asked was a hearing :
that has been abundantly granted.
You opened wide the doors, my
opponents rang the bell all Saturday
night, and Sunday morning the audi
ence was there,
Let no fondness for me blind your
eyes to errors which may be in my
doctrine, which must be in my life.
I am content to serve by warning
where I cannot guide by example.
Mortal, or entered on immortal life,
still let me be your minister, to serve,
never your master, to hinder and
command. Do not stop where I
could go no further, for, after so long
teaching, I feel that I have just begun
to learn, begun my work. ' No man
can feed us always;' welcome, then,
each wiser guide who points you out
a better way,"

CHAPTER XV.
The Lecturer.
" Fill thy heart with ever active love, — -
Love for the wicked as in sin he lies ;
Love for thy brother here, thy God above.
Fear nothing ill ; 'twill vanish in its day :
. Live for the good, taking the ill thou must ;
Toil with thy might : with manly labour pray ;
Living and loving, learn thy God to trust,
And He will shed upon thy soul the blessings of the just."
Theodore Parker.

FOUR years before Parker ap
peared in public to preach his
first sermon, he had appeared on the
platform of the Lexington Lyceum
and delivered his first lecture. This
was in the winter of 1832, when he
was twentyrtwo years old, and was
acting as assistant-master in the school
at Boston. His subject was " The
History of Poland," selected on ac

count of the enthusiasm for the Poles
which was then prevailing in New
England. Of how he acquitted him
self upon the occasion we have no
record. When finishing his course
at the Divinity Hall, in the winter of
1836, he gave his second public lec
ture. This was at Concord, the home
of Emerson. We are not told what
the subject was, or how the lecture

164

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

passed off, but, in the journal, Parker
informs us that he passed part of an
evening with Emerson, " truly a most
delightful man," and his wife —
" Emerson once said of her that she
was the soul of faith ; of course her
life is faith put in action ; and what
more noble can be said of anyone ? "
We hear of no other lecturing by
him until the year 1841, when he
complied with a request to deliver a
course of five lectures, in Boston, on
religious matters, and which after
wards developed into the book, "A
Discourse of Matters Pertaining to
Religion." The autumn following,
he delivered in Boston six " Lectures
for the Times," treating of religion,
theology, and of its application to
life. Both these courses were re
peated in several of the New England
towns. After about two years' experi
ence as Minister of the Twenty-eighth
Congregational Society, he decided,
contrary to his previous intentions,
to devote himself largely to public
lecturing. The reasons which led
him to do sq, and his personal ex
periences in this sphere of his labours,
will be best told in hjs own words : —
" To accomplish my wprk," he
wrote in his Experience, '' I must
spread my ideas as widely as possible,
without resulting to that indepency
of advertising so common in America,
There was but one considerable pubr
lishing house in the land that would
continue to issue my works — this only
at my own cost and risk. As it had
only a pecuniary interest therein, and
that so slight in its enormous busi
ness, my books did not have the
usual opportunity of getting known
and circulated. They were seldom
offered for sale, except in one book
store in Boston ; for other States, I
must often be my own bookseller.
None of the Quarterlies or Monthlies
was friendly to me ; most of the
newspapers were hostile ; the New
York Tribune and Evening Post were
almost the only exceptions. So my

books had but a small circulation at
home in comparison with their diffu
sion in England and Germany, where,
also, they received not only hostile,
but most kindly notice, and some
times from a famous pen. But,
another opportunity for diffusing my
thought offered itself in the Lyceum
or public lecture. Opposed by the
four great social forces at home, I
was surprised to find myself becoming
popular in the lecture-hall. After a
few trials I ' got the hang oi the new
school -house, ' and set myself to seri
ous work therein.
" For a dozen years or more, I
have done my share of lecturing in
public, having many invitations more
than I could accept. The task was
always disagreeable, contrary to my
natural disposition and my scholarly
habits. But I saw the nation had
reached an important crisis in its
destination, and, though ignorant of
the fact, yet stood hesitating between
two principles. The one was slavery,
which I knew leads at once to mili
tary despotism — political, ecclesias
tical, social — and ends at last in utter
and hopeless ruin. The other was
freedom, which leads at once to in
dustrial democracy — respect for
labour, government over all, by all,
for the sake of all, rule after the
eternal right as it is writ in the con
stitution of the universe— securing
welfare and progress.
" I knew the power of a great Idea;
and spite of the market, the State,
the Church, the press, I thought a
few earnest men in the lecture- halls
of the North might yet incline the
people's mind and heart to justice and
the eternal law of God — the only safe
rule of conduct for nations, as for
you and me — and so make the
American experiment a triumph and
a joy for all humankind. Nay, I
thought I could myself be of some
service in that work ; for the nation
was yet so young, and the instinct of
popular liberty so strong, it seemed

THE LECTURER.

165

to me a little added weight would
turn the scale to freedom. So I
appointed myself a home missionary
for lectures.
" Then, too, I found I could say
what I pleased in the lecture-room,
so long as I did not professedly put
my thought into a theologic or politi
cal shape ; while I kept the form of
literature or philosophy, I could
discburse of what I thought most
important, and men would listen
one hour, two hours, nay, three
hours ; and the more significant the
subject was, the more freely, pro
foundly, and fairly it was treated, the
more would the people come, the
more eagerly listen and enthusias
tically accept. So I spared no labour
in preparation or delivery, but took
it for granted the humblest audience,
in the least intelligent town or city,
was quite worthy of my best efforts,
and could understand my facts and
metaphysic reasonings. I did not fear
the people would be offended, though
I hurt their feelings never so sore.
' ' Besides, the work was well paid
for in the large towns, while the small
ones did all they could afford — giving
the lecturer for a night more than
the schoolmaster for a month. The
money thus acquired enabled me to
do four desirable things, which it is
not needful to speak of here.
"Since 1848, I have lectured
eighty or a hundred times each year
— in every Northern State east of the
Mississippi, once also in a Slave State,
and on slavery itself. I have taken
most exciting and important subjects,
of the greatest concern to the
American people, and treated them
independent of sect or party, street,
or press, and with what learning and
talent I could command. I put the
matter in quite various forms — for
each audience is made up of many.
For eight or ten years, on an average,
I have spoken to sixty or a hundred
thousand persons in each year, besides
addressing you on Sundays, in the

great hall you throw open to all
comers. "Thus I have had a wide field of
operation, where I might rouse the
sentiment of justice and mercy,
diffuse such ideas as I thought needful
for the welfare and progress of the
people, and prepare for such action
as the occasion might one day require.
As I was supposed to stand nearly
alone, and did not pretend to repre
sent anyone but myself, nobody felt
responsible for me ; so all could judge
me, if not fairly, at least with no
party or sectarian prejudice in my
favour ; and as I felt responsible only
to myself and my God, I could speak
freely : this was a twofold advantage.
I hope I have not spoken in vain. I
thought that by each lecture I could
make a new, deep, and lasting im
pression of some one great truth on
five thoughtful men out of each
thousand who heard me. Don't
think me extravagant ; it is only one
half of one per cent. ! If I spoke but
thus efficiently to sixty thousand in a
winter, there would be three hundred
so impressed, and in ten years it
would be three thousand ! Such a
result would satisfy me for my work
and my loss of scholarly time in this
home mission for lectures. Besides,
the newspapers of the large towns
spread wide the more salient facts and
striking generalisations of the lecture,
and I addressed the eyes of an
audience I could not count nor see.
"Still more, in the railroad cars
and steamboats I travelled by, and
the public or private houses I stopped
at when the lecture was over, strangers
came to see me ; they were generally
marked men — intellectual, moral,
philanthropic — at any rate, inquiring
and attentive. We sometimes talked
on great matters. I made many
acquaintances, gained much miscella
neous information about men and
things, the state of public opinion,
and, perhaps, imparted something in
return. So I studied while I taught

1 66

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

"Nor was this all. I had been
ecclesiastically reported to the people
as a ' disturber of the peace, ' ' an
infidel,' 'an atheist,' 'an enemy to
mankind.' When I was to lecture in
a little town, the minister, even the
Unitarian, commonly stayed at home.
Many, in public or private, warned
their followers 'against listening to
that bad man. Don't look him in
the face I ' Others stoutly preached
against me. So, in the bar-room ' I
was the song of the drunkard,' and
the minister's text in the pulpit. But,
when a few hundreds, in a mountain
town of New England, or in some
settlement on a prairie of, the West,
or when many hundreds, in » wide
city, did look me in the face, and
listen for an hour or two while I
spoke, plain, right on, of matters
familiar to their patriotic hopes, their
business, and their bosoms, as their
faces glowed in the excitement of
what they heard, I saw the clerical
prejudice was stealing out of their
mind, and I left them other than I
found them. Nay, it has often
happened that a man has told me, by
letter or by word of mouth, ' I was
warned against you, but I would go
and see for myself ' ; and when I came
home I said, " After all, this is a man,
and not a devil ; at least, he seems
human. Who knows but he may be
honest, even in his theological notions.
Perhaps he is right in his religion.
Priests have been a little mistaken
sometimes before now, and said hard
words against rather good sort of
men, if we can trust the Bible. I am
glad I heard him. " '
"Judging from the results, now
pretty obvious to whoso looks, and
by the many affectionate letters sent
me from all parts of the North, I
think 1 did not overrate the number
of thoughtful men who possibly
might be deeply and originally in
fluenced by what I said in the
lectures. Three thousand may seem
a large number ; 1 think it is not

excessive. In the last dozen years,
I think scarcely any American, not
holding a political office, has touched
the minds of so many men, by freely
speaking on matters of the greatest
importance, for this day and for ages
to come. I am sure I have uttered
great truths, and such are never
spoken in vain ; I know the effect a
few great thoughts had on me in my
youth, and judge others by what I
experienced myself. Those ministers
were in the right who, years ago,
said, ' Keep that man out of the
lecture-room ; don't let him be seen
in public. Every word he speaks, on
any subject, is a blow against our
religion ! ' They meant against
their theology.
"Such are the causes which brough t
me into the lecture-room. I did
not neglect serving my congregation,
while I seemed only to instruct other
men ; for every friend made in Penn
sylvania or Wisconsin became an
auxiliary in that great cause so dear
to my own people and to me. Nay,
I did not abandon my scholarly work
while travelling and lecturing. The
motion of the railroad cars gave a
pleasing and not harmful stimulus to
thought, and so helped me to work
out my different problems of many
kinds. I always took a sack of
books along with me, generally such
as required little eyesight and much
thought, and so was sure of good
company. WhUe travelling, I could
read and write all day long ; but I
would not advise others to do much
of either ; few bodies can endure the
long-continued strain on eye and
nerve." No one felt more than he himself
afterwards did that in thus labouring
he broke down his once strong con
stitution. The kind of life he some
times led during the lecturing season
was one which no man could have
long followed with impunity. Regular
public lecturingis hard and unpleasant
enough in England, but in a country

THE LECTURER.

167

where the communities are so widely
separated as they are in America the
hardship and inconvenience is largely
increased. Parker himself relates something of
these in the following letter to his
friend, Miss Hunt. It was written in
the railway carriage, while travelling
through New York State : — " If I
don't write you now, I shall have nc
time for next mail, so this little mite
of a pencil scrawl. It won't be worth
much, for I am tired and worn out
with overmuch work and exposure.
Some weeks since, I went to Western
New York ; travelled from Monday
morning till Saturday night, and ex.
pected to have a reasonable dinner
each day, and to sleep quiet in my bed
at night, and so come home sounder
and stronger than when I went away.
' Man proposes and God disposes. ' I
had two tolerable dinners, and one
night in a bed, four nights in railroad
pars. I have not recovered from it
since, but have been slipping behind
hand more and more each week. I
think lecturing is one of the most ad
mirable means of educating the people.
For ten years past, six or eight of
the most progressive and powerful
minds in America have been lecturing
fifty or a hundred times in the year.
Surely some must dance after so much
piping, and that of so moving a sort !
I can see what a change has taken
place through the toil of these mission.
aries. But none know the hardships
of the lecturer's life. Thus : in one
of the awful nights in winter, I went
to lecture at  . It was half charity
I gave up the Anti-Slavery Festival
for the lecture, rode fifty-six miles in
the cars, leaving Boston at half-past
four o'clock, and reaching the end of
the railroad at half-past six — drove
seven miles in a sleigh, and reached
the house of  , who had engaged
me to come. It was time to begin.
I lectured one hour and three-quarters,
and returned to the house. Was
offered no supper before the lecture,

and none after, till the chaise came to
the door to take me back again to the
<»iiroad station, seven miles off, where
1 was to pass the night and take the
cars at half-past six next morning.
Luckily, I always carry a few little
creature-comforts in my wallet. I ate
a seed-cake or two, and a fig with
lumps of sugar. We reached the
tavern at eleven, could get nothing at
that hour, and, as it was a temperance
house, not a glass of ale, which is a
good nightcap. It took three-quarters
of an hour to thaw out : went to bed
at twelve, in a cold room, was called
up at five, had, what is universal, a
tough steak, sour bread, and potatoes
swimming in fat. — — wanted me to
deduct from my poor fifteen dollars
the expenses of my nocturnal ride, and
would have succeeded, but I ' could
not make the change.' Afterwards
 wrote to apologise for the omis
sion of supper. 'Forsan haec olim
memihisse juvabit,' says the hearty
young man ; but to greybeards and
bald heads a little of protinus is worth
a deal of olim. Monday last, at seven,
I walked down to the Lowell Dep8t,
and at eight started for Rouse's Point,
two hundred and eighty-seven miles
off, sick and only fit to lie on a sofa.
A dreadful hard ride ends at nine
P.M., and I find myself in the worst
tavern (pretending to decency) in the
Northern States. Bread which defies
eating, crockery which sticks to your
hands, fried fish as cold as when drawn
from the lake. Rise at half-past four,
breakfast (?) at five, off in the cars at
half- past five, lecture at Malone that
night, lie all day on the sofa, ditto at
Potsdam next day. The third day,
leave Potsdam at nine, and reach
Champlain (if I get there) at half-past
eight, spending ten and a half hours
in travelling by railroad ninety-three
miles ! Thence, after lecture, to
Rouse's Point, and at half-past five
to-morrow morning return to the cars
which are to take me home. Next
wtek, three days in the ' East Coun-

i68

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

ties, ' and the next four days in Central
New York. That, I hope, ends the
business, bating nine or ten more in
April and May. I have been mend
ing all the time since I left home, but
have not taken up all the stitches let
down in the last New York expedi
tion. " Let the reader bear in mind
that, while thus spending his week
days and week-nights, Parker was
every Sunday preaching before his
great audience at the Music Hall, and
during one of the winters also out at
Watertown on the Sunday afternoons,
and the self-martyrdom he was making
becomes very apparent.
In the extract from the Experience
given in this chapter, Parker speaks
of having lectured once in a Slave
State, and on the subject of slavery.
This was at Wilmington, Delaware,
a place where the pro-slavery feeling
was very strong. But notwithstand
ing this, and the warning given by
the gentleman who invited him, to the
effect that the undertaking was danger
ous, that he would be exposed to
insult and, perhaps, to personal vio
lence, Parker, enjoying the prospect
of peril, readily accepted the invita
tion. He prepared a special lecture
for the occasion. When he arrived at
the town he found that the walls had
been covered with placards denouncing
him, and inviting the inhabitants to
give him the opposite of a friendly
reception. A crowd of excited and
adverse people filled the lecture-hall ;
scowling countenances were turned
upon him when he appeared on the
platform, and hints were given that
there were tar and feathers, intended
for him, within easy access. Parker
quietly rose, and announced that his
subject that night was " Rhode Island
and Delaware, the two smallest States
in the Union." First of all he drew
a comparison between the two States,
and showed that Delaware had great
advantages of position, climate, re
sources, historical arid political ante
cedents over Rhode Island, and to

'hear their own State thus extolled
delighted the audience greatly. That,
he said, was as the States ought to be
if things were right. But how were
they? Delaware was poor, unenter
prising, decaying ; Rhode Island was
vigorous, rich, advancing. Why?
Because, in the case of Delaware,
slavery had prevented the promise of
nature from being secured, while in
Rhode Island freedom had wrung
from nature what she otherwise had
not to give. These positions were
established by unanswerable trains of
argument, statistics, and appeals to
common sense, and the manner of
the lecturer was so earnest, can
did; able, that at the close, instead
of the threatened tar and feathers,
Parker was rewarded with a vote of
thanks ! The lion had been bearded
in his own den and successfully over
come. But though Parker was so popular
and acceptable aS a lecturer aU over
America— from Penobscot to the Mis
sissippi — the lecture-courses of Boston
were closed against him. This arose
owing to the arrangement for such
courses generally being in the hands
of those who hated him for his the
ology, and therefore would not give
him an opportunity of speaking on
any other subject. From their point
of view they were wise in this, for,
whatever subject Parker had had to
treat, he must have brought in his
principles, and thereby influenced the
audience in his direction : his prin
ciples were too much the natural out
growth of his own nature for it to
have been otherwise. The Boston
Unitarian and other ministers saw
this, and, along with their dislike of
him, it served to prevent him from
ever Being invited to take part in their
lecture-courses. To counteract this,
in 1858, Parker's own Society com
menced what they called the Frater
nity Course of Lectures. They were
under the direction of a committee
established for charitable and philan-

THE LECTURER.

169

thropic purposes, which was very
active, and did a great deal of good in
its way. Indeed, it was claimed that,
at the time of Parker's death, the
Fraternity connected with his congre
gation was accomplishing more for
the service of humanity than any
other philanthropic organisation exist
ing in Boston. It was from Parker's
congregation, too, that the Vigilance
Committee, which passed four hundred
coloured men and women into Canada
in the course of one year, chiefly came.
The lectures promoted were of a free
and progressive character, like the
principles of the society. Lecturers
and subjects, tabooed by the strait-
laced promoters of the usual courses,
often had an opening found for them
in the Fraternity Course. Men and
women were invited to speak who had
something to say on all the great
humane subjects of the day ; the
audiences were not treated as children,
who must only be allowed to hear
what a pharisaical committee think
is good and safe for them.
The opportunity to lecture in Bos
ton, which the Fraternity Course gave
him, Parker occasionally improved.
It was through it he gave his
admirable biography of Benjamin
Franklin, whioh he first preached in
fragmentary form as a sermon, and
then elaborated into a lecture. As
might be expected of a man who, like
Franklin, had had to fight his way by
perseverance and will, the subject was
a favourite one with Parker. He

thought it out with great care, and
wrote it three times over, once, how
ever, ' through losing the manuscript
on returning from delivering it at
South Boston.
Parker was much pleased with the
formation of the Fraternity in con
nection with his society, especially as
it originated with the members them
selves, and not from him. He hoped
much good from it, and laid out much
work to do with its help. For one
thing, he intended to deliver before it
ten easy lectures on the First Three
Centuries of the Christian Era, and
show how the Christianity of the
Christians, not the more humane and
natural religion of Jesus, developed
itself in ideas — the doctrines of the
Biblical and Patristic books ; in insti
tutions — the special churches, each
a republic at first, with individual
variety of action, but gradually de
generating into a despotic monarchy,
with onlyecclesiastical unityof action ;
and, finally, after compromising with
the Hebrew and classic schemes, how
it became the organised religion of
the civilised world, a new force in it
both for good and evil, the most power
ful organisation on earth. Park er told
his congregation of this intention,
should he recover, when an invalid
at Santa Cruz in 1859 ; also how,
during his sleepless nights the pre
vious autumn, he had sketched out
the plan and arranged the chief details.
He, however, never recovered, and
the lectures remained undelivered.

170

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

CHAPTER XVI.
The Liti'erateur.
" The Pen is mightier than the Sword." — Lord Lytton.

IN the matter of the means used by
the man of letters to express
his thoughts — handwriting — Parker's
was as execrable as his ideas and
composition were grand. Many were
the letters of complaint he received
from his friends upon this matter,
letters no doubt written when pa
tience and perception had been
taxed beyond further endurance. His
friend, the Rev. J. F. Clarke, con
veyed his complaint in a humorous
note, in which he said that it was
a great popular delusion that he
(Parker) was not afraid of saying
what he believed, since he wrote it
so that he could declare at any time
that he had not said it ! Parker
good-humouredly wrote in return :
" Dear Friend, — Find fault with
my handwriting ! Mine ! Me Hercle !
Was ever such fastidiousness dreamed
of ? Why, I write nearly as well as
Dr. Parr. I will lay a wager that,
in three cases out of ten, 1 can de
cipher (pretty accurately) my own
handwriting, even a month after it
has been laid aside. Shame on such
fault-finding ; study the Babylonian,
the Cufic, the Chinese, the Bengalee,
and then you will  It was a
terrible man who taught me to write,
or made the attempt. He set me
near fourscore copies before he suf
fered me to join any two letters.
All that I had created before were
natural celibates, unfit for wedlock."
When he began his ministry, his
handwriting was large, round, and
deliberate ; all the words were fur
nished with the full number of letters,
and there v. ere no cabalistic signs to
make the reader suspect occasional

quotations from the Sinaitic or the
Chinese. As his , writing increased
in quantity it became worse in quality ;
the letters gave up their individuality,
and suffered a kind of pantheistic
absorption into the sense of the word
which was then to be intuitionaUy
conceived. Mr. Weiss thinks that if
a fac-simile (if that were possible) of
a page from the manuscript of his
last projected work was given to the
world, it would trouble the learned
like a problem of strata in geology,
or a monumental inscription in archae
ology. Parker's caligraphy must have
become rather bad as early as 1841,
as is evidenced by his receiving a
letter, saying, " Your good letter
gave me so much pleasure that,
despite the hard work I had, assisted
by my wife, in spelling out some parts
of it, I felt truly grateful for it. I re
flected that the gods gave us no good
thing without labour ; and if, after
digging through the hieroglyphics, I
found a treasure, I had no right to
complain." " Do you know," writes
another friend, ' ' that I am sometimes
puzzled with your handwriting ? Not
but that I am willing to crack any
shell to get at such meat." It was
even too much for the compositors of
the printing-offices, who are prover
bially thought to be able to read any
thing. Sometimes his manuscript,
after baffling all the compositors in
an office, was returned to the editor
of the magazine with an intimation
that they were " ignorant of the lan
guage ! " An editor wrote . him on
one occasion, "Metcalf absolutely
refuses to print from your hand
writing ; it must be copied, or it must

THE LITTERATEUR.

171

be paid double." It appears, how
ever, that ' ' orthodox " compositors
sometimes made the writing an excuse
for getting out of setting distasteful
matter. We will give the reader a
sample of his abbreviations, as con
tained in an extract from a manu
script sermon, and leave him to judge
for himself how difficult it must be
to make it out in rapidly penned
writing. "Iwuld. hae. Rei. Inst, and fr.
tht. I would not take a min. with a
book-Rel., bt. a P. of Ht & Life,
nt. a Pt who thinks man a little
weak DI, by Nt. & God a gt. sg. one
by will, bt. a Man who kn. th. Inf.
Gd. by Ht"
Which may be thus translated : —
" I would have religious instruc
tion, and for that I would not take a
minister with a book-religion, but a
preacher of heart and life ; not a
priest who thinks man a little weak
devil by nature, and God a great
strong one by will, but a man who
knows the infinite God by heart. "
Hh., Hps., Fids., stand for health,
happiness, friends ; Dis. is daugh
ters ; Hty. is history ; 12 H. T. is
1,200,000 ; < > is a symbol mean
ing more or less than ; =ly equally.
He does not appear to have ac
quired any system of ordinary short
hand, such as Byron's or Pitman's.
Perhaps it is better he did not ; for,
in that case, the contents of his
journal and other private memoranda
would have largely remained a sealed
book to other eyes. Like every
thing else, shorthand has its advan
tages and disadvantages : the law of
compensation through aU things does
pervade. Leaving the small matter of hand
writing for the important one of form
ing and expressing ideas, we have
Parker's own testimony that, though
he wrote and composed fluently, he
previously thought slowly. Many of
the literary defects of his compositions
were due to haste, but still more to his

desire to say the best things he could
in the plainest way. He never used
a word of Latin origin when he could
find one of native birth. Still further,
he knew that in his compositions —
especially his sermons — there was an
excess of metaphors, similes, and all
sorts of figures of speech ; but this, he
said, was his nature — he could not help
it if he would. ' ' My mouth I do but
ope, and out there flies — a trope."
He thought this might not always be
natural ; but, as long as it was, he
supposed he must dwell in the
tropics. Parker's first published composi
tions were those contributed to the
Scriptural Interpreter, the little maga
zine which he and two of his class
mates edited during a portion of the
time he was at Divinity Hall. He
was the largest contributor, furnish
ing articles chiefly which reported
his own studies in Biblical interpre
tation — those being at the time the
subjects he was most interested in.
For it he wrote articles on "The
Authenticity and Construction of the
Pentateuch," "The Composition of
the Psalms," " The Dates and Ingre
dients of the Books of Isaiah,"
"The Nature of Prophecy," "The
meaning of the so-called Messianic
Prophecies," and others. In all, he
wrote about forty articles for this
publication ; and these were all writ
ten before he attained his twenty-
sixth year.
In 1839, Parker issued the pamph
let, ' ' The Previous Question between
Mr. Andrews Norton and his Alumni,
moved and handled in a Letter to all
those Gentlemen, by Levi Blodgett."
In 1840 he contributed "A Lesson
for the Day," and "Truth against
the World," to the Dial, a magazine
edited by Margaret Fuller and George
Ripley, and the article on "Strauss'
Life of Jesus" to the Christian
Examiner. Of the latter, he himself
wrote in his journal, "i have just
finished a review of Strauss for the

172

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Examiner. I could not say all I
would say from the standpoint of the
Examiner — for this is not allowable
— but the most the readers of the
paper will bear. If the editor is
shabby, as he was a few days ago, he
will 'decline the article,' ungram-
matical as it may be. I have written
it, however, at his request, and with
no small labour. The reading of six
teen hundred pages like this is some
thing ; and then to consider the study
of the books of UUman, Tholuck, and
the ' Streit Sehriften,' it makes up a
good deal of work. " In 1 841 he con
tributed " The Life of St. Bernard of
Clairvaux " to the Christian Exam
iner, and "Thoughts on Labour,"
and "The Pharisees," to the Dial.
The year 1842 saw him produce
"Primitive Christianity," "German
Literature," " Hollis Street Council "
(the plain-spoken article in which he
held up the miserable conduct of the
Unitarian Council, which sided with
the grog-sellers and against the Rev.
John Pierpont, whom they tried to
turn out of his pulpit for preaching
against vice), and "Thoughts on
Theology" — all contributed to the
pages of the Dial. The next year,
"843, was a still more memorable
one to him, literarily speaking, for in
the spring of that year the "Dis
course of Matters Pertaining to Re
ligion " appeared, and in the summer
his translation of De Wette's " In
troduction to the Old Testament,"
with copious original notes by him
self. Of this great work he thus
gives the history in a letter to a
friend: — "The translation of De
Wette cost me a deal of labour. I
began it when a student of theology
at Cambridge, 1836, and published
it in 1843. Nobody knows how
much toil it cost me. I lived in a
little country village, and had plenty
of time, health, and vigour. It must
contain many errors, and I am some
times astonished that I did the work
so well as it is. It cost me 2000 dol

lars to stereotype it ; I have received
about 775 dollars back again ! So,
adding my interest to my principal —
and that to my outlay for books on
that speciality — it makes a pretty
little sum, not to speak of my toil.
But if I were to live my life over
again I would do the same. I meant
it for a labour of love. It has
had no recognition nor welcome in
America — it served the purpose of no
sect." The year 1845 saw the pub
lication of the " Letter to the Boston
Association of Congregational (Uni
tarian) Ministers touching certain
Matters of their Theology," a large
portion of which we have quoted in
the chapters we have devoted to the
Unitarian Controversy. In 1846 he
contributed his well-known " Sonnets
to Jesus " to the Anti-Slavery pub
lication, the Liberty Bell, but he
had written them some years before.
At the close of 1847, in conjunction
with Emerson and J. E. Cabot,
Parker started the Massachusetts
Quarterly Review, of which they be
came joint editors. It was started
because Parker and his coadjutors felt
that there was a want of a journal
devoted to letters, poetry, art, philo
sophy, theology, politics (in the best
sense of that word), and humanity in
general. Parker hoped much from
such a Quarterly, and tried to induce
the ablest men in America to co
operate with him in the work. In
his own words he wanted " a tremen
dous journal, with ability in its arms,
and piety in its heart." For, "if
there were such a journal, ably con
ducted, it would have two good in
fluences : 1. It would strike a salu
tary terror into all the Ultramontan-
ists, and make them see that they did
not live in the Middle Ages — that
they are not to be let alone dreaming
of the garden of Eden, but are to
buckle up and work. 2. It would
spread abroad the ideas which now
wait to be organised, some in letters,
some in art, some in institutions and

THE LITTERATEUR.

173

practical life. " It was Parker's de
sire to simply be one of the con
tributors, and so he tried to get, first,
Emerson, and then Charles Sumner,
to take the place of editor, but neither
would do so, and though the journal
appeared as having three editors,
practically the conduct of it devolved
upon the already over-busy brain and
pen of Parker. He found a great
difficulty in getting such contributions
as he wanted, and in consequence he
had to do all the more himself. It
was to this journal that he contributed
his articles on " Schwegler," "Baur
on the Gospels," " William Ellery
Channing," "The Political Destina
tion of America," "John Quincy
Adams," "The Writings of Ralph
Waldo Emerson," "Character of
Mr. Prescott as an Historian,"
"Theology in Germany," " Pres-
cott's Conquest of Mexico," &c. The
Massachusetts Quarterly Review, how
ever, proved too thorough and ad
vanced a periodical for the times. It
only lived three years, and it was
chiefly owing to Parker that it lived
so long. There was a dearth of com
petent and willing contributors, and
when, in 1850, the notorious Fugitive
Slave Bill was enacted, the chief
editor felt that it was far more im
portant that he should devote his
energies to opposing that outrage upon
human liberty than go on devoting
them to a magazine for which it was
.evident New England was not as yet
prepared. The essays on "The Education of
the People," and "Ballad Literature,"
and the review of Francis William
Newman's "Hebrew Monarchy," be
long to some time about the year
1848, as also does the article on " The
Administration of the late Mr. Polk."
Some time after 1849, he wrote the
articles on " Hildreth's History of the
United States,"and "Some Thoughts
on the Different Opinions in the New
Testament relative to the Personality
of Jesus." In 185 1, he wrote an

article on " The Like and the Differ
ent," called forth by Mr. Gladstone's
letter on the cruelties practised upon
his subjects by King Bomba, and
showing that worse things were done
in America in connection with slavery
than in connection with despotism in
Naples. In 1852 he published his
" Ten Sermons of Religion," which
he dedicated "To Ralph Waldo
Emerson, with admiration for his
genius, and with kindly affection for
what in him is far nobler than genius. "
The next year he issued ' ' Theism,
Atheism, and the PopulaT Theology,"
also the very able tractate entitled,
" A Friendly Letter to the Executive
Committee of the American Unit
arian Association touching their new
Unitarian Creed, or General Procla
mation of Unitarian Views." In this
he most effectually grinds to powder
the semi-supernatural positions which
the Association had been ill-advised
to take in a declaration of views and
principles issued a short time before.
The article on " Buckle's History of
Civilisation," as also the essay-tale,
"Two Christmas Celebrations, I
and 1 856, " belong to the years 1 85 7- 8,
and it was in the latter year that the
article on "The Material Condition
of the People of Massachusetts " was
written for the Christian Exam
iner. In 1859, " Theodore Parker's
Experience as a Minister " was written
and published, and his last work, a
learned witticism, entitled "A Bumble
Bee's Thoughts on the Plan and Pur
poses of the Universe, " and in which
he hits the philosophers and theolo
gians who treat the present stage of
things as final, and the end for which
all other stages has existed, was writ
ten for Professor Desor's manuscript
album, when he was an invalid, stay
ing with him at Neuchatel.
At the time his last illness took him
away, from home, he had in contem
plation many articles and essays on
such subjects as " The Homeric
Question," ".rEschylus," "The Greek

174

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Drama," "Aristophanes," "Goethe,"
' ' Henrich Heine, " ' ' Marriage, "
"Woman," "Socialism," &c, for
all of which he had read extensively,
and made many preparatory notes.
Another article, for which he had
collected «. great many notes and ex
amples, was one to be entitled "The
Supernatural in Literature." In this
he had no intention of dealing with
what is generally known as the super
natural, but he meant to treat, first,
of violations of ordinary laws in com
position, common sense, common
honesty, and recognition of a common
intelligence ; second, of theological
and religious hypocrisies ; third, cases
of bombast in ancient and modern
literature ; fourth, mistakes in news
papers, pamphlets, sermons, &c,
which unconsciously assert a ridicu
lous impossibility : for example —
" Both the obelisks are in a state of
perfect preservation ; the larger is
about 82 English feet high, and the
other about 336 feet shorter ;" fifth,
cases of American exaggeration, from
reports of southern and western gran
diloquence and congressional appeals.
Part of the article was intended to be
purely literal, as he had noted the
false antitheses in Junius, the tragic
degradations in Seneca's plays, and
the vices of Heine, Coleridge, Rich-
ter, Dryden, Cowley, and Carlyle.
He had also made a curious collec
tion of miracles of all ages and nations,
cases of resurrections, healings/ mi
raculous conceptions, &c. Also he
had collected remarkable prophecies
made by sagacious and far-seeing
men, which received verification, in
ancient and modern times. He used
inferences from these in his ' ' Dis
course of Matters Pertaining to Re
ligion," and elsewhere, but whether
or not he intended to have used them,
had he lived longer, for special arti
cles is not known. Another piece
of literary work he was most anxious
to finish, and one to which he fre
quently alluded as his end drew

nigh, is thus described in a letter to
George Ripley, written in 1859 : — " I
preached a series of sermons on the
' Testimony of the World of Matter
to the Existence and Character of
God,' in 1857-8, which I think the
ablest I ever wrote. I wish I could
live long enough to print them : each
was an hour and a quarter long (hard,
abstruse matter), and I did not preach
more than two-thirds of the MS. I
have not much instinctive love of life,
but just now I should like a year or
two more to finish up some things not
half done. StiU I am ready anytime,
and have never had a minute of sad
ness at the thought of passing to the
immortals. Your friendship has long
been very precious to me, and one of
the great delights of my life. The
volume of sermons I just spoke of I
meant to dedicate ' To George Rip
ley, most genial of critics, most faith
ful of friends.' Take the will for the
deed." But all other unfinished works of
his, as~ indeed any he had finished,
were comparatively small when com
pared with the unfinished one on
" The Development of Religion in
Mankind," which he intended to be
the great book by which he was to
be remembered. As his other occu
pations and health would admit, he
was working on this intended book
for some years before he died, and
his regret at not being able to com
plete it was almost as great as that
of Buckle in connection with another
similar comprehensive literary under
taking. Parker's purpose in setting
about the preparation of this book
was to establish a historical and
philosophical ground for pure theism,
by marking the different epochs of
religious development in the races of
mankind, so that the divine premedi
tation might be discovered, following
a definite plan and purpose parallel
to that which appears in the material
world. In short, he was, twenty
years ago, going' to apply the evolu.

THE LITTERATEUR.

i'75

tion which is now only just coming
into vogue, to religious development,
thus anticipating what is likely to be
the religious philosophy of the future.
He had schemed the work out in
six books. Book I. was to treat
"Of Religion and the Evidence;"
Book II. " Of the Development of
Religion in the Caucasian Race into
various National Forms, to the Time
of Christ;" Book III. "Of the
Moral and Religious Condition of
Mankind at the Birth of Jesus Christ;"
Book IV. " Of the Agreement and
Differences of Christianity with other
Forms of Religion;" Book V. "Of
the Historical Development of
Christianity as a Religion and a
Practice ; " and Book VI. " Of Pro
blems yet to be Solved in the Reli
gion of Mankind." The manuscript
of this worlc, so far as completed, is
contained in about 270 pages of
writing, but also in his journal and
elsewhere he had made notes and
lists of books to be used in the course
of its preparation. From the sample
quotations given by Mr. Weiss in
his Life and Correspondence, we can
judge what a wonderful and compre
hensive work this would have been
had Parker been allowed health and
life to have finished it. He thought,
in the early stages of the work, that
he could complete it in ten years, by
using all the time which he ordi-
nirilyhad at his command for serious
study. But the conflict with American
slavery, into which duty bade him
enter, caused all literary and scientific
pursuits to be cast on one side, and
this book with the rest. "I was
made," wrote Parker, " for a scholar
and a philosopher, but the times call
for a stump-orator." It was not in
him to sit writing books while the
National Conscience was being out
raged. Duty must give way to desire :
the desire become dutiful.
There is great painstaking and
ability to be noticed in all Parker's
literary work, but the leading cha

racteristic is the great conscientious
ness it shows. Especially is this
the case with his critical productions.
"A critic," he once wrote, "ought
only to fear one thing — a falsehood ; "
and this fear led him into the most
careful and extensive examination
before assuming positions or making
assertions. The want of knowledge
of men and subjects, which American
editors and writers who set up to
mercilessly criticise them manifested,
was to him amazing. " I am aston
ished," says he in one place, " at the
boldness of the Americans in passing
judgment on works of the fine arts.
I once rode in a hack with an Ame
rican, aged twenty-one, through the
Via Condotti ; we passed a shop
whose windows were full of cameos.
My companion put his glass up to
his eye, squinted at them, and said,
' Poor things, by Jove ! ' Since then
it has not astonished me to hear the
must sweeping judgments from Ame
ricans — especially women — on paint
ing, sculpture, &c. It is not at all
necessary for the critic to know any
thing about art, or to have any feel
ing for nature, only to have insolence
and a tongue." American literary
criticism he found to exhibit the same
vices. The shortcoming hit by Sidney
Smith, when he said he did not like
to be prejudiced in his criticism by
reading the book he was reviewing,
was more common than uncom
mon. "In America," Parker wroje,
" anybody (or nobody) feels com
petent to pass judgment on all works
of thought, of literature, science, and
art, no matter how ignorant he may
be. So all American editors, with
the rarest exceptions, are ready on
two legs to pronounce judgment on a
book like Buckle's, or Darwin's, or
J. S. Mill's. All they need is pen
and ink ; all else, like reading and
writing, comes by nature. 'Can
you read and write, Patrick ? ' said a
gentleman to a Paddy. ' No doubt
of it, yir honnerr — I niver thried ! '

176

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

was the answer. Jonathan Cock
sure, editor of the National Conser
vative, Spread Eagle, and Universal
Democrat, ' thries ' his hand at criti
cising a work of statesmanship, of
physics, or metaphysics, and finds the
types compose as readily on that theme
as any other, and finds he has be
come a great 'American critic,'
while Patrick is still bothered with
his A B C." Another failing was
the one Parker thus refers to after
reading Villemain : " If I had the
requisite knowledge, I would criticise
the work in the North American or
Christian Examiner ; but the habit,
so common in America, of getting
all your knowledge from the author
you review, and then censuring him,
is villainous and unworthy. Cattle
drink, and then foul the water; so
these critics. Mr. Somebody re
viewed Cox's ' Life of Melancthon,'
getting all his information from Cox,
who had little himself! We need
and must have a new kind of criti
cism. It must be like the German
in its depth, philosophy, all-sidedness,
and geniality. It must have the life,
wit, and sparkle of the French.
What need it to borrow from the
English? Most of our critics are
somewhat shallow men at the best,
and they write often of what they
understand but feebly and super
ficially, and so the result is as it is."
We have already shown how con
scientious he was in his researches
and verifications when preparing bio
graphical discourses such as those he
delivered on John Quincy Adams
and Daniel Webster, and the same
conscientiousness was put into his
magazine work. When preparing to
review Strauss' "Leben Jesus," he
read first of all the sixteen hundred
pages of the work, then all the books
or pamphlets defending or attacking
Strauss, which had appeared up to
the time of his article, then the no
tices in the fortign reviews, and this,
with his previous knowledge of the

German theological field, and his
natural ability, formed the com
petency with which he judged the
book. Another example of the kind
is given in connection with his re
view of Prescott's histories. Before
writing that, he spent all the leisure
time which he could command during
seven months in reading the authori
ties. He read everything which his
author himself had, except some
manuscripts in Mr. Prescott's own
possession, and thus he verified nearly
every citation made in the eight
volumes under review. Another such
Ulustration of his conscientious literary
painstaking comes out in connection
with his membership of the Oriental
Society, when he was appointed to
read an essay on Mohammed. "By
way of preparation for the task, he
renewed his acquaintance with the
Arabic and Spanish languages in
order to obtain original materials.
Then he collected all the books he
could find relating to Mohammed,
till, standing with their titles up,
side by side, they covered a length
of twelve feet oi) his library floor.
These books he read, extracted the
pith from them one by one, and then
felt qualified to write the essay. "
When editing the Massachusetts
Quarterly Review he was equaUy con
scientious with the productions of his
contributors. If he noticed a defect
in a paper, and added a paragraph,
he left it with the writer whether or
not it should appear in the magazine
as in the "proof" forwarded. He
did not, as too many editors do,
fancy that assuming the editorial
function gave him a license to dis
pense with conscience and considera
tion in dealing with the articles of
contributors. In his " Pharisee of
the Printing Press" he lashes the un
conscionable conduct of many of the
editor tribe most severely.
Less than two months- before he
died, he began to write his autobio
graphy up to the age of twenty-one.

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 177

He did this because he thought no
one could tell his early history but
himself. But his nearness to the
point of death prevented him from
writing more than fills about nine
pages of Mr. Weiss' Life. The frag
ment is in three -sections : the first
treating of the material surroundings
of his birthplace, the second of the
human "surroundings of his childhood,

and the third of the period from his
birth to the age of eight. It closes
with the beautiful incident showing
the power of conscience, which made
so deep an impression upon him from
his childhood onward ; and which
was thus one of the latest experiences
of his closing, as of his opening, con
sciousness.

CHAPTER XVII.
The Champion of Conscience and Liberty.
' He's true to God who's true to man ; wherever wrong is done,
To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us ; and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race."
J. G. Whittier.

THOUGH not one of the pioneers
of the American Anti-Slavery
movement, nor amongst those who
were spared to see its triumph, Theo.-
dore Parker was its most effective
worker and greatest leader. He was
constrained to labour against slavery
more than any other concrete wrong,
because he felt it to be the greatest of
all, "the sum of all villanies,"and
the most popular, the wanton darling
of the American Government. He
became acquainted with it in his early
childhood, and learned to hate it even
then, when, though he might not
comprehend the injustice of the prin
ciple, he could yet feel the cruelty of
the fact. When he kept school in
Watertown, Mr. Francis observed
that he never approved of slavery or
defended it, or was silent when others
spoke in its favour. He then felt
that it was an inhuman system, a
blunder in economics, and a blot on
American institutions. When at col
lege, he read with sympathetic ap
proval the "Letter on Slavery" by
Dr. Channing; and the following
extract from a letter written to Miss
Cabot, when he was on a visit to

Washington, near the end of his
college term, shows that his mind
was kept alive to the question : —
' ' Plenty of negroes, of course, one
sees here. I saw in the paper of
to-day an advertisement offering cash
, for 700 negroes of both sexes. That
I sounds harsh to Northern ears. They
are a queer set, these negroes ; some
of them are very merry, dancing and
capering about on the sidewalk as if
they had nought to do but dance. I
saw two negro lovers walking arm-in
arm, cooing and billing, as if they
could not restrain their joy in one
another's presence. Why should
colour prevent them? " He began to
preach against slavery early, but used
great circumspection ; for he knew
the. vulgar prejudice in favour of all
successful tyranny, and wished his
few hearers thoroughly to accept the
principle of justice and apply it to
this as to all wrongs. But even in
the little meeting-house at West Rox
bury, though some of the audience
required no teaching in this matter,
the very mention of American slavery
as wicked at first offended all his
hearers who had any connection with
N

178

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

the Democratic party. Some said
they could see no odds between
claiming freedom for a negro slave,
and "stealing one of our oxen," the
right to own cattle including the
right to own men ! But as, little by
little, he developed the principle of
true democracy, showing its root in
the love of our neighbour as our
selves, which Jesus both taught and
loved, and of that eternal justice
which comes even to savage bosoms,
and showed how repugnant slavery
was to both — gradually all the more
reflective and humane drew over to
the side of freedom ; and they who
at first turned their faces to the floor
of their pews when he announced
slavery as the theme for that day's
sermon, ere many years turned on
him eyes flashing with indignation
against wrong when he told the tale
of the national wickedness ; and they
subsequently gave him the heartiest
sympathy in his efforts to moralise the
opinions and practice of the peopla
One of the sermons thus preached
— in 1841 — at West Roxbury against
slavery was re-delivered by request
the next year, and afterwards pub
lished. The same year he was ap
pealed to on behalf of a fugitive slave
named Latimer, for whom the aboli*
tionists were asking the intercession
of ministers of religion, and who
subsequently escaped while his exa
mination was pending. Parker re
plied : — ' ' Perhaps you feel a stronger
interest than I do in the welfare of
Latimer and of the slaves in general.
It must be a very strong one if it is
so. But I will not boast of my zeal.
No man can be zealous enough in the
cause of humanity." Latimer had
been arrested under a fugitive-slave
enactment which had been passed in
1793. The occurrence called forth
'J he Latimer Journal, a revolu
tionary sheet published by Dr. Bow-
ditch, assisted by leading anti-slavery
writers, Parker being one. What
was probably his first anti-slavery

article, in the form of an Eastern
allegory, appeared in this journal.
The arrest also led Dr. Bowditch,
F. S. Cabot, and Dr. Channing, as
the Latimer Committee, to obtain
64,526 names in Massachusetts to a
petition for a personal liberty bill,
which was granted by the legislature.
This was after Latimer's escape, and
intended as a prevention of any future
similar attempts at kidnapping.
In 1842 Parker had become so
deeply interested in the question that
he entreated a lady friend, who was
leaving for Georgetown in Virginia,
to make careful inquiries on the spot,
and to communicate what she learnt.
But it was in 1845, at the time when
commencing his career as a preacher
in Boston, that he became engrossed
with the consideration of the vile
domestic institution as never before.
For while in his youth, as he tells us,
"Slavery was admitted to be an
evil, commerciaUy profitable, but
morally wrong — an exceptional mea
sure, which only the necessity of
habit might excuse, but -which nothing
could justify — of later years it was de
clared a ' moral good,' ' the least
objectionable form of labour,' fit for
Northern whites not less than African
negroes, one of those guide-board
instances which indicate the highway
of national welfare. For some years
slavery had been the actual first
principle of each Federal Administra
tion ; to this all interests must bend,
all customs and statutes conform, and
the nation's two great documents, con
taining their programme of political
principles and of political purposes,
must be repudiated and practically
annulled; the Supreme Court had
become only the Jesuitical propa
ganda of slavery." And when the
ambition of the slave-power became
more insolent by what it fed upon,
and the North still tamer and more
servile under the bridle and the whip
of such as were horsed thereon, he
felt that there was a line of duty

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 179

marked out for him other than that
of the student which he had marked
out for himself. He seldom entered
his pulpit without remembering that
he did so in a land where church
members were not more numerous
than slaves, as many " communing
with God " by bread and wine, so
many communing with man by chains
and whips ; and that not only the
State, press, and market, but also the
Church, took a " South-side view of
slavery," as indeed she did of each
other wickedness presently popular
and of "good report ! "
He began his Boston opposition to
slavery by looking up the statistics on
the general subject, and preparing
material for a History of Slavery
among the Romans, its causes, effects,
and extinction : a work which was
not written, but the materials thus
gathered were made, otherwise, to
do good service. The same year he
looked up and collected the facts
respecting the introduction and do
mestication of slavery in America.
Soon he became so deeply engrossed
in the subject that henceforward his
money, his time, his mind, were all
freely devoted to the anti-slavery
agitation. He attended Anti-Slavery
Conventions all over the Northern
States, delivering powerful addresses ;
he rapidly passed from state to state
with ponderous lectures that were
arguments, historical disquisitions,
harangues, all in one. From Sunday
to Sunday he thundered at the evil,
and at all who lent it support, from
Ijhe pulpit of the Melodeon or the
TWusic HaU. He roused the lagging,
urged the hesitating, cautioned the
faltering, praised the valiant, in
structed the ignorant, denounced the
faithless— he was the life and soul of
the abolition movement. As Daniel
O'Connell said of the English that
they needed to be told a thing a
hundred times over before they paid
attention to it, so Parker had his
anti-slavery formulas, which he re

peated in sermon, speech, lecture,
and letter with tireless iterations.
These were: — (1) Freedom may put
down slavery by due course of law ;
(2) Slavery may put down freedom
by due course of law ; (3) Slavery
and freedom may draw swords and
fight. These were propositions which
he illustrated and amplified in all
manner of ways. So that, however
soon the reasoning and Ulustrations
might pass away from the minds of
his bearers, his formula, with its in
evitable and dread alternatives, was
sure to remain and fructify. "T
wonder," he wrote in 1845, "if some
good result will not follow the con
stant preaching of truth ! It must
tell at length ; not in my day, but it
will tell at last. At this early age of
the country, la few good men of great
ideas can do a great work, that will
make a mark on the nation for ever.
It needs not many to do this, but
much. I am resolved to spend what
little strength I have in this way.
What happens to me I care little
for ; but the welfare of men I think
may be advanced by my humble
efforts." In 1846 an event occurred in Boston
which was the first of several similar
outrages upon individual freedom, and
under which the lovers of the divine
principle in the city writhed with
mortification. A vessel owned by a
Boston citizen, and manned by New
England men, arrived in the harbour
from a voyage to New Orleans. In
the hold a poor wretched slave was
found secreted, almost suffocated, and
half dead with fear. He was trying
to escape from slavery, but the in
human owner of the vessel had him
shipped back to New Orleans, and
restored to his ' ' master." The hearts
of many of the Boston citizens were
aroused at this indignity, and a great
meeting was called in Faneuil Hall,
over which John Quincy Adams pre
sided. Parker was one of the main
movers in this popular protest, and it

l8o

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

was on this occasion that he made his
first speech in ' ' the cradle of liberty,"
as Faneuil Hall came to be called.
At the meeting a Vigilance Committee
was formed, composed of the leading
anti-slavery men of the day, to pre
vent, if possible, a similar outrage on
human Uberty being again perpetrated
in the city. Parker was made a member
of the executive, and, in what was
done afterwards, urinated much of its
action. The same year the Rev. Charles T.
Torrey died of consumption in a
Maryland prison, where he had been
confined for enticing slaves from their
masters. He was "orthodox," and
had told Parker to his face that he
was an "infidel, "but notwithstanding
this, as he had set free over 200 slaves
before he fell, and died in the dis
charge of his duty, Parker honoured
him, and placed him high on his list
of martyrs. The corpse .was brought
to Boston for interment ; the service
was announced to take place in one
of the churches, but this .was not
allowed, and it had to be gone through
in the Tremont Temple. Parker,
though ill at the time, and the weather
inclement, came from West Roxbury
to attend the funeral, and lamented
that more was not made of the event.
"We are too dead," he wrote, "so
sold to money that it takes a terrible
blow to cut through the golden skin
that covers the sins of our age. Where
are the Churches that honour the
martyr ? Did the Church of the Pha
risees at Jerusalem honour the first
Christian martyr, just as the Church
at Boston honours this ? "
The reader will better understand
such reflections when he remembers
that the Abolition movement, even
up to the time of the late Civil War,
was not popular in America. Interest
in slavery, prejudice against the negro,
fear of disruption of the Union, and
other causes, made Abolitionists to be
looked upon a's "fools and fanatics."
Up to the time of the war, there were

more persons in America in favour of
slavery than against it, and this was
largely the case with ministers of re
ligion, including the Unitarian ones.
Many of these preached sermons in
favour of slavery, and contended, with
much reason, that the Bible allows it.
At meetings of the Unitarian Asso
ciation, ministers rose and fiercely
attacked the anti-slavery movement,
contending that its advocates sought
to destroy existing institutions, to pull
down Church and State, to build
up an institution, and put them
selves therein, and that they cared less
for the advancement of the slave than
for their own advancement. Even
Dr. Channing's congregation would
not allow an anti-slavery meeting to
be held in their chapel, nor the an
nouncement of one, held elsewhere,
to be made from the pulpit. Lloyd
Garrison had often to deliver his lec
tures in the lecture-halls of the Secu
larists, because cf every church and
school in the town being closed against
him. Of course, there were noble
exceptions among the Unitarian as
among the other ministers. There were
men like John Pierpont, S. J. May,
Thomas W. Hjgginson, Dr. Furness,
and others, who were in the van of
the agitation from the earliest. Dr.
Channing did noble service, but even
he had treated Lloyd Garrison and lus
movement, for years, with neglect, re
fusing evento answer letters appealing
to him to help in the Abolition cause ;
and Dr. Dewey, another prominent
Unitarian minister, declared in public
that he would send his nearest rela
tive back into slavery rather than not
comply with an infamous slavery en
actment ! "I am amazed," wrote
Parker to the Rev, S. J. May, " at the
way good men and politicians look at
the matter — amazed at their silence."
In December, 1847, Parker pub
lished a pamphlet entitled, ' ' A Letter
to the People of the United States
touching the matter of Slavery, '' which
has been described as "a model of

THE CHAMIION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 181

terse composition, with an earnest
ness as deep as Garrison's, and ani
mated by a wisdom as calm as Chan
ning's." This publication brought
him several long letters from slave
owners in the South which are curiosi
ties of literature. In one the bluster
ing writer addressed Parker as ' ' repre--
sentative of Beelzebub's heart," and
told him, "You Negrophilists may
write and publish for ever in your
style, and with your matter, without
striking the Southern heart, or en
listing its sympathies. Until and only
until you prove by the Bible collec
tively — for it is a coUection of theo
logic truths in its own stability, un-
chismatic — that God did not allow
slaves through Moses' prophetic writ
ings to the Israelites, and that Jesus
Christ, instead of being silent, and St.
Paul coherent, had been of your own
conclusion, that ' was a sin without an
excuse. ' This is the great point you
have evaded. Indeed, the whole con
troversy between slave-holders and
anti-slavites hinges- on the proofs from
God's book — God's will— for either
side ! Till then, Heaven forbid we
should arrogate to condemn Moses,
and to sneeze, as you, at the Creator ! "
And thus he continued over several
pages of foolscap. Notwithstanding
the spirit and absurdity of the epistle,
Parker wrote a long and philosophic
reply to it, as he did to several others,
more or less like it, received from
Southern slave- owners.
If thus Southern men wrote to him,
the reader will not be surprised to
hear that the Southern- press did not
spare "that mad parson," as they
termed him. Especially did The
Charleston Courier distinguish itself
by the bitterness of its attacks.
Parker answered it by its own adver
tisements, published in the very issues
in which he was so coarsely assailed.
In these, black human beings were
offered for sale or exchange, as animals
and chattels are in the advertisements
of ordinary newspapers. Bargains

were offered of negroes "old but
vigorous," "fine and lively," "valu
able negroes," "children nine years
old," "four years," "six months,"
' ' an intelligent dark woman. " Mixed
up with these were other advertise
ments of " oxen and stallions on sale,"
" a young buffalo and his harness,"
' ' a good cook in the flower of his
age." We need hardly add that
Parker's peculiar answer gave him the
best of the editor-bully.
The same month the " Letter " was
published, he delivered an address on
slavery at Faneuil Hall, for which
he had- compiled comparative tables
showing how, for many years, the free
states of America had outstripped the
slave ones in the various accompani
ments of civilisation. -\
By this time slavery had become)
the burning- question of the time, and\
men seeing Parker's deep interest in
it, and his great ability in treating it,)
it was suggested to him that if he!
were in Congress he would have a
better chance of serving the antij
slavery and similar causes than in the
pulpit, " To which," answered Parken
"there are two objections. I. No\
body would send me. I don't believe)
any town in Massachusetts would give)
me any post above that of a hog-'
reeve, and I don't feel competent for
that office : a man in spectacles could
not well run after swine. 2. Politics
are not my vocation, nor yet my desire.
I aim to labour for ideas, to' set men
a-thinking. I feel as if bom for a
pulpit, if for anything. If I could be
well — well enough to work, to do a-
man's duty — I should be glad. " He
saw, too, that his position, as an in
dependent preacher and lecturer, was
after all a better one for his purpose
than he could have by becoming a
politician. " I am," he wrote, " re
sponsible to nobody, and nobody to
me. But it is not easy for Mr. Sum
ner, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Chase to
say all of their thought, because they
have a position to maintain, and they

1 82

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

must keep in that position. The
political reformer is hired to manage
a mill owned by the pedple, turned
by the popular stream ; to grind into
anti-slavery meal such corn as the
people bring him for that purpose,
and other grain also into different
meal. He is not principal and owner,
only attorney and hired man. He
must do his work so as to suit his
employers, else they say, 'Thou
¦mayest be no longer miller.' The
non-political reformer owns his own
mill, which is turned by the stream
drawn from his own private pond ;
he put up the dam, and may do what
he will with his own : ron it aU night,
on Sunday, and the Fourth of July ;
may grind just as he likes, for it is his
own com." Thus, he concluded, it
was for him to excite the sentiment
and give the idea, and leave to the
politicians to organise them into law
afterwards. Hence, too, though no
party politician, he believedin politics ;
and, unlike the abolitionists.the wanted
to make use of politics for anti-slavery
ends, himself standing above them.
While he appealed to conscience and
the eternal law, he " electioneered "
with all his might. He cared not for
the points of constitutionality or other
wise of the slave laws, which troubled
ordinary politicians ; he only saw that
the rights of human beings were being
trodden under the feet of unprincipled
men, and that their conduct was en
dangering the success of democratic
institutions, the dream of history, and
humanity's hope. He, therefore, felt
:that he was called upon to strive to
encompass the destruction of slavery
by any and all moral means which
presented themselves to his hand.
It was, however, in 1850 that the
greatest indignation was felt by the
Abolitionists, for in that year the slave
•power, backed by Daniel Webster,
who carried with him the wealth,
eminence, and social respectability of
Massachusetts, passed the infamous
Fugitive Slave BUI, which practically

opened up the whole North as a hunt
ing-ground for Southern masters who
had had slaves escape from them into
the non-slave states.
The passing of that bad law was a
great trial to Parker, but hardly less
painful to him was the unexpected
declension which Webster showed
then and subsequently. He felt that
the great statesman had now for
saken his pristine purity of character,
and begun to care more about the
road to the Presidential chair than to
the kingdom of heaven. Hitherto,
Parker had admired him intensely,
giving his portrait the place of honour
in his study .; but now he took the
likeness down, kissed it sadly, and put
it out of sight. When Webster de
clared that it was the duty of all to
obey the Fugitive Slave Act because
it was the law of the .country, and
ridiculed the idea that there could be
any law higher than the statutes of
men, Parker answered him in a dis
course on the text, "Righteousness
exal teth a nation, but sin is a reproach
to any people" — a manifesto which for
lofty and piercing irony is, perhaps,
unsurpassed in the English language.
He asked whether, after all, it had
not been the duty of Daniel to have
obeyed Darius, when the king for
bade him to pray to God ; whether
the parents of Moses ought not to
have drowned their infant son in the
Nile in obedience to the decrees of
Pharoah ; whether the Apostles ought
not to have relinquished their preach
ing of the Gospel at the behest of
the Sanhedrim. He referred to
another case reported in the Bible
with reference to one concerning
whom " the chief priests and Phari
sees had issued a commandment, that
if any man knew where he were, lie
should show it that they might take
him. " ' ' Judas Iscariot, " he went on,
" has rather a bad name in the Chris
tian world : he is called ' the son of
perdition,' in the New Testament,
and his conduct is reckoned a ' trans-

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 183

gression ; ' nay, it is said the devil
' entered into him,' to cause this
hideous sin. But all this it seems
was a mistake ; certainly, if we are
to believe our ' republican ' lawyers
and statesmen, Iscariot only fulfilled
his 'constitutional obligations,' It
was only ' on that point, ' of betraying
his Saviour, that the constitutional
law required him to have anything to
do with Jesus. He took hfs ' thirty
pieces of silver' — about fifteen dollars ;
a Yankee is to do it for ten, having
fewer prejudices to conquer — it was
his legal fee, for value received. True,
the Christians thought it was 'the
wages of iniquity,' and even the Phari
sees — who commonly made the com
mandment of God of none effect by
their traditions— dared not defile the
temple with this ' price' of blood ; '
but it was honest money. It was as
honest a fee as any American com
missioner or deputy will ever get for
a similiar service. How mistaken we
are ! Judas Iscariot is not a traitor ;
he was a great patriot ; he conquered
his 'prejudices,' performed 'a dis
agreeable duty' as an office of 'high
morals and high principle ; ' he kept
the 'law' and the 'Constitution,'
and did all he could to 'save the
Union ;' nay, he was a saint, 'not a
whit behind the very chiefest of the
apostles.' ' The law of God never
commands us to disobey the law of
man.' Sancte Iscariote, ora pro nobis."
So Parker declared before his great
congregation that he should, on the
very first opportunity, violate the vile
enactment, come what might come —
a declaration which was repeiyed with
loud clapping of hands,
Under this brutal law it was en
acted that whoever sheltered a slave
escaping to freedom, should be liable
to a fine of a thousand dollars and
six months imprisonment in gaol.
As might be expected, its adoption
produced great consternation among
the escaped slaves living in the New
England towns. More than forty fled

from Boston alone within three days
of the bill being signed by the Presi
dent, These poor creatures had thus
to make sacrifices of their little
properties, lose their employment,
break up family ties, and expose
themselves to a melancholy and un
certain future. Indignation meetings
were held, and Vigilance Committees,
whose duty was to prevent fugitives
from being arrested if possible, or to
furnish legal aid and raise every ob
stacle to their rendition, were formed.
Thus, to attempt to enforce the law and
retake quondam slaves was made dif-
cult, if not dangerous ; and in conse
quence few such attempts were made.
Still, in about six years more than two
hundred negroes were thus arrested.
About a dozen of these proved that
they never had been slaves, and were
liberated ; but other negroes, equally
free, but lacking ready proof, were
carried off into slavery. Many fugi
tives were caught by their masters,
and taken back without even the
formality of appearing before a com
missioner. About half a dozen were
forcibly rescued from the officers of
the law.
In Boston, the old Vigilance Com
mittee, formed at the time of Latimer's
arrest, was called into active exertion,
and Parker became its most energetic
moving spring. His was the first
name on the executive committee, and
associated with him were Wendell
Phillips, S. G. Howe, Edmund Jack
son, Charles M. Ellis, Charles K.
Whipple. He was made chairman of
the committee appointed to act in
sudden emergencies. He worked all
through as if he had been engaged
in a hotly contested election, drawing
up resolutions, writing placards, ad
vising, acting.
On the 14th of October, 1850, there
was a meeting bf Boston citizens, to
the number of nearly four thousand
in Faneuil Hall, to denounce the
bill, and take measures to defeat its
operations in the city. C. F. Adams

1 84

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

presided, and Parker and Wendell
Phillips were the chief speakers, and
the only ones who were sufficient for
the occasion. Parker wrote of his
speech in a letter: — "Then I said a
few words ; told the people a few
stories about the feelings and perils
of the blacks now ; and put several
cases, asking them what they would
do if the marshal tried to carry off a
man adjudged to be a slave. They
answered well, and promised to go
with only the arms their mothers gave
them and rescue the slave." The
'feeling of this meeting was so intense
that the strongest sentiments were
most tumultuously applauded. One,
who was probably present at the
meeting, thinks that if the slave
holders had only been there, and had
seen the determination displayed, they
would have given up all thought of
attempting to fetch fugitives away
from Boston. As they were not there,
however, they did not, and subse<
quently, in four cases, attempts were
made to put the infamous law into
operation in that city.
The first was one in which Parker
had an especial interest, for the two
negroes sought to be captured— Wil
liam Craft and his wife Ellen — had
been known to him from the time of
their coming to Boston; They had
attached themselves to his congre
gation, and he had found them re
spectable, orderly, estimable people.
Formerly they had been slaves at
Macon, Georgia. William was a
joiner and hired himself (!) of his
owner — "a very pious man," "an
excellent Christian " — for about forty-
five pounds a year. Naturally he and
his wife were not satisfied with this
arrangement, and they cherished for
years the plan of escape. They
saved a little money, and bought,
piece by piece, of different dealers,
at different times, by stealth, a suit of
gentleman's clothes. Ellen dressed
herself in these, and William attended
her as her servant, and in this man

ner they escaped to Bostpn, coming
more than nine hundred miles through
the enemy's country. Most of what
occurred when the slave-hunters came
to arrest therh is given in Parker's
journal, as follows: — "Returning
home from Plymouth late in the after
noon of the 25th, found Howe had
been at our house, to warn me of
slave-hunters in town ; found the
Legal Committee had been in at
tendance most of the day. A slave-
hunter is here in Boston, named
Hughes, and warrants are out for the
arrest of Ellen Craft and her husband.
Smith says Craft is armed, and EUen
secreted; Informal meeting of Vigi
lance Committee at the office of New
Englander. Craft has consented to
be hid to-night at the south end of
Boston. Mr.  took him up in a
coach. Ellen is to-night at  , in
— — Street. So all is safe for this
night. 26th. — It seems that a miser
able fellow by the name of Knight came
here to Boston from Macon, Georgia,
sent out by the former owner of the
Crafts. He used to work in the
cabinet-shop with William, but was
dull and imbecile ; so that his chief
function was to wait upon the rest
There came with him a Mr. Hughes,
who is the gaoler at Macon. Last
Tuesday, Knight called on Craft at
his shop, expressed pleasure to see
him, &c. ; Craft asked him if he came
on alone ? ' Yes, there was nobody
with him.' But he wanted William
to go round with him, to show him
the streets and the curiosities of Bos
ton. No I William was on his guard,
was ' busy,' 'had work to attend to,'
and could not go. The next day he
came again, wanted William to go
round the Common with him ! No,
he could not go. Then he told Wil
liam, ' Perhaps you would like to
come to the United States Hotel and
see me ; your wife would like to come
also, and talk about her mother. If
you will write, I will take the letter
home.' "

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 185

Hughes next sent a very friendly ( I)
letter inviting him to come and bring
his "wif" with him to see him at
the hotel, as he. was leaving "eirley,"
next day. But Craft continued too
crafty for him. After hiding unwill
ingly for a short time, Craft armed
himself, went about his business as
usual, and took care of himself after
his own fashion. He is said to have
told a police officer that he would
rather be drawn and quartered than
carried back into slavery. Finding
that dodging would not do, Hughes
declared himself by applying to Judge
Woodbury, a Democrat, for warrants
of arrest against Craft and his wife,
which he obtained. Upon this the
1 Vigilance Committee brought an ac
tion against the kidnappers for defa
mation of character, they having
charged William with being a thief,
in that he stole the clothes he wore,
as well as his own person, when he
ran away. The writs were served,
and the arrests were made amidst
considerable excitement, the crowd
following, and muttering ominous
threats against the "slave-hunters."
Knight declared, as he and his com
panion were being conveyed to the
sheriff's office, "I've come for Wil
liam and Ellen Craft, and nobody
else ; and damn 'em, I'll have them
if I stay here to all eternity ; and if
there are not men enough in Massa-;
chusetts to take them, I'll bring some
from the South. It is not the niggers
I care about ; but it's the principle of
the thing" Though the judge dc
manded bail to the amount of over
2,000/. — that being the amount of
damages laid — there were two rich
men in Boston degraded enough to
come forward and give it. When the
prisoners were released, Knight slip
ped out at the back door, to the dis
appointment of the crowd who had
prepared for him a reception more
demonstrative than genial. As Hughes
entered the carriage which had been
brought to take him away, a negro

jumped up behind, dashed in the
glass, and would have shot the scoun
drel, had not one of the committee
dragged him down. After that the
carriage was chased a long distance
till completely out of Boston.
A meeting of the Vigilance Com
mittee was then held. Fresh precau
tions were taken ; a poster describing
the kidnappers, such as Parker was
wont to write, was displayed on the
walls of the city, and the movements
of the two men were watched.
In the meantime Parker was calling
now and again upon the fugitives and
cheering and encouraging them. " I
saw William this morning," writes
he. " He seemed cool and resolute.
I told him I thought it was no use
to put the matter off and cut off the
dog's tail by inches. If he were to
take the bull by the horas, he had
better do it to-day, rather than to
morrow. So he thought. I inspected
his arms — a good revolver, with six
caps on, a large pistol, and small ones,
a large dirk and a short one. All
was right; "
By previous arrangement, the com
mittee, to the number of sixty, assem
bled at six o'clock, the morning follow
ing the day of the bond-giving, at the
hotel where Knight and Hughes were
staying, filling all the passages, and
avowing their determination to watch
the kidnappers. Parker and a com
panion took up their position in the
passage in which the door of their
room was situated, the two passing
and repassing each other, pacing the
corridor like sentries on a beat. The
landlord came in a passion and in
sisted that they should leave. Parker
refused to do so until he was allowed
to see the two men, and ultimately the
landlord not only procured the com
mittee an interview but promised to
rid his house pf his two inconvenient
guests. At the interview Parker spoke
for the committee. He told the men
he was a minister, and came, as a
friend, in the cause of peace, and

186

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

with a desire to save them from the
violence of the populace. The in
dignation against them was so great
that their safety could not be gua
ranteed another night, nor could it
possibly be allayed while they re
mained in Boston. He told them that
he had stood between them and vio
lence once, but he could not promise
to do so again ; and for their own sakes
he counselled them to leave the city
at once. They both complained that
they were Ul-treated, and Knight also
blustered a great deal about his cou
rage and what he would do ; but Parker
saw that they were thoroughly fright
ened, and- bidding them good morn
ing he came away. How frightened
they were was evidenced by the fact
that, a few hours later, they left
Boston for New York, and were never
again heard of in Boston, The danger
they were in was, as Parker had re
presented to them, great. They could
not go out without a mob collecting
about them, and crying "The slave-
hunters ! there go the slave-hunters ! "
and this no doubt would soon have
led to personal attacks upon them
being made. Another thing which
made it desirable that they should
be gone was a threat of the President
— who was annoyed at the resistance
of the Bostonians to the Fugitive
Slave Act — to send 600 or 700
soldiers to the city to dragoon the
citizens into submitting to the law.
Had this been done, there must have
been bloodshed.
During the time of the greatest
danger, Parker concealed Ellen Craft
in his own bouse, keeping the entrance
door chained, and writing his sermon
that week with a loaded pistol lying
on his desk with which to resist her
capture. He wrote in the journal
that he made no doubt he should have
to go to gaol that winter, and planned
work to be done there in the event of
his incarceration. As he himself re
marked, it was indeed a pretty state
'of things when a minister was liable

to a fine of 1,000 dollars, and to be
sent to gaol for six months, for shel
tering a member of his own congre
gation, who had violated no law of
God, and only taken possession of
herself. The Crafts had long been married,
but their marriage lacked the solem
nity of law, and, now the slave-
hunters were gone, they wished to be
married in accordance with the law
of Massachusetts, and asked Parker
to perform the ceremony. He readily
consented, and the rite was performed
at a boarding-house for coloured
people. We will aUow Parker him
self to describe what took place : —
"Before the marriage ceremony, I
always advise the young couple of the
duties of matrimony, making such
remarks as suit the peculiar circum
stances and character of the parties.
I told them what I usually teU all
bridegrooms and brides. Then I told
Mr. Craft that their position de
manded peculiar duties of him. He
was an outlaw; there was no law
which protected his liberty in the
United State's ; for that he must de
pend on the public opinion of Boston,
and on himself, If a man attacked
him, intending to return him to
slavery, he had a right, a natural
right, to resist the man unto death ;
but he might refuse to exercise that
right for himself, if he saw fit, and
suffer himself to be reduced to slavery
rather than kill or even hurt the slave-
hunter who should attack him. But
his wife was dependent on him for
protection ; it was his duty to pro
tect her, a duty which it seemed to
me he could not decline. So I charged
him, if the worst came to the worst,
to defend the- life and liberty of his
wife against any slave-hunter at all
hazards, though in doing so he dug
his own grave and the grave of a
thousand men. Then came the mar
riage ceremony; then a prayer such
as the occasion inspired. Then I
noticed a Bible lying on one table and

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 187

a sword on the other; I saw them
when I first came into the house, and
determined what use to make of them.
I took the Bible, put it into William's
right hand, and told him the use of
it. It contained the noblest truths in
the possession of the human race, &c. ,
it was an instrument he was to use to
save his own soul, and his wife's soul,
and charged him to use it for its pur
pose, &c. X then took the sword, I
put that in his right hand, and told
him if the worst came to the worst to
use that to save his wife's liberty, or
her life, if he could effect it in no other
way. I told him that I hated violence,
that I reverenced the sacredness of
human life, and .thought there was
seldom a case in which it was justifi
able to take it ; that if he could save
his wife's liberty in ino other way, then
this would be one of the cases, and as
a minister of religion I put into his
hands these two dissimilar instru
ments, one for the body, if need were
— one for his soul at aU events. Then
I charged him not to use it except at
the last extremity, to bear no harsh
and revengeful feelings against those
who once held him in bondage, or
such as sought to make him and his
wife slaves even now. ' Nay,' I said,
' if you cannot use the sword in de
fence of your wife's Uberty without
hating the man you strike, then your
action wUl not be without sin.' I
gave the same advice I should have
given to white men under the like
circumstances — as escaping from
slavery in Algiers."
When the fugitives left Boston for
Liverpool, Parker furnished them with
a letter of introduction to the Rev.
James Martineau at the latter place,
in which he recounted their history
and trials. He told him they needed
no pecuniary aid. Their friends
wanted the English people to see what
kind of men and women were made
slaves of in " the model republic." If
Mr. Martineau' would tell their story
to his friends, and draw public atten

tion to the fact that such persons were
not safe in Boston, he might help the
great cause of humanity in a new
mode. Formerly his (Parker's) fore
fathers had fought against the British
for independence and the rights of
man. " But now I am obliged to look
to the British for protection for the
liberty of two of my own congrega
tion who have committed no wrong
against anyone. I thank God that
Old England, with aU her sins and
shames, allows no slave-hunter to set
foot on her soil."
We may add here that William
and Ellen Craft were treated most
kindly in England, the late Lady
Byron taking an interest in them
amongst others. The year they ar
rived in England was the one in
which the first great Exhibition was
held. There were crowds to see
them when they appeared at the
Crystal Palace, and sang God save the
Queen, to thank heaven for having
put them beyond the reach of kid
nappers and slave-hounds. Parker
said subsequently, in a meeting, that
this was an indigenous product of
North America, contributed to the
world's exhibition ! After the Ame
rican war they returned to the state
where {hey had been slaves, where
they interested themselves in pro
moting an industrial school for the
instruction and elevation of the freed
negroes. Two weeks after the attempt to
retake the Crafts, Parker wrote a
most vigorous and searching letter to
the President of America, Millard
Filmore, in which he eloquently told
him of what he had done to help
WiUiam and Ellen Craft and other
escaped negroes to resist the Fugitive
Slave Act, and dared him to say that
in thus Christianly taking in, shelter
ing, and protecting his church mem
bers he had done wrong.
How deeply Parker hated the in
famous law, and how determined he
was to resist it, wUl also be seen from

188

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

the following extract, written about
the time : — ' ' I am not a man who
loves violence ; I respect the sacred-
ness of human life, but this I say,
solemnly, that I will do all in my
power to rescue any fugitive slave
from the hands of any officer who
attempts to return him to bondage.
I will resist him as gently as I know
how, but with such strength as I can-
command; I will ring the bells and
alarm the town ; I will serve as head,
as foot, or as hand to any body of
serious and earnest men who will go
with me, with no weapons but their
hands, in this work. I will do it as
readily as I would lift a man out of
the water, or pluck him from the
teeth of a wolf, or snatch him from
the hands of a murderer. What is a
fine of a thousand dollars, and gaol
ing for six months, to the liberty of a
man? My money perish with me if
it stand between me and the eternal
law of God ! "
In February, 185 1, there was a
meeting in Tremont Temple to con
sider the case of Genera! Chaplin.
He was under bonds of twenty-five
thousand dollars for helping two
slaves of members of Congress to-
escape from the capital'of America.
Parker wrote of the. meeting and
case : — "I opened the meeting with
prayer, and introduced Mr. Chaplin
to the audience. I think it a disgrace
to Boston that there were no more
present. I saw no minister. It is not
to be supposed that many such would
attend, for the meeting was called
for a purpose wholly Christian, to
seek and to save that which was lost.
If General Chaplin had done in
Algiers what he did in Washington,
all the snobs in Boston would have
turned out to welcome him ! But
Wisdom is justified by her own chil
dren ! "
"February 28. — To-night a meet
ing of a few members of the Twenty-
eighth Congregational Society was
held at our house, to see what we

could do for General Chaplin. It
was thought by some that one thou
sand dollars might be got. I thought
five hundred dollars would be more
than we ought to expect. A little
more than two hundred doUars was
paid down by those present."
Eleven days- before this, and less
than three months after the case of
the Crafts, Boston was again roused
to excitement by another case of
arrest. A fugitive named Shadrach
was seized and shut up in the United
States Court Room. Immediately on-
hearing of the arrest, Parker went to
the place "intending to make a
rescue if possible." But before he
heard of the arrest a rescue had been
effected. A member of the Vigil
ance Committee had knocked at the
door until it was opened. The crowd,
largely composed of coloured people,
then pushed in, and before the be--
wildered officers could recover them--
selves, Shadrach had been seized and
carried outside. That very afternoon
he was hurried off to Canada and
saved. Parker wrote of the occur
rence : — "I think it the most noble
deed done in Boston since the de
struction of the tea in 1773. I thank
God for it."
The next day, after parting from
some friends who had departed for
Europe, he sadly wrote in the diary: —
' ' I doubt that they ever see me again~
for I must not let a fugitive slave_be
ta&en fronTBoston, cost what it may

rescue,
Parker's work, as the journal shows,
was much more like that of a police
detective than of a minister. " These
are sad times to live in, but I should
be sorry not to have lived in them.
It will seem a little strange, one or
two hundred years hence, that a plain,
humble scholar of Boston was con
tinually interrupted in his studies,

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 189

and could not write his book for
stopping to look after fugitive slaves
— his own parishioners ! " In order
that he might be prepared for the
worst, he now re-wrote his will, and
had it executed.
The excitement caused by Shad-
rach's case was hardly over when
another occurred, but this time the
excitement came after the event,
which unfortunately had terminated
unfavourably. A fugitive named
Thomas Sims was arrested about
seventeen days after Shadrach's es
cape. He was seized on the night of
the 3rd of April, 1851, in the street.
The bystanders interfered, and the
fugitive himself drew a knife upon
the officers. They, upon this, pre
tended that they were arresting him
for disturbing the peace, notwith
standing that their attempt to de
stroy his liberty had caused the dis
turbance. He was illegally arrested,
the writ of habeas corpus was refused
him, he never saw a jury, but once a
judge, George Ticknor Curtis, the
commissioner before whom he was
taken, after a summary examination,
gave him up to his pursuers. Ere
this the poor boy, knowing that his
fate was sealed, had begged of his
counsel — "Give me a knife; and
when the commissioner declares me
a slave, I will stab myself to the
heart, and die before his eyes. I
will not be a slave ! " Of course
this painful request could not be
granted. At midnight, the mayor of
Boston, with his marshal, attended
by two or three hundred policemen,
took the wretched fugitive, chained
and weeping, from his cell to a vessel
in the harbour, in which he was con
veyed back to bondage in Savannah.
As he was being put on board, the
wretched creature exclaimed, "And
this is Massachusetts liberty ! " Upon
reaching Savannah his owner had
him conveyed to the town jail, and
whipped within an inch of his life..
A doctor, who was standing by, said,

" You will kill him if you strike him
again." The "master" brutally re
plied, " Let him die."
Parker held up and denounced
the whole transaction in a sermon
preached on a fast day, respecting
which Charles Sumner wrote him : —
" May you live a thousand years, al
ways preaching the truth of Fast Day!
That sermon is a noble effort. It
stirred me to the bottom of my heart,
at times softening me almost to tears,
and then again filling me with rage.
I wish it could be read everywhere
throughout the • land. You have
placed the commissioner in an im
mortal pillory, to receive the hootings
and rotten eggs of the advancing
generations." Five days afterwards
Charles Sumner was chosen senator
for Massachusetts for six years, and,
in part, this result came undoubtedly
from the strong feeling caused by the
rendition of Sims. As tiU this oc
curred no slave had been sent back
by Massachusetts since the Revolu
tion, the following year this disgrace
was commemorated on its anniversary
day by a public service at the Melo
deon, and an address by Parker, who
had also written an ode for the occa
sion. In the address Parker made
the foUowing powerful use of the
similes of Jesus, when applying them
to the case of Sims : — " Out of the iron
house of bondage, a man, guilty of
no crime but love of liberty, fled to
the people of Massachusetts. He
came to us a wanderer, and Boston
took him in to an unlawful jail ; hun
gry, and she fed him with a felon's
meat ; thirsty, she gave him the gall
and vinegar of a slave to drink ;
naked, she clothed him with chains ;
sick and in prison, he cried for a
helper, and Boston sent him a mar
shal and a commissioner ; she set
him between kidnappers, among the
most infamous of men, and they made
him their slave. Poor and in chains,
the government of the nation against
him, he sent round to the churches

190

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

his petition for their prayers : the
churches of commerce they gave him
their curse ; he asked of us the sacra
ment of freedom, in the name of our
God, and in the name of their
Trinity, the Trinity of money — Boston
standing as godmother at the cere
mony — in the name of their God they
baptized him a slave. The New
England church of commerce said,
' Thy name is Slave. I baptize thee
in the name of the golden eagle, and
of the silver dollar, and of the copper
cent.' "
The month following the one in
which the Sims commotion occurred,
Parker attended the Berry Street Con
ference — a conference composed of
Unitarian ministers, and at which
subjects affecting them were wont to
be discussed. The vexed question
of the duty of ministers under the
Fugitive Slave Act had been just
before brought up at the business
meeting of the Unitarian Association,
which, the same week, was holding
its anniversary meetings in Boston,
and refused a hearing. The Rev.
Samuel J. May then determined to
bring it before the Ministers' Con
ference. The first day it was brought
up there was a good deal of pre
liminary discussion, and not a little
diplomacy, and then it was decided
that it should be made the special
subject for consideration next day.
The truth was, the city ministers,
having influential persons pecuniarily
interested in slavery in their congre
gations, were most averse to the ques
tion being discussed ; and even on the
Thursday morning all kinds of idle
preliminaries were thrown in the way
to prevent action. But the country
ministers, who looked at the question
with purer minds, were determined
that the question should come on,
and the magnates of the sect be com
pelled to declare themselves thereon.
When, at length, the discussion could
no longer be resisted, the Rev. John
Pierpont made a speech in which he

contended that the Fugitive Slave
Bill lacked all the essentials of a law,
that it had no claim to obedience,
and that it could not be administered
with a pure heart or unsullied ermine.
Several others made speeches, and
then the discussional part began.
The Rev. Mr. Osgood (who subse-
sequently left the Unitarians for the
Episcopalian Church) censured Parker
for the manner in which he had
preached on the Fugitive Slave Law,
and defended Dr. Dewey for having
said that he would send his own son
into slavery to preserve the Union
from danger. The Rev. Dr. Gannett
(Dr. Channing's successor) next spoke
at some length. He criticised severely
the statement of Mr. Pierpont that
the Fugitive Slave Law ' ' could not be
administered with a pure heart or
unsullied ermine. " Mr. George Tick-
nor Curtis, who was a member of his
congregation, had the most honour
able motives for attempting to exe
cute the law. He (Dr. Gannett) was
in a minority, and the majority
had no right to think that he was
not as honest in his opinion as the
rest. If they did not obey the Fugi
tive Slave Bill, the disobedience
would lead to the violation of all law.
There were two things — law without
liberty, and liberty without law. Law
without liberty was only despotism ;
liberty without law only license.
Law without liberty was the better
of the two. If we began by disobey
ing any one law, we should come to
disobeying all laws. They must obey
the Fugitive Slave Law, in order to
preserve the Union ; as without that
he did not know what would become
of human freedom and human rights.
After the Rev. George E. Ellis had
spoken, and observed that "the
brethren had no right to come there
and discuss and condemn the opinions
or the conduct of a fellow-minister, "
Parker spoke. He was glad to hear
what Mr. Ellis had just said ; but he
wished the ministers present had

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 191

come 'to that conclusion ten years
before; He should have been a
gainer by it, for this was the first
time for nine years that he had
attended this Conference without
hearing something which seemed
said with the intention of insulting
him. He was glad also to hear Dr.
Gannett say they had no right to
attribute improper motives to any
one who differed from us in opinion;
It was true no man had a right thus
to "judge another." But he would
remind Dr. Gannett that, a few years
ago, he and the speaker differed in
opinion on a certain matter of con
siderable importance, and, after
clearly expressing their difference, he
(Parker) ,said, "Well, there is an
honest difference of opinion between
us," and Dr. Gannett replied, " 'Not
an honest difference of opinion, brother
Parker,' for he called me 'brother'
then, and not ' Mr. ,' as since and
now, when he has publicly said he
cannot take my hand fraternally.
Dr. Gannett had said that disobe
dience of theFugitive Slave Law would
lead to the violation of all law ; but
in no country on earth was there
more respect for law than in New
England. Disobedience was unpopu
lar-even when the law was ; and
nowhere were judges more respected.
So true was all this, that to inform
against one's neighbour, if he violated
the law of the land — an act infamous
everywhere else — was commended,
for the reason that the people made
the laws for themselves, were repre
sented by them, and educated by them.
The value of human laws was to con
serve the eternal laws of God. So long
as laws did this they should be obeyed.
The Fugitive Slave Law did the oppo
site. It aspired to trample on the law
of God, commanded what nature,
religion, and God alike forbade, and
forbade what all three alike com
manded. Who were they who op
posed the Fugitive Slave Law?
Men who had always been on the

side of law and order, and whose
disobedience was one of the strongest
guarantees of just law and equitab'e
order. They could not trust a people
that would keep law because it is law :
they could not distrust a people who
would keep no law but what is just.
Obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law
would do more to overturn the Union
than all disobedience to it the most
complete. But suppose that dissolu
tion was the alternative of disobe
dience ; which would be the worse ?
Was the Union as precious as con
science, freedom, duty? For my
own part, I would rather see my own
house burned to the ground, and my
family thrown, one by one, amid the
blazing rafters of my own roof, and
myself be thrown in last of all, than
have a single fugitive slave sent back
as Thomas Sims was sent back : nay,
I would rather see the Union dis--,
solved till there was not a territory so j
big as the county of Suffolk. Let us
lose everything but fidelity to God . I /
am not going to speak honeyed words, j
or prophesy smooth things, in times
like these — our court-house a barra-,
coon, our officers slave-hunters, mem-\
bers of our Unitarian Churches kid
nappers ! I have in my church blac
men, fugitive slaves : they are th,
crown of my apostleship, the seal o
my ministry. It becomes me to lool
after their bodies in order to save\
their souls. I have been obliged t
take my own parishioners into m-
house to keep them from the clutchei
of the kidnappers : yes, gentlemen
I have been obliged to do that, am
to keep my doors guarded by day a!
weU as by night. I have had to ai
myself. I have written my sermon:
with a pistol in my desk, loaded
with a cap on the nipple, ready foi
action : yes, with a drawn swon
within reach of my right hand. This1
in Boston, in the middle of the nine
teenth century ! I am no non-re
sistant : that nonsense never went
down with me. But it is no small

192

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

/rnatter which will compel me to
shed human blood. But what could
Ido? I was bom in the little town
where the fight 'and bloodshed of the
Revolution began. The bones of the
men who first fell in' that war are
covered by the monument at Lexing
ton ; it is 'SACRED to liberty and
[THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND :' those
men fell ' in the sacred cause of God
land their country.' This is the first
inscription that I ever read. These
men were my kindred. My grand
father drew the first sword in the
revolution ; my fathers fired the first
ishot ; the blood which flowed there
iwas kindred to this which courses in
[my veins to-day. Besides that, when
1 1 write in my library at home, on the
one side of me is the Bible which my
fathers prayed over, their morning
and evening prayers, for nearly a
hundred years. On the other side
there hangs the firelock my grand
father fought with in the old French
Jvar, which he carried at the taking
\{ Quebec, which he zealously used
at the battle of Lexington ; and be
side it is another, a trophy of the
viar — the first gun taken in the Revo
lution — taken also by my grandfather,
With these things before me, these

symbols — with these memories in me
— when a parishioner, a fugitive from
slavery, a woman, pursued by the
kidnappers, came to my house, what
could I do less than take her in and
defend her to the last? But who
sought her life — or liberty? A
parishioner of my brother Gannett
came to kidnap a member of my
church ; Mr. Gannett preaches a
sermon to justify the Fugitive Slave
Law, demanding that it should be
obeyed ; yes, calling on his church
members to kidnap mine and sell
them into bondage for ever. Yet all
this while Mr. Gannett calls himself
' a Christian ' and me an ' Infidel ;'
his doctrine is ' Christianity, ' mine
'Infidelity,' ' Deism at the best ' Oh,
my brothers, I am not afraid of men ;
I can offend them. I care nothing
for their hate or their esteem. I am
not very careful of my reputation ;
but I dare not violate the eternal law
of God. You have caUed me 'in
fidel. ' Surely I differ widely enough
from you in my theology. But there is
one thing I cannot fail to trust : that
is, the infinite God, father of the white
man, and father, also, of the white
man's slave, I should not dare to
violate his law, come what may come."

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 193

CHAPTER XVIII.
The Champion of Conscience and Liberty. (Continued.)
" The Crisis presses on us, face to face with us it stands,
With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands,
This day we fashion des.tiny, our web of fate we spin,
This day for ever choose we or holiness or sin.
By the future which awaits us, by all the hopes that cast
Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the past,
And by the blessed thought of those who for earth's freedom died,
O my people, O my brothers, choose ye the righteous side,"
J. G. Whittier.

AFTER the Conference referred to
at the close of the last chapter,
there appears to have been a lull for
two months ; for nothing is entered in
the journal for that space. It again
opens thus:— "August 24, i8|i.—
Here is something to be done': — I.
Finish and publish my book before
August 24, 1852 j Z, Lecture some
forty or fifty times (1851-2) ; 3. Do
better at preaching than ever before ;
4. Work with more" industry. But
who knows that I shaU be able to do
this ? Last year I laid out much, and
how little of it I did ! The wicked
Fugitive Slave Law came and hin-
dered all my work. It may be so
again. I intend, for the future, to der
vote myself more exclusively to the
great work of my life, to theology
(speculatively) and rehgion (practi
cally) ; less to politics. Indeed, I
would never preach on a political
matter again, if it were consistent
with duty to avoid it. If I am to
live twenty years more, and devote
my life to religion and the science
thereof, with health and no outward
impediment, I may do something to
serve my God by blessing mankind.
Surely I will try. But I have not so
much confidence in my own judg
ment as to slight the demands of the
day and the hour. Suppose I could
have given all the attention to theo
logy, &c. , that I have been forced to
pay to politics, slavery, &c, how much

I might have done ! I was meant for
a philosopher, and the times caU for
a stump orator. "
The Fugitive Slave Law continued
in force ; but though two months later
a rescue of a slave named Jerry was
effected at Syracuse, and of which
Parker heard with great delight, the
attempts to enforce it were not for the
moment active in Boston. A year
afterwards Daniel Webster, who had
declared resistance to, and even de
nunciation of, the Fugitive Slave
Law to be " high treason," died at
Marshfield. It was then that Parker —
who, as already said, had admired him
intensely up to the time of his denial
of the ''higher law" — made on
the false statesman's character the
grandest of his pulpit orations. In
this he alluded to the trials which had
arisen out of the Shadrach case, then
going on in Boston — "the streets
are hung with black ; the newspapers
are sad coloured ; the shops are put
in mourning ; the public business
stops, and flags droop half-mast down.
The courts adjourn — even at Balti
more and Washington the courts ad
journ ; for the great lawyer is dead,
and justice must wait another day.
Only the United States Court, in Bos
ton, trying a man for helping Shadrach
out of the furnace of the kidnappers —
the court which executes the Fugitive
Slave Bill — that does not adjourn ;
that keeps on : its worm dies not ;
o

194

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

and the fire of its persecution is not
quenched when death puts out the
lamp of life."
The most celebrated slave case of
all began on the 23rd of May, 1854,
when Colonel Suttle, of Virginia,
presented to E. G. Loring, of Boston,
Commissioner, a complaint under the
Fugitive Slave Bill, praying for the
seizure and enslavement of Anthony
Burns. A warrant was issued next
day ; Burns was arrested on the false
pretext of burglary, taken to the
Court House, and there detained
under an armed guard. The follow
ing day he was brought before the
Commissioner, guarded and in chains,
though as yet he had been proved
guilty of nothing, not even of being
a slave. The Commissioner was just
on the point of ordering him back
into slavery, when Parker, with a few
members of the Vigilance Committee,
made their way into the court-room,
spoke with the prisoner, ascertained
that he wished to be defended, and
R. H. Dana, Esq., urged the point so
effectually that the Commissioner was
lompelledto grant an adjournment to
the day but one after.
On the evening of the next day a
great meeting was held in Faneuil
Hall, the mayor and aldermen cheer
fully consenting to its use for the
purpose, and the former declaring he ,
would willingly have presided had
he not had a pre-engagement. The
ostensible object of the meeting — in
which S. G. Howe, G; R. Russell,
Parker, Wendell PhUlips, J. L.
Swift, and others, took part— was to
excite popular indignation at the new
arrest. The non-ostensible object
. was to aid in a concentrated attack
upon the Court House, and thereby
help Bums to escape. The majority
of the Vigilance Committee had voted
against the proposed attack, thinking
it too desperate, but had so far winked
at it as to allow the minority to meet
in one of their rooms for the comple
tion of their plans. Intense feeling

against the arrest occupied the breasts
of the vast meeting, and this was in
creased rather than allayed as the
speeches proceeded. It had been
arranged that Parker should rouse the
meeting up to the highest pitch of
excitement, that then the signal should
be given that an attack was being
made upon the Court House, and
upon this the audience be despatched
en masse thither. It was to Parker
a great occasion, and his powerful
platform ability enabled him to rise
to it : "his frame quivered with the
action of his mind ; his voice, in pas
sages, was like the roaring of a lion
at bay." On coming to the front, he
addressed the meeting as, "Fellow-
subjects of Virginia," which, as he
had expected, was received with cries
of " No, No. " He went on— ' ' Fel
low-citizens of Boston, then, — A deed
which Virginia commands has been
done in the city of John Hancock,
and the ' brace of Adamses. ' It was
done by a Boston hand. It was a
Boston man Who issued the warrant ;
it was a Boston marshal who put it
in execution ; they are Boston men
who are seeking to kidnap a citizen
of Massachusetts, and send him into
slavery for ever and ever. It is
our fault that it is so. We are the
vassals of Virginia : she reaches her
arm oyer the graves of our mothers,
and kidnaps men in the city of the
Puritans. Gentlemen, there is no
Boston to-day. There was a Boston,
once. Now, there is a north suburb
to the city of Alexandria— that is
what Boston is. And you and I,
fellow-subjects of the State of Vir
ginia  (Cries of ' No, no ! '
' Take that back again ! ') I will take
it back when you show me the fact
is not so. Men and brothers, I am
not a young man ; I have heard
hurrahs and cheers for liberty many
times ; I have not seen a great many
deeds done for liberty. I ask you, are
we to have deeds as weU as words ? I
say, so confident are the slave-agents

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 195

now that they can carry off their slave
in the day-time, that they do not put
chains round the Court-House ; they
have got no soldiers billeted in Faneuil
Hall, as in 1851. They think they
can carry this man off to-morrow
morning in a cab. (Voices : ' They
can't do it !' ' Let's see them try I ')
Well, gentlemen, I say there is one
law — slave law ; it is everywhere.
There is another law, which also is
a finality ; and that law, it is in your
hands and your arms, and you can
put it in execution just when you see
fit. Gentlemen, I am a clergyman,
and a man of peace. I love peace.
But there is a means, and there is an
end ; liberty is the end, and some
times peace is not the means towards
it. Now, I want to ask you what you
are going to do ? (A voice: 'Shoot,
shoot ! ') There are ways of manag
ing this matter without shooting any
body. Be sure that these men who
have kidnapped a man in Boston are
cowards — every mother's son of them ;
and if we stand up there resolutely,
and declare that this man shall not go
out of the City of Boston, without
shooting a gun — (Cries of 'That's
it ! ' and great applause)— then he
won't go back. Now, I am going to
' propose that when you adjourn it be
to meet at Court Square, to-morrow
morning, at nine o'clock. (A large
number of hands were raised, but
many voices cried out, ' Let's go to
night ! ' ' Let's pay a visit to the slave-
catchers at the Revere House ; put
that question.') Do you propose to
go to the Revere House to-night?
then show your hands ! (Some hands
were held up.) It is not a vote.
We shall meet at Court Square, at
nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
No signal wasgiven,as expected, while
Parker was speaking, and in conse
quence the whole scheme was frus
trated. Parker explained afterwards
to a friend that he talked against time
for half an hour, while expecting it,
and at length had to take his seat

completely nonplussed. Wendell
Phillips then rose again. He had
never agreed with the plan of an
assault, and now, convinced that it,
had failed altogether, he applied him
self to calming the excitement of the
meeting. When he had done this
most effectually, a second piece of ill-
luck came — in an announcement that ;
the Court House was being attacked.
The signal came too late ; the meet
ing streamed forth, but those in the
rear of the hall and on the platform
could hardly have got outside before
the struggle was over.
It seems that a small body of men,
about nine o'clock, made an attack
upon the Court House. By means of
a piece of timber, they succeeded in
bursting in the outer door. The bell
of the Court House rung an alarm
for the police. The garrison made a.
stand in the breach. One of the Mar
shal's assistants was killed, but whe
ther by the assault of those without
or the awkwardness of those within
has never been clearly ascertained.
The time which it took to break in
the door, and the noise which neces
sarily attended the operation, drew
the police of the city to the scene.
The attacking party were not strong
enough to follow up their first success,
or, at least, had good reason to think
so ; and the accident of a volunteer
company marching into the square,
on their return from target practice
in the country, helped to discourage
the attempt, through the belief that
it was a company of marines detailed
to strengthen the force inside. The
rescue had to be abandoned. The
whole affair lasted scarcely five
minutes. The opportunity was lost.
It was a gallant and generous attempt,
but ill-advised and injudicious under
the circumstances. It should not
have been made without a larger
co-operation and a more general un
derstanding. Its failure complicated
very materially the possibilities of
subsequent operations, and gave the

196

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

slave-catchers' minions the occasion
they desired — of calling in the aid of
the military. That very night a force
of marines was marched over ; the
next morning a detachment of regular
United States troops. The mayor
called for the aid of the volunteer
companies, which was granted. For
nearly an entire week the city-was,
virtually, under martial law, in order
that Suttle might make a slaveof a
man who had had the address and
courage to make himself a freeman.
Parker was deeply distressed at the
failure of the Friday night's work.
On the Sunday, as was to be expected.,
there was an immense congregation
at the Music Hall, anxious to hear
what he had to say upon the topic of
the hour. At the time for the lessons
he thus addressed them : — " I see 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 extemporise
a sermon for this day ? ' It is easier
to do it than not. But I shall not
extemporise a sermon for to-day — I
shall extemporise 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 enact
ing 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 to-day 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.
That will presently be the theme of
my morning sermon. Next Sunday
I shall preach on The perils into

which America is brought at
this day by the new crime
against Humanity. That is the
theme for next Sunday ! the other is
for to-day. But before I proceed to
that, I have some words to say in
place of the Scripture lesson, and
instead of a selection from the Old
Testament prophets.
" Since last we came together,
there has been a man stolen in this
city of our fathers. It is not the first ;
it may not be the last. He is now in
the great slave pen in the city of
Boston. He is there against the law
of the Commonwealth, which, if I am
rightly informed, in such cases pro
hibits the use of State edifices as
United States gaols. I may be mis
taken. Any forcible attempt to take
hkn from that barracoon of Boston
would be whoUy without use. For,
besides the holiday soldiers who be
long to the city of Boston, and are
ready to shoot down their brothers
in a just or an unjust cause any day
when the city government gives them
its command and its liquor, I under
stand that there are 184 United States
marines lodged in the Court House,
every man of them furnished with a
musket and a bayonet, with his side
arms, and twenty-four ball cartridges.
They are stationed also in a very
strong building, and where five men,
in a passage-way about the width of
this pulpit, can defend it against five-
and-twenty, or a hundred. To ' keep
the peace,' the Mayor, who the other
day 'regretted the arrest of our
brother, Anthony Burns, and declared
that his sympathies were wholly with
the alleged fugitive— and of course
wholly against the claimant and the
Marshal— in order to keep the peace
of the city, the Mayor must become
corporal of the guard for kidnappers
from Virginia. He must keep the
peace of our city, and defend these
guests of Boston over the graves, the
unmonumented graves, of John Han
cock and Samuel Adams.

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 197

"A man has been killed by vio
lence. Some say he was killed by
his own coadjutors : I can easily be
lieve it ; there is evidence enough
that they were greatly frightened.
They were not United States soldiers,
but volunteers from the streets of
Boston, who, for their pay, went into
the Court House to- assist in kidnap'
ping a brother man. They were so
cowardly that they could not use the
simple cutlasses they had in their
hands, but smote right and left, like
ignorant and frightened- ruffians as
they are. They may have slain their
brother or not--I cannot tell. It is
said by some that they killed him.
Another story is that he was killed
by a hostile hand from without.
Some say by a bullet, some by an
axe, and others still by a knife. As
yet, nobody knows the facts-. But a
man has been killed. He was a
volunteer in this service. He liked
the business of enslaving a man, and
has gone to render an account to God
for his gratuitous wickedness. Twelve
men have been arrested, and are now
in gaol to await their examination for
wilful murder !
" Here, then, is one man butchered,
and twelve men brought in peril of
their lives. Why is this ? Whose
fault is it ?
"Some eight years ago, a Boston
merchant, by his mercenaries, kid
napped a man ' between Faneuil Hall
and old Quincy,' and carried him off
to eternal slavery. Boston mechanics,
the next day, held up the half-eagles
which they received as pay for stealing
a man. . The matter was brought
before the grand jury for the county
of Suffolk, and abundant evidence
was presented, as I understand, but
they found 'no bill.' A wealthy
merchant, in the name of trade, had
stolen a black man, who, on board a
ship, had come to this city, had been
seized by the mercenaries of this mer
chant, kept by them for awhile, and
then, when he escaped, kidnapped

a second time in the city of Boston.
Boston did not punish the deed !
" The Fugitive Slave Bill was pre
sented to us, and Boston rose up to
welcome it ! The greatest man in all
the North came here, and in this city
told Massachusetts she must obey the
Fugitive Slave Bill with alacrity —
that we must all conquer our preju
dices in favour of justice and the un
alienable rights of man. Boston did
conquer her prejudices in favour of
justice and the' unalienable rights of
man. " Do youmot rememberthe ' Union
Meeting ' which was held in Faneuil
HaU, when a ' political soldier of
fortune,' sometimes called the 'De
mocratic Prince of the Devils,' howled
at the idea that there was a law of
God higher than the Fugitive Slave
Bill ? He sneered, and asked, ' Will
you have the " Higher Law of God "
to role over you?' and the multitude
which occupied the floor, and the mul
titude that crowded the galleries,
howled down the Higher Law of
God ! They treated the Higher Law
to a laugh and a howl ! That was
Tuesday night. It was the Tuesday
before Thanksgiving- day. On that
Thanksgiving-day; I told the congre
gation that the men who howled down
the Higher Law of Almighty God
had got Almighty God to settle with ;
that they had sown the wind, and
would reap the whirlwind. At that
meeting Mr. Choate told the people
' REMEMBER ! Remem-ber ! Re
member! ' Then nobody knew what
to 'remember.' Now you know.
That is the state of the case.
"Then you 'remember' the kid
nappers came here to seize Thomas
Sims. Thomas Sims was seized.
Nine days he was on trial for more
than his life ; and never saw a judge
— never saw a jury. He was sent
back into bondage from the city of
Boston. You remember the chains
that were put around the Court
I House ; you remember the judges of

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Massachusetts stooping, crouching,
creeping, crawling under the chain of
Slavery, in order to get in their own
courts. All these things you 'remem
ber.' Boston was non-resistant. She
gave her ' back to the smiters ' — from
the South ; she ' withheld not her
cheek ' — from the scorn of South
Carolina, and welcomed the ' spit
ting' — of kidnappers from Georgia
and Virginia. To-day we have our
pay for such conduct You have not
forgotten the ' 1,500 gentlemen of
property and standing,' who volun
teered to conduct Mr. Sims to slavery
— Marshal Sukey's 'gentlemen.'
They ' remember ' it. They are sorry
enough now. Let us forgive — we
need not .forget. ' REMEMBER I
Remember ! Remember ! '
" The Nebraska Bill has just now
been passed. Who passed it ? The
' 1,500 gentlemen of property and
standing 'in Boston, who, in 185 1,
volunteered to carry Thomas Sims
into slavery by force of arms. They
passed the Nebraska Bill. If Boston
had punished the kidnapping of 1845,
there would have been no Fugitive
Slave Bill in 1850. If Massachusetts,
in 1850, had declared the Bill should
not be executed, the kidnapper would
never have shown his face in the
streets of Boston. If, failing in this,
Boston had said, in 1851, 'Thomas
Sims shall not be carried off,' and
forcibly or peacefully, by the majesty
of the great mass of men, had resisted
it, no kidnapper would have come
here again. There would have been
no Nebraska Bill. But, to every de
mand of the slave power, Massachu
setts has said, ' Yes, yes I — we grant
it all I ' ' Agitation must cease ! '
' Save the Union ! '
" Southem^Slaveryisan institution
which is in earnest. Northern Free
dom is an institution that is not in
earnest. It was in earnest in '76 and
'83. It has not been much in earnest
since. The compromises are but
provisional ! Slavery is the only

finality ! Now, since the Nebraska
Bill is passed, an attempt is made to
add insult to insult, injury to injury.
Last week, at New York, a brother
of the Rev. Dr. Pennington, an esta
blished clergyman of large reputa
tion, great character,' acknowledged
learning, who has his diploma from
the University of Heidelberg, in Ger
many— -.a more honourable source
than .that from which any clergyman
in Massachusetts has received one —
his brother and two nephews were
kidnapped in New York, and, .with
out any trial, without any defence,
were. hurried off into bondage. Then,
at Boston, you know what was done
in the last four days. Behold the
consequences of the doctrine that
there is no higher law. Look at
Boston to-day. There are no chains
¦round your Court House — there are
only ropes round it this time. A
hundred and eighty-four United
States soldiers are there. They are,
I am told, mostly foreigners — the
scum of the earth — none but such
enter into armies as common soldiers
in a country Uke ours. I say it « ith
pity — they are not to blame for having
been born where they were and what
they are. I pity the scum' as well as
I pity the mass of men. The soldiers
are there, I say, and their trade is to
kill. Why is this so ?
"You remember the meeting at
Faneuil Hall last Friday, when even
the words of my friend Wendell
Phillips, the most eloquent words
that get spoken in America in this
century, hardly restrained the multi
tude from going and by violence
storming the Court-House. What
stirred them up ? It was the spirit
of our fathers — the spirit of justice
and liberty in your heart, and in
my heart, and in the heart of us
all. Sometimes it gets the better
of a man's prudence, especially on
occasions like this ; and so excited
was that assembly of four or five
thousand men, that even the words

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 199

of eloquent Wendell Phillips could
hardly restrain them from going at
once rashly to the Court House and
tearing it to the ground.
"Boston is the most peaceful of
cities. Why? Because we have
commonly had a peace which was
worth keeping. No city respects
laws so much. Because the laws
have been made by the people, for
the people, and are laws which re
spect justice. Here is a law which
the people will not keep. It is <*
law of our Southern masters ; a law
not- fit to keep.
" Why is Boston in this confusion
to-day? The Fugitive Slave Bill
Commissioner has just now been
sowing the wind that we may. reap
the whirlwind. The old Fugitive
Slave Bill Commissioner stands back :
he has gone to look after his ' per
sonal popularity.' But, when Com
missioner Curtis does not dare appear
in this matter, another man comes for
ward, and for the first time seeks to kid
nap his man also in the city of Boston,
Judge Loring' is a man whom I have
respected and honoured. His private
life is mainly blameless, so far as I
know. He has been, I think, uni
formly beloved. His character has
entitled him to the esteem of his
fellow-citizens. I have known him
somewhat. I never heard a mean
word from him — many good words.
He was once the law-partner of
Horace Mann, and learned humanity
of a great teacher. I have respected
him a good deal. He is a respect
able man — in the Boston sense of
that word, and in a much higher
sense ; at least, I have thought so.
He is a kind-hearted, charitable man ;
a. good neighbour ; a fast friend
— when politics do not interfere ;
charitable with his purse ; an excel
lent husband, a kind father, a good
relative. And I should as soon have
expected that venerable man who sits
before me, born before your Revolu
tion [Samuel May], I should as

soon have expected him to go and
kidnap Robert Morris, or any of the
other coloured men I see around me,
as I should have expected Judge
Loring to do this thing. But he has
sown the wind, and we are reaping
the whirlwind. I need not say what
I now think of him. He is to act
to-morrow, and may yet act like a
man. Let us wait and see. Per
haps there is manhood in him yet.
But, my friends, all this confusion is
his work. He knew he was stealing
a man born with the same unalienable
right to ' life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness ' as himself. He knew
the slaveholders had no more right
to Anthony Burns than to his own
daughter. He knew the conse
quences of stealing a man. He knew
that there are men in Boston who
have not yet conquered their preju
dices — men who respect the higher
law of God. He knew there would
be a meeting at Faneuil Hall — gather
ings in -the streets. He knew there
would be violence.
" Edward Greeley Loring,
Judge of Probate for the county of
Suffolk, in the State of Massachu
setts, Fugitive Slave Bill Commis
sioner of the United States, before
these citizens of Boston, on Ascension
Sunday, assembled to worship God, I
charge you with the death of that man-
who was killed on last Friday night.
He was your fellow-servant in kid
napping. He dies at your hand. You
fired the shot which makes his wife a
widow, his child an orphan. I charge
you with the peril of twelve men,
arrested for murder, and on trial for
their lives. I charge you with filling
the Court House with one hundred
and eighty-four hired ruffians of the
United States, and alarming not only
this city for her liberties that are in
peril, but stirring up the whole Com
monwealth of Massachusetts with in
dignation, which no man knows how
to stop, which no man can stop.
You have done it all !

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

"This is my Lesson for the Day."
Others than the Abolitionists, even
judges, commissioners, and lesser
officials, were now disgusted with the
law, and felt sympathy with the per
secuted fugitives. The pro-slavery
President, Franklin Pierce, showed
eager interest in the proceedings, and
sent the adjutant-general of the army
to Boston, with power to call troops
stationed at New York, should those
in Massachusetts prove inadequate/
Amid hopes of a decision favourable
to Burns, the case against him pro
ceeded. But though Suttle failed to
make good his charges, and notwith
standing the ability and zeal with
which Messrs. Dana and EUis ma
naged the defence, it was soon seen
that the time and circumstances would
be too much forthefugitive. Attempts
were then made to buy Bums, and
the Commissioner himself drew the
sale papers. But, whether owing to
encouraging hints from those high in
authority, or to intimidations from
Southern planters, to the effect that if
he did so far give in it would be
worse for himself, Suttle, after tem
porising and vacillating a good deal,
backed out of the bargain.
Meantime the Vigilance Committee
were hard at work appealing to the
people by means of pungent placards,
mostly written by Parker; Mr. Weiss
gives seven of them in his memoir.
The first simply announces, in short,
sharp words, the arrest. The second
calls upon the citizens of Boston to
see to it that no citizen is dragged
into slavery without trial by jury.
A third summons the " yeomanry of
New England " to come and lend
the moral weight of their presence,
and the aid of their counsel, to the
friends of justice and humanity in the
city. A fourth brands the insult of
employing murderers, prize-fighters,
thieves, and blacklegs to aid in the
execution of the atrocious law. A
fifth warns the citizens to be on their
guard against an attempt to carry off

Burns after the Commissioner had
declared him free. A sixth ad
monishes to be on the alert against
lies and deceit, a. story being afloat
that Burns had been ransomed. The
last issued called on true Americans
to be prepared for the worst : — " Let
there be no armed resistance ; but let
the whole People tum out and line
the streets, and look upon the Shame
and Disgrace of Boston, and then go
away and take measures to elect Men
to office who will better guard the
honour of the State -and Capital."
The VigUance Committee tried every
expedient they thought likely to save
the fugitive, but in vain. Many a
distinguished lawyer said afterwards
that the Commissioner had no right to
render tip the man upon testimony
so defective ; but he did.
Friday, June 2, was the day fixed
for conveying the fugitive from prison
to the wharf. In Court and State
Streets crowds of indignant people
thronged the footpaths, filled porti
coes, balconies, windows, and in
some instances occupied roofs of
houses, whilst waiting for the shame
ful procession to pass. The helpless
negro was conveyed in the centre of
a hollow square of armed ruffians,
who in turn were guarded by com
panies of the militia and protected
by cannon. It was a terrible scene
to see a human being thus treated for
no other crime than claiming to own
his own person ; not less terrible was
it to think how the noblest senti
ments of the noblest citizens were
thus being trampled down by the
sheerest brute force. To still further
mark displeasure,- the Vigilance Com
mittee ordered the streets through
which the procession had to pass to
be draped in mourning, and the bells
of the city to toll funeral dirges ; and
this was pretty generally done. As
a last resort for trying to produce
confusion and bring about a rescue
the fire-alarm was started just as the
procession was about to move. The

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 201

fire-engines were dashed through the
lines of soldiers and crowds of citizens.
No better means could have been
used for creating a tumult, but that
was all the ruse accomplished ; the
soldiers were too well on their guard
to allow of anything more, and closed
up the irruptions in their lines the
moment the engines had passed
through them. It was thus Boston
gave up a victim to that slave power
which, a few years later, was to turn
and rend her.
The negro whom the North thus
sent back into slavery afterwards
taught himself to read and write,
became minister to a church of
coloured people, and brought on
consumption and an early death
through his devotion to the interests
of his brethren.
The next Sunday, the prophet
who had for years been foretelling
this subsequent result — Theodore
Parker — before an immense congre
gation of thousands — denounced this
"New Crime against Humanity,"
in the noble discourse which has
been published in his collected works.
Once more in burning utterances he
set forth the majesty of the "higher
law," which "men of property and
respectability" in the United States
were at the time laughing at, but for
which they were to pay so dearly in
treasure, tears, and blood a few years
later. The week following, Parker, along
with Wendell Phillips, T. W. Hig-
ginson, and four others, was indicted
for knowingly and wilfully obstruct
ing, with force and arms, the Marshal
of the district, when attempting to
serve and execute the warrant under
which Burns was taken and held ;
also for making an assault upon the
said Marshal, when in the due and
lawful discharge of his duties as an
officer. It could not even be shown
that Parker was at the Court House
at the time of the attempted! rescue ;
he was indicted simply because Judge

B. R. Curtis charged the grand jury
to the effect that not only those who
were present and actually obstructed,
resisted, and opposed, and all who
were present leagued in the common
design, but aU who; though absent,
did procure, counsel, command, or
abet others, and all who by indirect
means, by evincing an express liking,
gave approbation or assent to the
design, were liable as principals ; and
it was of no importance that the ad
vice or directions were departed from
in respect to the precise time or place,
or mode or means, of committing
the offence. Parker was arrested
on November 29, and gave bail in
fifteen hundred dollars for his appear
ance when the trial came on. Several
friends had previously asked to be
aUowed to be his bondsmen, and he
took three members of his own con
gregation, Samuel May, Francis
Jackson, and J. R. Manley. The
journal shows that he was prepared
for the worst. " June, 1854. — What
I shall do if I am sent to gaol: — I.
Write one sermon a week, and have
it read at the Music Hall, and printed
the next morning. Who can read it ?
Write also a prayer, &c. (Prayer,
Saturday night.) 2. Prepare a volume
of sermons from old MSS. 3. Write
Memoirs of Life, &c. 4. Vol. I. of
' Historical Development of Reli
gion,' i.e., the Metaphysics of Reli
gion. 5. Pursue the Russian studies."
The trial was fixed for April 3, 1855,
but it- did not proceed. Parker's
counsel — John P. Hale and Charles
M. Ellis — moved that the indictment
against him be quashed ; and, after a
brief argument, the Court pronounced
both it and the whole of the others
bad. The whole affair thus ended in
a victory for Parker's side. " Well,
Mr. Parker," said Commissioner
Benjamin F. Hallett, "you have
crept through a knot-hole this time."
" I will knock a bigger hole next
time," Parker replied.
While, on the whole, glad of this

202

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

result, he regretted that he did not
get the opportunity for delivering the
long and elaborate defence which,
assisted by hints from Charles Sumner,
C. M. Ellis, and, perhaps, also by
other legal friends, he had prepared.
He determined, notwithstanding the
trial was over, to re-write and elabo
rate this defence, and publish it to
the world. To this determination he
devoted the summer of 1855, and the
result came forth as a volume of 220
pages. Mr. Weiss thinks he has
written nothing that is so vigorous
and effective, and that the style of it
is better than that of any of his
writings, except the last three of the
" Sermons of Theism," and some of
the ' ' Occasional Discourses. " Mr.
Frothingham says jt is a monument
of historical learning, as well as a
thrilling record of events, and a stem
judgment on men. The slave power
was ranked with the most arrant of
despotisms ; its measures were classed
with the most infamous deeds of the
most infamous times ; its servants were
numbered with the meanest tools
of tyranny. With grim rhetoric he
called forth the "spirits of tyrants,"
"Herod the wicked," "Nero, the
awful Roman Emperor, " "St. Domi'
nie, Torquemada, fathers of the In
quisition," ' ' the heap of wickedness,
George Jeffries," bade them look
on the Boston kidnappers, excused
their shudderings at the sight, and
allowed them to pass as not so re
prehensible in the sight of God and
man. The relatives and friends of the
Boston judges and commissioners as
sailed in this manner complained bit
terly of Parker thus wounding their
feelings. But what feeling had they
for the poor negroes who were sent
back into slavery, and their wives and
children? Parker arraigned public
deeds, and these are never impersonal.
When men exalt the statutes of men
above the eternal justice of God, they
must, and deserve to, suffer ; and he

who, as Parker did, does most to hold
up such conduct to infamy does most
to lessen suffering in the end. He
fought for others, not for himself,
hence he had little reason for having
personal feeling against those he con
tended with. His formula was ever —
"I know what sin is, God alone
knows who are sinners ; " and he
sought earnestly to accomplish the
hardest of all tasks— to love the un
lovely. He prayed God to forgive
the offenders in high places, and him
self showed readiness to forgive on
the slightest show of concession to
the higher morality. If at all times
he was not able to speak charitably
of hjs own revilers, and of public
wrong-doers, it was because he was
human ; and candour must allow
that even his most severe judgments
came from his intense moral earnest
ness. The terrible and bloody ordeal
hjs country had to pass through soon
afterwards, in order to purge her
constitution, showed that he, of all
Americans, understood the diseased
state of the body poUtic. History has
now justified his strongest language,
and shown that the sleek "respect
able " officials who crouched to the
slave power, over-anxious to "save
the Union," were as false to their
country and kind as he was wont to
paint them.
Parker not only found it necessary
to struggle to cripple slavery as al
ready existing, but also to prevent the
slave power from increasing and over
mastering the Free States. He op
posed the annexation of Texas as a
Slave State, because he saw that it
was, what it afterwards proved, the
first step of the slave power towards
its goal, the supreme control of the
American Government. This took
place in 1845, the year he preached
his first sermon "Of Slavery." The
war with Mexico — the first conse
quence of the annexation of Texas 
occurred the following year. It was
supported by the pro-slavery party in

THE CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY. 203

Congress, and strongly condemned in
sermons, lectures, and speeches by
Parker. When President Polk was raising
volunteers for this war by proclama
tion, Parker was one of the speakers
at an anti-war meeting, held in Faneuil
Hall, at which a good many soldiers,
and others favourable to the war,
were present. They interrupted him
and used various kinds of threats, but
his good humour and courage proved
too much for them. The following
extracts from the newspaper report
will show that both were needed. "If
God please, we will die a thousand
times, but never draw blade in this
wicked war, (Cries of ' Throw him
over ! ' &c. ) What would you do next,
after you have thrown him over?
(' Drag you out of the Hall ! ') What
good would that do ? It would not
wipe off the infamy of this war —
would not make it less wicked ! "
Undauntedly he proceeded to review
the facts connected with the war,
saying many things calculated to make
those who had volunteered for it
heartily ashamed of themselves. He
then went on to ask — "Did not Mr.
Webster, in the streets of Phila
delphia, bid . the volunteers — mis
guided young men— go and uphold
the stars of their country ? (Voice,
' He did right !') No, he should have
said the stripes of his country ; for
every volunteer to this wicked war is
a stripe on the nation's back I Did not
he declare this war unconstitutional,
and threaten to impeach the Presi
dent who made it, and afterward go
and invest a son in it ? Has it not
been said here, ' Our country, how
soever bounded ! ' — bounded by rob
bery, or bounded by right lines? Has
it not been said, all round, 'Our
country, right or wrong'? I sayi
blame not so much the volunteers as
the famous men who deceive the
nation. (Cries of 'Throw him over !
Kill him, kill him ! ' and a flourish of
bayonets. ) Throw him over ! You

will not throw him over. Kill him !
I shall walk home unarmed and un.
attended, and not a man of you will
hurt one hair of my head." His
bravery cowed the bullies, and he
went home unmolested, as he had
said. This recalls another similiar incident
related of him by Miss Cobbe. " On
one occasion we have been told by an
eye-witness that he was standing in a
gallery at a large pro-slavery meeting
in New York, when one of the
orators tauntingly remarked, ' I
should like to know what Theodore
Parker would say to that. ' ' Would
you like to know?' cried he starting
forward into view. ' I'll tell you what
Theodore Parker says to it !' Of
course there instantly arose a tre
mendous clamour, and threats of kill
ing him and throwing him over.
Parker' simply squared his broad
chest, and looking to the right and
left, said undauntedly, ' Kill me ?
Throw me over? You shall do no
such thing. Now I'll tell you what
I say to this matter. ' His bravery
quelled the riot at once. "
The result of the war with Mexico
greatly increased the reputation of
the pro-slavery party ; and by means
of the election of General Taylor to
the Presidency in 1848, they confirmed
the gains already made, and were em
boldened to make new plots for federal
usurpation. Under the administra
tion of Franklin Pierce, the conspi
rators showed themselves yet more
auda'cious ; so much so, that at length
the North came to feel that the wel
fare of the nation was in the highest
danger. In 1854 the Missouri Compromise,
by which slavery was precluded from
passing the 36th degree of latitude,
was set aside by the passing of the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, in spite of the
vigorous opposition of the Northern
senators ; and the abolition of this
time-honoured compromise stirred all
parties at the North with indignation.

204.

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Neither Nebraska nor Kansas having
the population required for admission
as a State, both parties made haste to
stock them with people after their
own kind, for it was to be by the vote
of the people that it was to be decided
whether they should be Slave States
ornot The "border ruffians "poured
in from Missouri, and took violent
possession of the stragetic points.
Emigration societies were formed in
the: Free States, which sent bands of
pioneers across the Western prairies,
fully equipped with implements of
civilisation, and armed with rifles for
self-defence. The suppressed war
broke out in the new territories with
fury ; outrages of every kind occurred ;
murders were of daily occurrence. The
utmost anarchy prevailed in both
districts ; and, as first one party and
then the other had its reinforcements
sent, the difficulties were increased.
Peace, liberty, safety, were unknown :
there was real though undeclared
war. It was in these dreadful times and
scenes that stern, grim, Puritan John
Brown became a prominent figure.
Though differing widely from Parker
in theology, he and Captain Brown
were friends and co-workers for several
years. At the time of the faUure of
the insurrection at Harper's Ferry,
which did so much to precipitate the
American conflict, and which led to
Brown being hanged, Parker was- an
invalid at Rome, and from there
wrote a long letter, which was im
mediately published, in which he
justified Brown's conduct, and thus
concluded: — "Brown will die, I
think, like a martyr, and also like a
saint His noble demeanour, his un
flinching bravery, his gentleness, his
calm, religious trust in God, and his
words of truth and soberness cannot
fail to make a profound impression on
the hearts of Northern men ; yes, and
on Southern men. For ' every human
heart is human,' &c. I do not think
the money wasted nor the lives thrown

away. Many acoms must be sown to
have one come up ; even then, the
plant grows slow : but it is an oak at /
last. None of the Christian martyrsf
died in vain ; and from Stephen, whCj
was stoned at Jerusalem, to Mai-
Dyer, whom our fathers hanged on ,
bough of ' the great tree ' on Bostoh
Common, I think there have been fei
spirits more pure and devoted thai
John Brown's, and none that gave ud
their breath in a nobler cause. Lei
the American State hang his bodj
and the American Church damn h: ;
soul ; still, the blessing of such as ar :
ready to perish will fall on him ran I
the universal justice of the Infiriltel r
Perfect God will take him welcom:
home. The road to heaven is as short
from the gallows as from the throne 1
perhaps, also, as easy." A
In- May, 1856, Charles Sumner^
delivered in the Senate^ his famous
speech, "the Crime against Kansas,"
which so frenzied the' pro-slavery
party that one of them, a senator
named Preston Brooks, brutally as
saulted him with a bludgeon, and
created such- indignation in the Free
States that on all hands it was re
solved that the slave power should
be repulsed in the Presidential election
then pending. But the slave power had
now become too strong for the North.
Prolslavery James Buchanan was
.elected- President, and John Charles
^FreemaoPthe Republican candidate,
was defeated, though he polled a mil
lion and a quarter of votes, of which
Parker could fairly claim great num
bers as his own. When the result of
the election was made known, he saw
nothing for it but war. On that very
day he wrote in the journal : — •' Of
course we shall fight. I have expected
civil war for months ; now, I buy no
more books for the present. Nay, I
think affairs may come to such a pass
that my own property may be confis
cated — for who knows that we shall
beat at the beginning — and I huug as
a traitor ! So I invest my property

THE REFORMER.

205

accordingly. Wife's will be safe. I
don't pay the mortgage till 1862."
When the Free States succeeded in
electing Abraham Lincoln in i860, it
was too late for a peaceful solution of
the long-standing quarrel ; and even
then the North would have unworthily
settled without abolishing slavery,
if the South would have conformed to
union. As Mr. Frothingham truly
says : — "The civil war punished the
South for its iniquity and the North
for its complicity. " Had slavery been
boldly confronted by the North at the
commencement, as Parker advised,

the bloody and fratricidal cinflict of
1861-5 — a conflict in which the North
alone lost 316,000 men — would have
been avoided. It is at this costly rate
that nations learn the lesson that there
is a "higher law" than human en
actments, an Eternal right, violation
of which cannot be made with im
punity. " God is not mocked : what
soever a nation sows that must it
reap." In spite of her noblest son's
advice and entreaty, America would
sow to the wind ; and in return she
had to reap the whirlwind.

CHAPTER XIX.
The Reformer.
" The sad sense of human woe is deep
Within my heart, and deepens daily there.
I see the want, the woe, the wretchedness,
Of smarting men, who wear, close pent in towns,
The galling load of life. The rich, the poor,
The drunkard, criminal, and they that make
Him so, and fatten on his tears and blood —
I bear their sorrows, and I weep their sins :
Would I could end them ! No : I see before
My race an age or so ; and I am sent
For the stern work, to hew a path among
The thorns — I take them in my flesh — to tread
With naked feet the road, and smooth it o'er (
With blood. Well, I shal lay my bones
In some sharp crevice of the broken way.
Men shall in better times stand where I fell.
And journey singing on in perfect bands,
Where I have trod alone, no arm but God's,
No voice but His, Enough ! — His voice. His arm,
Theodore Parker.

THEODORE PARKER was *
reformer by nature. His large
ideality led him to progressively im
agine a better state of things, and
his large practical genius helped him
to the means thereto. All through
his life he was ever found asking of
the things he came in contact with,
Are they as they ought to be ? And
if not, how can they be made better ?
When at college, at about his twenty-
fifth year, his humanity thus broke
out after reading Plato's Republic.
" Is a man bad, the good shall teach

him goodness. And the teaching
shall be good, not that which renders
the vUe doubly perverse, for that is
unjust. When wiU this sentiment
lie at the foundation of all codes of
laws ? Penal legislation, now-a-days,
has all the effect of the purest in
justice, in driving the half-guilty to
increased crime, and in making doubly
deep the hatred of the revengeful.
I doubt not the angel of humanity
will beat, with her golden pinions,
all prisons to small dust." But even
when at college he did not content

206

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

himself with theorising : on Sundays
he used to walk over to Charlestown
to the State Prison, and endeavour
to practically carry out what he felt
upon a class of prisoners he had
there. When at Cape Cod, during
his time of candidature, he paid a
visit to an Indian settlement about
twelve miles from the town. He
noticed the poverty, squalor, smoke,
and stench of the only real wigwam
in the settlement, and listened to the
talk of the old squaw who Was its
occupant. The poor hag had seen
trouble ; she said her children were
dead. "But," reflects Parker, "she
had found the only comfort which
the savage receives from the white
man ; it peered out from under a
bench in the shape of a jug of gin."
Here again the future reformer mani
fested himself, and saw one of the
chief demons which in after life he
would have to labour to exorcise.
It is chiefly in cities that social
problems press themselves upon the
attention of thinkingmen ; but through
books they pressed themselves upon
Parker's mind and heart even during
his first pastorate in a sweet country
village. It was when he had just
settled at West Roxbury that the
writings of St Simon, Victor Con-
siderunt, Charles Fourier, and others
of the various schools of socialism,
were becoming known in America,
and were already creeping into the
speculations of reformers. Albert
Brisbane's pamphlet, in part a repro
duction of Fourier, a brochure point
ing out the vices and miseries of
modern society, and proposing to
cure them by reconstructing society
itself, from the foundation, on new
principles, resting on a new philoso
phy of human nature, was especially
attracting attention at the time.
Parker read and pondered it deeply,
thought it would do good, was for
cibly struck by its portrayal of the
evils of society, and expressed himself
glad to see the case stated boldly.

' ' Brownson, " he writes in the journal,
"has recently written an "article on
the labouring classes, calculated to
call the philosophic to reflection.
He thinks inherited property should
be given up ; that the relation of
master and servant, employer and
employed, should cease ; that the
priest is the chief curse to society.
This makes a great noise. The
Whigs, finding their sacramental idea
—money — in danger, have come to
the rescue with firebrands and the
like weapons. Fearful lest the article
should do harm, they trumpet forth
to the people those doctrines which,
if left alone, would come only to
scholars. I like much of his article,
though his property notions agree not
with my view. Yet, certainly the
present property scheme entails awful
evils upon society, rich no less than
poor. This question, first of in
herited property, and next of all
private property, is to be handled in
the nineteenth century, and made to
give in its reason why the whole
thing should not be abated as a nui
sance. Society now rests on a great
lie. Money and service have much
to answer for. Can one man serve
another without being degraded?
Yes; but not in all 'relations. I have
no moral right to use the' service of
another, provided it degrades him in
my sight, in that of his feUows, or of
himself ; yet personal service is con
nected with this degradation."
After reading "Murphy's Science
of Consciousness," "a queer book,
written by a Materialist, Socialist,
Owenite," he was led into these re
flections:— "This book is but a straw
in the stream; but it shows which
way the current sets, and God knows
what wUl be the end of this awful
movement. For my single self, I
fear the result will be as often before ;
the 'rich' and 'noble,' becoming
alarmed, will shed blood, and then
the mob, getting scent thereof, will
wash their hands in the hearts of the

THE REFORMER.

207

'rich' and 'noble,' and we shall
have a Worse tragedy in the end of
the nineteenth century than in the
end of the eighteenth. Heaven save
us from an English Reign of Terror 1
The same question must be passed on
in America. Property must show
why it shall not be abated. Labour
must show why it should exempt so
many from its burdens, and crush
others therewith. It is, no doubt, a
good thing that I should read the
Greek Anthology, and cultivate my
self in my leisure, as a musk-melon
ripens in the sun ; but why should I
be the only one of the thousand who
has this chance ? True, I have won
it dearly, laboriously; but others of
better ability with less hardihood fail
in the attempt, and serve me with the
body. It makes me groan to look
into the evils of society ; when will
there be an end ? I thank God I am
not born to set the matter right. I
scarce dare attempt a reform of the*
ology ; but I shall be in for the whole,
and must condemn the State and
Society no less than the Church."
It will thus be seen that Parker,
like all intense lovers of their kind,
from Jesus down to Dr, Channing,
had to experience his doubts as to the
justice of holding private property,
and to feel an, inclination towards
socialism. But his strong practical
sense prevented him from joining the
schemes started by such men as Owen,
and his own personal friend, George
Ripley. " Ripley, " he writes in the
journal, "dislikes the customs 'of
property — a father transmitting to his
son — but I see no way of avoiding
the evil. The sin lies deeper than
the transmission of property from
getter to enjoyer. It lies in the love
of low things, and in the idea that
work degrades. We must correct
this notion, and then all is well ;
and, before that is done, to hew down
the institutions of property, and cut
the throats of aU that own lands,
would do little good. How the world

ever came into such a sad state it is
difficult to conjecture : how it is to
get out of it is impossible to foretell."
In August, 185 1, after a tour
through Pennsylvania, during which
he studied the coal, the rocks, and
plants of the mountain district, his
old discontent with the unfair distri
bution of wealth breaks out :— " I
am amazed when I think of the
material riches which God has stored
up in this world as school-furniture
for the human race. For, I take it,
these great forces which science slowly
brings to light, out of the ground,
are, at last, to serve the great moral
purpose of human life ; to make the
mass of men better off, wiser, juster,
more affectionate, and more holy in
all their life, without and within.
But, hitherto, the great results of
human science have been for the tew,
not the many. The steam-ships that
weave the two Continents together
are palaces for the wealthy man who
takes passage in them. But the poor
sailor on board them is hardly better
off than the Norse seaman who
sailed to Labrador, dressed in bear
skins, one thousand years ago, and
they have not so much self-respect.
You might step from the Crystal
Palace to St. Giles's parish in London,
and what a contrast you would see
between the 'London labour and
the London poor ! ' The magni
ficence of luxury is achieved at im
mense cost ! The men who make
the finery of Birmingham and Brussels,
of Lyons and Geneva, never wear it.
The ass used to carry papyrus to the
Roman bath, but himself was never
washed ! So it is now with the
workers and their work. You, the
Shakers (this was a letter to one of
Jhem), I think, have solved the pro
blem of industry with remarkable
success. The labour of each blesses
all: none is cursed with drudgery,
none with idleness, none with poverty,
none with the wantonness of un
earned riches. Now, I think that,

208

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

some time or another, the human
race will solve this dreadful problem,
and do without poverty as easily as
without war. Then these great
forces— steam, electricity, anda hun
dred more which no man dreams of
yet, wiU do their higher work of
civilising, moralising," refining, and
blessing mankind. We must work
and wait."
He was more especially dissatisfied
with society's dealings with the cri
minal classes, and the unequal justice
which the State deals out to men.
" The State," wrote he in the journal,
"is a bundle of shams. It is based
on force, not love. It is still feudal.
A Christian State is an anomaly,
like a square circle. Our laws de
grade, at the beginning, one half the
human race, and sacrifice them to
the other and perhaps worser half.
Our prisons are institutions that make
more criminals than they mend :
seventeen-twentieths of crimes are
against property. Society causes
crimes and then hangs the criminals. "
Whilst residing at West Roxbury,
he went to New York, and visited
the city prison there, called the
"Tombs. It is a large block of
buildings, embracing a whole square,
and comprising a court-house, jail,
and yards, the whole forming a mag
nificent and imposing edifice in the
old Egyptian style. He thought the
taste which would expend all that
architecture on a building so loath
some as a jail was most wretched. He
goes on when referring to it — " Shame
that the disgrace of society should be
thus arrayed in costly dress, and made
to flaunt before the public eye ! I
went into the court-house to see
' justice ' administered. A negro was
on trial in the Court of Sessions for"
abusing his wife. It seemed to me
that the place was well called ' Egyp
tian, ' from the darkness that covered
over justice there ; and ' Tombs, '
for it appears, as all our court-houses
are, the sepulchre of equity. How

can it be 'justice' to punish as a
crime what the institutions of society
render unavoidable ? How could any
thing better be expected of the poor
wretches daily brought up to that
court, exposed, naked as they are, to
all contaminations of cormpt society.
This poor negro, on trial for a crime,
showed me in miniature the whole of
our socjal institutions. I. He was
the victim of Christian cupidity, and
had been a slave. 2. From this he
had probably escaped by what was
counted a crime by his master; or
else was set free by charity, perhaps
desiring to cover up its own sins. 3.
He was cast loose in a society where
hjs colour debarred him the rights of
a man, and forced him to count him
self a beast, with nothing to excite
self-respect, either in his condition,
h>s history, or his prospects. Poor,
wretched man ; What is life to him ?
He is more degraded than the savage ;
has lost much in leaving Sahara, and
gained infamy, cold, hunger, and —
the white man's mercy — a prison of
marble. Oh, what wrongs does man
heap on man !"
These were the kind of feeUngs he
had, and the kind of reflections he
was making, while still minister of
the Uttle country parish at West Rox
bury. But he had much more reason
given him for feeling and reflecting
when he became a minister in the
large seaport city of Boston. Though
invited there as a theological re
former, and knowing his supporters
would not have complained had he
confined his endeavours to that up.
hill field, his was not the nature to
ljve in "the city, its sins, and its
sorrows," and not become a re
former of many another kind as well.
His love for men and his piety to
wards the Father of men were too
deep and intense for that. With all
his other manifold engagements, he
found time to look deeply into the
vice and suffering of his community,
and to devise and try to carry out

THE REFORMER.

209.

preventives thereof and remedies
therefor. As James Martineau has
written of him, he was greater as a
practical reformer even than as a great
thinker. Before relating what in other ways
comes to us of Parker's work as a
social reformer in .Boston, we will
first present the reader with his own
written "experience." _,.
" When I first carne to Boston, I
intended to do something for the
perishing and dangerous classes in
our great towns. The amount of
poverty and consequent immorality
in Boston is terrible to think of,
while you remember the warning of
other nations, and look to the day
after to-day. Yet it seemed to me
the money given \yj public and pri
vate charity — two fountains that never
fail in Puritanic Boston — was more
than sufficient tp relieve it all, and
gradually remove the deep-seated and
unseen cause which, in the hurry of
business and of money, is not attended
to. There is a hole in the dim-lit
public bridge, where many fall through
^nd perish ! Our rnercy pulls a few
out of the water ; it does npt stop the
hole, nor light the bridge, nor warn
men of the peril. We need the great
charity that palliates effects of wrong,
and the greater justice which removes
the cause.
"Then there was drunkenness,
which is the greatest concrete curse
of the labouring Protestant popula
tion of the North, working most
hideous and wide-extended desolation.
It is as fatal as starvation to the Irish
Catholic. None of the four . great
social forces is its foe. There, too,
was prostitution ; men and women
mutually polluted and polluting,
blackening the face of society with
dreadful woe. Besides, in our great
towns, I found thousands, especially
the poorer Irish, oppression driving
them to us, who, save the discipline
of occasional work, got no education
here except what the streets taught

them in childhood, or the Popish
priest and the American demagogue —
their two worst foes.
" Still more, I learned early in life
that the criminal is often the victim
of society rather than its foe, and
that our penal law belongs to the
dark ages of brute force, and aims
only to protect society by veiigeance
on the felon, hot also to elevate man
kind by refining him. In nay boy
hood I knew a man, the last result of
generations of ancestral crime, who
spent more than twenty years in our
State Prison, and died there, under
sentence for life, whose entire Ulegal
thefts did not amount ty twenty dol
lars ! and another, not better born,
who lawfully stole houses and farm's,
lived a 'gentleman,' and at death
left a considerable estate, and the
name of Land-shark. While a theo
logical student I taught a class in the
Sunday School qf the State Prison,
often saw my fellow-townsmen, be
came well acquainted with several
convicts, learned the mode of treat-
ment, and heard the sermons and
ghastly prayers which were let fly a
the heads of the poor unprotected
wretches. I saw the ' orthodox
preachers and other helps, ' who gave
them ' spiritual instruction, ' and
learned the utter insufficiency of our
penal law to mend the felon or prevent
his growth in wickedness. When I
became your minister I hoped to do
something for this class of inen, whose
crimes are sometimes but a part of
their congenital misfortune or social
infamy, and who are bereft of the
sympathy of mankind, and uncon
stitutionally beset with sectarian min
isters, whose function is to torment
them before their time.
' ' For all these — the poor, the
drunken, and the ignorant, for the
prostitute, and the criminal — I meant
to do something, under the guidance,
perhaps, or certainly with the help, of
the controlling men of the town or
state ; but, alas ! I was then fourteen p

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

years younger than now, and did not
quite understand all the consequences
of my relation to the great social
forces ; or how much I had offended
the religion of the state, the press,
the market, and the church. The
cry, ' Destroyer,' ' Fanatic,' ' In
fidel,' 'Atheist,' 'Enemy of man
kind,' was so widely sounded forth
that I soon found I could do little in
these great philanthropies, where the
evil lay at our own door. Many as
you are for a religious society, you
were too few and too poor to under
take what should be done ; and out
side of your ranks I could look for
little help, even by words and coun
sel. Besides, I soon found my very
name was enough to rain any new
good enterprise. I knew there were
three periods in each great movement
of mankind— that of sentiment, ideas,
and action : I fondly hoped the last
had come ; but when I found I had
reckoned without the host, I turned
my attention to the two former, and
sought to arouse the sentiment of
justice and mercy, and to diffuse the
ideas which belonged to this five
fold reformation . Hence I took pains
to state the facts of poverty, drunken
ness, ignorance, prostitution, crime ;
to show their cause, their effect, and
their mode of cure, leaving it for
others to do the practical work. So,
if I wanted a measure carried in the
Legislature of the town or state, or
by some private benevolent society,
I did my work by stealth. I some
times saw my scheme prosper, and
read my words in the public reports,
while the whole enterprise had been
rained at once if my face of name had
appeared in connection with it. I
have often found it wise to withhold
my name from petitions I have myself
set a-going and found successful ; I
have got up conventions, or mass
meetings, whose 'managers' asked
me not to show my face thereat."
In summarising Parker's views and
action on the principal reforms of his

time, we begin with Temperance and
Prohibition, the twofold remedy for
Intemperance the fons malorum of
fully half our social evils. His pri
vate journal shows that wherever he
was — in Northern or Southern Europe,
England, America — he studied deeply
the causes and cure of this greatest
evil. Economically, morally, socially,
ethnologically, nationally, the ques
tion interested him. In 1846 he
signed the total abstinence pledge,
and kept it to the end of his life, with
the exception of the alcoholic liquors
he took towards the end by the advice
of his physicians. Frequently, in his
preaching, he used the strongest
language in speaking of the monstrous
evil of dmnkenness, the material and
moral ruin it works so widely. His
first offence in preaching, so he tells
us, came when he first spoke on the
misery occasioned by this ghastly
vice. Victims of it sat before him,
were in great wrath, and never for
gave him. Some left his congregation
on account of it. He rightly called
those who live and flourish upon
supplying drinks which give men a
diseased appetite, which leads them
to sacrifice all to its gratification,
" drunkard-makers, " for such they
are, however their ill-gotten wealth
and social cbnventiqnalisms may blind
men's eyes to the fact. He warned
young and old against the monstrous
and ugly sin, and never ceased to call
on the appointed magistrates to use
all their official power to end so fatal
a mischief. But in a great trading
town he found such calls of little use ;
the interest of the few was against
the virtue of the people. Said he in
his " Sermon of the Perishing Classes
in Boston"—" They burnt up a man
the other day at the distillery in
Merrimack Street. You read the
story in the daily papers ; and re
member how the bystanders looked
on with horror to see the wounded
man attempting with his hands to
fend off the flames from his naked

THE REFORMER.

head ! Great Heaven ! It was not
the first man that distillery has burned
up ! No : not by thousands. You
see men about your streets all a-fire ;
some half-burnt down ; some with all
the soul burned out, only the cinders
left of the man — the shell and waU,
and that tumbling and tottering,
ready to fall. Who of you who has
not lost a relative, at least a friend,
in that withering flame ? " When the
wealthy liquor-traffickers connected
with Hollis Street Church turned the
Rev. John Pierpont out of that pul
pit for preaching against the vice
whereby they lived, Parker — as also
Dr. Channing — stood by him, and
gave the whole of the offenders casti-
gations which they richly deserved.
But while ordinary temperance re
formers will go with Parker thus far,
he enunciates doctrine in the two
following extracts in which they can
not coincide :— " Yet," he wrote in
his Experience, " I had riot ac
cepted the opinion of the leading
temperance men, that the rise of in
toxicating drinks is in itself a mor"al
or a physical evil. I found that they
had not only a medical but also a
dietetic use to serve, and, in all stages
of development above the savage,
man resorts to some sort of stimulus
as food for the nervous system : for
a practice so nearly universal I sup
pose there must be a cause in man's
natural relation to the world of
matter.'' "Wine is a good thing;
so is beer, rum, brandy, and the like,
when rightly used. 1 think the tee
totallers are right in their practice for
these times, but wrong in their prin
ciples. I believe it will be found on
examination that, other things being
equal, men in social life who use
stimulants moderately live longer, and
have a sounder old age, than teeto
tallers. I don't know this, but be
lieve it. ''
The foregoing extracts are unworthy
of Parker. The assertion of the first
is founded upon an " I suppose," and

of the second upon " I don't know
this, but I believe it." There is' the
excuse for him, however, that he
wrote nearly twenty years ago, when
overwhelming evidence for total ab
stinence was not so plentiful as it is
now. Surely, the craving for stimu
lants is not more universal than the
tendency to do wrong, and both arfe
permitted for the same purpose,
namely, to be resisted, and the causes
which induce them to' be removed.
Then, if Parker had known of the
experience of the Temperance Life
Assurance and Sick Societies, he
would have known that facts ranging
over a period of nearly forty years
are diametrically opposed fo his no
tion that those "who use stimulants
mdderately live longer, and have a
sounder old age,' than teetotallers.*
We make these comments in our anx
iety to save the authority of Theodore
Parker from being quoted on the side
of the dietetic use of alcohol, feeling
assured that had he been living now
they would have expressed his own
revised belief. To us the great total
abstinence movement, springing up
as it did from the instinct of the un
lettered men of Preston; is a powerful
argument in favour of intuition pri
marily perceiving the truth better
than intellect— the principle for which
Parker ever contended. For now,
after forty years of resistance, the
conviction fore-felt by those Lanca
shire working men is triumphing,
and becoming the accepted and
proved truth of the philosophical.
Parker also favoured the policy of
totally prohibiting the drink traffic,
which was adopted in Maine in the
winter of 1850-1, and which, at the
time we write, is being carried out
with greater success than ever before^
He wrote of it in the journal :-^' 'They
have a new law in Maine, passed last
winter, which went into operation in
May or June. This prohibits the
use [No, the common sale] of all in
toxicating drinks except for medical

,212

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

or mechanical purposes. They are
now enforcing it with great vigour.
It makes the whole state an asylum
for the drunkarif. The principle was
long ago acted on, though, perhaps,
not recognised, that thepublic.should
seize and destroy things dangerous to
the community. Thus no man , is
allowed to keep a 'dangerous beast'
In France, and perhaps aU Countries,
the government seizes contaminated
ment, &c. Instruments for gambling,
counterfeiting, &c, are also contra
band of peace. Suspected persons are
deprived of arms in war time. All
this is of the same principle. In
Ohio there is a party — I hope a large
one — that will vote for none but tee
totallers. If Maine can keep her
actual law, and Ohio her contem
plated one, for a single generation, it
will be of much value to the state. "
That has now been done, with what
success let the Commissioners sent
by the Government of Canada, in
1875, to examine the working of the
law in the prohibitory states, answer :
— "The Prohibitory Law of the
States of Maine and Vermont has
been well enforced, and has largely
diminished crime and pauperism ;
and its beneficial effects upon the
community have been so fully proved
by the experience of over twenty
years that there is now no attempt
made to repeaj it ; while in the other
States visited — although the law was
npt So generally enforced — wherever
it was brought into full operation the
same result , of diminution of crime
invariably w followed. In the cases
where the Prohibitory Law was for a
short time repealed, intemperance
and crime immediately increased to
so marked a degree that prohibition
was soon re-enacted."
Parker goes on in his comment in
1851 : — " The law seems an invasion
of private right. It is an invasion,
but for the sake of preserving the
rights of all ; the evils are so mon
strous, so patent, so universal, that it

becomes the duty of the State to take
care of its citizens — the Whole of its
parts. If my house gets on fire, the
bells are rung, the neighbourhood
called together, the engine brought
out, and water put on it till my garret
is a swamp. But, as I am fully in
sured, I don't care for the fire ; and I
contend that my rights are invaded
by the engine-men and their water.
They say, ' Sir, you would bum down
the town ! '"
He held that the moral salvation
of^men ought to take precedence of
all other considerations. He thought
government should be other than
force : a reflex of the- highest intel
ligence grid moraUty of the times ;
and that its chief function — as Mr.
Gladstone has .put it, is — " to make
it easy for men to do right and difficult
for them to do wrong." Had Parker
nowbeen living.in England, we doubt
not that his formula of a.troe demo
cracy, namely, " government of the
people, for the people, by the people,"
would, have made him an earnest ad
vocate of "local option" iu dealing
with the indescribable .evils of the
liquor .traffic.
He.was an earnest Educational Re
former, ¦ He had known, himself, what
it was _to attain education with great
difficulty, as also the great advantages,
when attained, it had given him ; and
he was anxious to replace ignorance,.
from which springs so, many evils, by
knowledge,-" the wing wherewith we
fly to heaven." He himself says : —
"As I was a schoolmaster at seven
teen, though more from necessity than
early fitaess I fear, and chairman of
a town school committee at twenty-
two,,! have naturally felt much interest
in the education of the people, and
have often preached thereon. But I
have seen the great defect of our
culture, both in public and private
schools ; our education is almost en- li
tirely intellectual, not also moral, 1
affectional, and religious. The Sun- '
day-schools by no means remedy this

THE REFORMER.

213

evil, or attempt to mend it ; they
smartly exercise the devotional feel
ings, accustom their pupils to a cer
tain ritualism, which is destined only
to serve ecclesiastical and not humane
purposes ; they teach some moral
precepts of great value, but their chief
function is to communicate theological
doctrine, based on the alleged super
natural revelation, and confirmed by
miracles, which often confound the
intellect and befool the conscience.
They do not even attempt any develop
ment of the higher faculties to an
original activity at all commensurate
with the vigorous action of the under
standing. In the public schools there
are sometimes devotional exercises,
good in themselves, but little pains is
directly taken to educate or even
instruct the deeper faculties of our
nature. The evil seems to increase ;
for of late years many of the reading-
books of our public and private
schools seem to have been compiled'
by men with only the desire of gain
for their motive, who have * rejected
those pieces of prose of poetry which
appeal to what is deepest in human
nature, rouse indignation against suc
cessful wrong, and fill the child with
generous sentiments and great ideas.
Sunday-school b6oks seem yet worse,
so loaded with the superstitions of the
sects. The heroism of this age finds
fib voice nor language in our schools. "
He thought the great defect of modern
colleges is that while they do much
to develop the intellect, they do
little to develop the conscience, the
affections, arid the soul. Hence that
colleges were seldom places where
the youth of the nation found the
enthusiasm' for humanity which is
desirable in the future leaders of
society ; and that the practical result
was that the class which has* the
superior education— ministers, pro
fessors, lawyers, doctors, and the like
— is not only never a leader in any of
the great humane movements of the
age but it continually retards all

efforts to reform evil institutions, or
otherwise directly increase the present
welfare or the future progress of man
kind. The scholars' culture palsied
their natural instincts of humanity,
and gave them instead, neither the
personal convictions of free moral
reflection nor the traditional com
mands of church authority, but only
the maxims of vulgar thrift; " get the
most and give the least; buy cheap
and sell deaf I " Knowing these facts
— and he found them out pretty early
— he told them often hi" public, and
showed the need of a thorough reform
in educational institutions. Still more,
he ever ufged on the' members' of
his own congregation to give their
children such a great development of
the moral, affectional, and religious
powers as should j?f £setve all the high
instincts of nature, while it enriched
every faculty by the information
given. Parker was stfohgly opposed to
war ; and in his' discourses and lec
tures he showed its enormous cost in
money and men, and the havoc it
makes of public and private virtue.
He tried to discourage the ' ' excessive
lust for land," that aggressive and
invasive spirit which is characteristic
of both the American and British
people. He thought it clear that the
strongest races would ultimately sup
plant the feebler and take their place,
as the strong grasses outroot the weak
from the farmer's meadow. But the
work needed not to be done by vio
lence or any form of wrong. Yet he
never fell in with the views of the
peace-at-any-price party — with the
doctrine of non-resistance. He thus
wrote about this one time in a letter : —
" In respect to repelling force by force,
I should differ from you' widely. I
respect the conduct of the Friends in
this ' matter' ver^ much, and their
motives also, but I do not share their1
opinions. I follow what seems to me"
the light of nature. It appears to me,
the opinion of Jesus is made too much

214

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

of in this particular. He supposed
the 'world' was soon to end, and
the ' kingdom of heaven ' was pre
sently to be established. He there
fore commands his followers to ' resist
not evfl' — npt only not to resist with
violence, but not at all. In like
manner he tells them to 'take no
thought for the morrow.' These
counsels, I take it, were given in the
absolute sense of the "words, and
would do well enough for a world with
no future ; the day was ' at hand '
whence Sqn of Man should come
with power and great glory, and give
fourfold foj: all given in t charity, and
eternal life besides. But' the Son of
Man (or God) is to use violence of the
most terrible character (Matt. xxv.
3-1-46). Men were not to take ven
geance, or even to resist wrong ; not
' to meditate the- defence they were to
make when brought before a court —
all was to be done for them by super
natural power. These things being
so, with all my veneration for the
character of Jesus, and my reverence
for his general principles of morality
and religion, I cannot accept his rule
pf conduct in such .matters. Yet I
think violence is resorted to nine
times when it is needless to every
one instance when it is needed. I
have never preached against the doc
trine of the non-resistants, but often
against the, excess of violence in the
State, the Church, the community,
and the family. I think cases may
occur in which it would be my duty
to repel violence, even with taking
ljife. Better men than I am think
quite dinerently, and I respect their
conscientiousness, but must be ruled
by my own conscience ; and, till
otherwise enlightened, should use
violence, if need be, to help a
fugitive.*' He was strongly opposed to capital
punishment. It is true he did not
often refer to it, for it is not a con
tinuous evil like most others, but one
which only manifests itself now and

again. ¦ But when he did speak, jt
was with no uncertain sound. The
two foUowing extracts from the
journal will show his sentiments :—
"May 30; J84J;,— Attended the Anti-
Capital Punishment Meeting ; nothing
remarkable', but as a sign of the times.
Spon.this sin of judicial murder will
be oven" "Aug. 30, 1850.— To
day, by command of the Governor
of Massachusetts, Dr. John White
Webster, professor of chemistry and
mineralogy in Harvard University,
was hanged in the jail-yard at Boston.
This, is the second execution at Boston
within a very few years ; and it is a
terrible sin— it seems to me — thus to
take the life of a man completely in
our power. The laws deal equally
wjth the poor negro and the well-
educated and respectable professor;
but I think it cannot be long that we
shall continue thus to kill men for
killing man. Of his interestin the
connected subject pf the punishment
of criminals we have already spoken, •
and those who peruse his " Sermon
of the Perishing Classes " will notice
how deeply he must have studied aU
connected with penal policy.
Very deeply was he interested in,
and much he preached and lectured
on, the Condition of Woman. He
knew the great ineffaceable differ
ence between the spiritual constitu
tion of her and man, and the con
sequent difference in their individual,
domestic, and social functions ; but,
examining the matter both philoso
phically and historically, it seemed
clear to him that woman was man's
equal, individually and socially en
titled to the same rights. He thought
woman s present condition was sadly
unfortunate; for, whether treated as
a doll or a drudge, she is practically
regarded as man's inferior, intended
by nature to be subordinate to him
subservient to his purposes ; not a
free spiritual individuality like him
but a dependent parasite or a com'
manded servant. He said this idea

THE REFORMER.

215

appeared in all civilised legislation ;
and in the "revealed religion" of
Jews and Christians, as well as in
that of Brahmins and Mohammedans.
He thought it unjust that no public
provision was made to secure superior
education for girls as for boys ; that
woman should have no place in the
superior industries— be shut out from
the learned professions and the higher
departments of trade, limited to do
mestic duties, and other callings which
pay but little ; that when she dqes a
man's service she should have "but
half his reward ; that' no political
rights should be awarded to her ;
that she should always be taxed and
never represented. He further pointed
out that, if married, her husband has
legally an unnatural control over her
property and her person, and, in case
of separation, over her children. He
said that no talents, no genius, could
secure a poor man's daughter her
natural share in the high culture of
the age, as they can the poor man's
son. All this he traced to the false
idea, which woman herself often
shares in the heroic degree, that' she
is by nature inferior to man ; and he
contended that prostitution and its
half-known evils came' from this as
naturally as crime and drunkenness
from squalid want — as plants from
seeds. He preached the equivalency
of man and woman—that each "in
some particular is ' inferior to the
other ; but that, on the whole, man
kind and womankind, though so
diverse, are yet equal in their natural
faculties' ; and he set forth the evils
which come to both from her' present
inferior position, her exclusion from
the high places of social or political
trust. He thought woman would
generally prefer domestic to public
functions, and he found "no philoso
phic or historic argument for thinking
she would ever incline much to the
rough work of man, or take any con
siderable part in politics ; but he de
manded that she should decide that

question for herself, choose her own
place of action, have her vote in all
political matters, and be eligible to
any office. In special, he urged ort
the attention of his congregation to
attend to the education of young
women, not only in accomplishments
— which, he said, are so often labori
ous in the process, only to be ridi
culous in the display, and idle in
their result's. — but in the grave dis
cipline of study, and for the practical
duties of life.
But in this, as in other matters,
Parker was not content to merely
theorise, or even preach. In Boston
concrete phases of the evil confronted
him, and he did what he could to
ameliorate them.. He called atten
tion to the condition of the friendless
girls in the streets of Boston, "the
most abandoned of the perishing
class, who would soon become the
most harmful of the dangerous class
— for prostitution is always twofold,
male as well as female damnation."
Along with Wendell Phillips, Hannah
Stevenson (a kind of American Flo
rence Nightingale, who resided with
Parker and his wife for many years),
Edmund Jackson, and others, he
formed a society for- the protection
of girls whom idleness and vagrant
habit's led into temptation and made
offenders against the laws. The Rev.
John T. Sargent undertook to be the
agent of the Society in the courts and
elsewhere, becoming bail for such as
he thought deserving, and rescuing
others before they became offenders ;
the Society also furnished a temporary
home for them in the city, instruction
in the means of gaining a living, and
places in the country towns of New
England for such as needed them.
Such was his desire to befriend these
poor street-girls on their way to the
brothel, that one Sunday afternoon
in 1854, when sick, tormented with
rheumatism, laid on the "sofa, he is
found writing to a company of phil
anthropists to beg of them to come

2r6

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

and devise some means to help
them. The philanthropic work of Charles
Loring Brace iii New York, especially
as it bore on the condition of the
tempted street-girls,, interested him
exceedingly; and he went several
times to Mr. Brace for the purpose
qf consulting him on his methods
and results. An extract from a letter,
written after' he had been several
years at Boston, will show how deeply
he at times felt the sin and suffering
around him, and how his optimism
still enabled him to go on with
philanthropic work : — '.'.I know not
what is to be done. The industrial
feudalism of the nineteenth century
leads to some terrible results. As I
look about Boston, I see the ghastly
misery of social life, and know not
what to do. Last Sunday afternoon
I preached at Deer Island, to a con
gregation of drunkards (men and
women), and street-walking harlots,
in a sort df hospital. There I saw
some forty to' sixty broken-down
women of the toWn, in bed with the
venereal disease ! I see daily sights
in Boston of awful sirf and misery,
not the product of lust albne, but
of intemperance, ignorance, poverty,
and manifold crime, which make me
shudder. All that I can do seems
like putting a straw into the ocean to '
stop the tide. But I do. not despair
of mankind. No; never ! It is better
than ever before, and the good God
has a remedy for it all/'
How further he was interested in
the work of even the humblest philan
thropists of Boston will be shown by
the following notice of the death of
John Augustus — a sort of American
John Pounds :— " John Augustus is
dead. I knew him well — have known
him from' my boyhood. He married
my cousinr— a, favourite niece of my
mother, who I think brought her up ;
but they were married before I Was
born. His death is a public loss.
I should have preached an occasional I

sermon on his 'death had I been at
the Music Hall. His life was a great
lesson. He was the friend of pub
licans and sinners to a greater'degree
than Jesus of Nazareth — if we rely
on the records. He had a genius for
philanthropy : it showed itself in
Lexington, -where he lived and carried
on the shoemaking business from
1810 till 1829 or 1830. He was an
odd man, queer arid fantastical, but
honest, self-sacrificing, and extraor
dinarily given to help the helpless
and love the unlovely. His character
was sweet, and clean, and beautiful.
AUthe members of the United States
Supreme Court might die next month,
and the President of the United
States follow suit, and half the Go
vernors of the Union, and, unitedly,
they would not be so great a loss as
poor old John Augustus. The fair
record of his life since 1810 (he was
bom about 1785, the illegitimate
son of somebody), especially since
1830, would be one of the most ex
traordinary and instructive pieces of
biography ever written. Ministers
preach benevolence and beneficence —
he went and did it." How many
common prostitutes did he pick out
of that Slough of Despond ! how
many, drunkards save from the pit of
ruin! how many thieves, and rob
bers, and other infamous persons,
did he help out of their' wickedness !
I wish the lives of riferchants like
Hovey and John L. Emmons, of
deacons like Moses Grant, and shoe
makers like John Augustus, could be
written. 'The Life arid Works' of
Calvin Whiting would be worth two
or three lives of King D6-nought, or
of Murderous the Great. Pope Gre
gory XVI. will have his life written
m many languages", but there will be
no history of Hovey, and Emmons,
and Grant, and Augustus, and Whit
ing, and Saint Matilda, and the other
angels of justice, of charity, of mercy
whom you and I know." Another
humble Boston philanthropist, Father

THE REFORMER.

21*1

Taylor', th e Met h od ist sailors' preach er,
whom' Charles Dickens describes ' in
' ' American Notes, " had practical
reason for saying of Parker, aftef his
death, " Don't tell me that Theodore
Parkef has gone to hell. He was so
good a man that the devil would not
know what to do with him. "
He was sorely oppressed with the
misery incident to thoughtless mar
riages, as extracts we have given, when
recording his own, will show. The
following letter to Miss F. P. Cobbe',
written about a year before his death,
will further show his sentiments on
this important subject: — "I have
not touched this great matter [Di
vorce] for two reasons : (i) I don't
feel quite competent to deal with it,
and perhaps never shall, even if I
live ; and (2) things are going on very
well without my interference, perhaps
better without it. All the progressive
States of America are changing their
laws of divorce", and iii New England
they have altered much in fifty or
even in twenty years. The instinct
and reflection of the people demand
a change. In the new Western
States the alterations are very great
and rapid. In private, I do not share
the opinions attributed to me, and
have painfully spent much time in at
tempting to reconcile married people
who at first sought a divorce. Yet,
out of many trials, I remember but
one where the attempt was at all suc
cessful. I have small sympathy with
men and women' who wduld either
make or break a marriage lightly ;
but I do not think material adultery
is the only breach of marriage. I
think I once petitioned the Massa
chusetts Legislature to make habitual
d rankenness a ground for divorce, if
the aggrieved party desired it. But
proper notions of marriage, and so of
divorce, can only come as the result
of a slow but thorough revolution in
the idea of woman. At present all
is chaotic in the relation between her
and man ; hence the ghastly evils of

involuntary celibacy, of unnatural
marriage, and of that dreadful and
many-formed vice which disgraces
our civilisation. Bit we shall gra
dually outgrow this feudalism of
women, and Kosrrios will come where
Chaos was. I have few things more
at heart than the elev'atibn' of woman,
and have written iriu'ch on that theme
which may never see the light. "
He was a strong advocate of the
political franchise being extended to
women, feeling convinced that justice
would never be done while the female
half of nations had t6 depend for re-
presentatiori' upon the male half; to
say nothing of the evil which comes
from the absence of the good which
woman's nature, patribtically and
politically developed, might bring
into politics. On June 3, 1853, along
with Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips,
arid T. W. Higginson, Parker ap
peared" before a Coifffnittee appointed
to revise the' Constitution of Massa
chusetts', arid made aft earnest appeal
for the admission of women to poli
tical rights*.
For all this, however, he was not
oblivious to the objections raised by
the opponents of Woman Suffrage.
Here, for instance, is an extract from
a letter of his to a young woman -
correspondent, which must delight
the greatest hater of "political fe
males : "— " I am glad you are busy
with work of the house and dairy ;
that you can make good bread (I
think it one of the fine arts), and also
good butter. We lived (or stayed)
ten weeks at St. Croix, and had never
a morsel of tolerable bread. There
are few American women who can
make a decent article : many of them
commit the (female) sin against the
Holy Ghost continually by trans
figuring good meal into bad bread.
I should rather be famous for bread
and butter than famous for straddling
about on platforms, and making a
noise in public meetings, and getting
into the newspapers, as many women

218

LIFE OF THEODpRE PARKER.

do." Yet he knew, too, that all
women are not fitted for bakers any
more than are all men ; and that
there is no reason a woman may not
be domesticated and clever in house
work and, in addition, take an interest
in the welfare of her country. In the
journal, in 1859, he wrote :—" It is
surprising to notice the odds between
the talk of men and women, who
bear the same relation to mankind
and to humankind. The women talk
so much more on trifles ; and when
they treat important matters, it is
in a comparatively poor and narrow
manner. If half the American Se
nate were women, who should bear the
same relation to their female consti
tuents as the meu to the male, I think
half (perhaps more than half) of the
debate would be of a strange charac
ter." Yet he knew that this was
largely the result of the lack of in-t
centive and opportunity to become
other which women have experienced
at the hands of men ; for, had men

always been treated as have wonjep,
they would have been as little fit
to talk philosophically on political
matters. To us it seems that the best
way to make women fit to engage in
politics wisely is to give them votes,
and interest them in politics ; just as >
the best way for a man to learn to
swim is for him to enter the water
and struggle to overcome his in
ability. Otherwise, it is unfair to ex
pect fitness — though even now many
women we know are much more fitted
to exercise the franchise than many
men we know who have it Parker
rightly felt that justice ought to be
done, however difficult and trouble
some it might prove in details of
operation. He knew that the greatest
hope is ever to be placed in humanity
in a condition of liberty — that, thus
conditioned, woman, no less than man,
would be likely to rise out of her short.
comings, and become his helpmeet in
polities' as in other matters.

-*4S

THE SAINT

219

.CHAPTER XJC.
The Saint.
.." O Thou eternal One, may I commune
With Thee, and fbr a moment bathe my soul
In Thy infinity, Mother and Sire
Of all that are '! In all that is art Thou :
Being is but by Thee, of Thee, in Thee ;
Yet, far Thou reachest forth beyond the scope
Vf- space and time, dr verge of human thought.
Transcendent God I Yet, ever immanent
In all that is, I flee to Thee, and seek
Repose and soothing in my Mother's breast,
'O God, I cannot fear,, for Thou art love,
And wheresoe'er I grope I feel Thy breath !
Yea, in the storm which wrecks an argosy,
Or in the surges of the sea of men
When empires perish, I behold Thy face,
I hear Thy voice, which gives the law to all
The furies of the storm, and Law proclaims,
" Peace, trdubled'waves, serve'ye the right— be still t
From all this dusty world Thou wilt not lose
'A molecule of earth, nor spark of light.
I cannot fear a single flash of soul
Shall ever fail, outcast from Thee, forgot.
'Father and Mother of all things that are,
1 flee tb Thee and in Thy' arms find rest.
My God I how shall I thank Thee for Thy love !
Tears must defile my saqramental words
And daily prayer be daily penitence
For actions, feelings, thoughts, which are amiss ;
Yet will I not say,, ' God forgive I ' for thou
Hast made the effect to follow cause, and bless
The erring, sinning man. Then, let my sin
Continual find me out, and make me clean
From all transgression, purified and bless'd ! "
Prayer from Parker's Private Journal.

WHEN, some few years after
Parker's death, his followers
in Boston had built the Parker Me
morial Hall in that city, an American
newspaper remarked that from the
estimation they held of his person and
his ideas they ought to term him "St.
Theodore. " This we are not exactly
going to do in this chapter ; but feeling,
as we do, that no grander exhibition
of manly piety than that displayed in
his life has been made known in
modern times, we are going to attempt,
as we think it desirable, a slight sketch
of him on his more immediate saintly
side ; albeit many evidences thereof
have already appeared in these pages.
By " saint " we do not mean what
Roman Catholics or High Churchmen

would understand by the term : a man
or woman who forsakes the practical
duties of life in order to completely
devote himself or herself to pious
asceticism and mysticism. To us, such
are not " saints " but fanatics. But
we mean a man who makes conscious
communion with God the spring of
all his motives; who feels, thinks,
acts, under an abiding impression of
responsibility to the All-Perfect God,
and who, in consequence, seeks to
serve God and man with every power
and faculty of body, mind, and spirit.
Among these true saints we place
Theodore Parker high on the roll.
Hardly ever was there a man whq
lived more in God and God in him ;
and never was there a man who, 14

220

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

consequence, more faithfully served
Deity and humanity than did this
great " prophet of the absolute good
ness of God. " As Miss Cobbe has
written of him : — " His doctrines and
his life were one. What he preached
to the world he had first found in the
depth of his own consciousness, and
that which he preached he lived out
in his own noble life. He seemed
always to live in , the light of God's
love, and to be able to work for his
fellows with the unwavering faith arid
tireless energy of one who actually
beheld in vision the foregleam of an
immortality, wherein all Souls shall
be redeemed and glorified. " In study
ing his private records, nothing comes
out more clearly than that he had
found his centre in God— the Oneness
with Him of which Jesus speaks.
God is the source of his enthusiastn
for humanity, of his aspirations for
perfection, and God is his consolation
when disappointments and despon
dency come respecting either or b6fh.
To Parker as to St. p Paul, " God "
was "all in all."
Already, in the chapters ' devoted
to his early life, we have spoken of
his fervent natural piety at that time.
Passing on to the time when he went
to Boston, and became an assistant-
schoolmaster, we again soon find con
tinued manifestations of it. For
instance, when he drew up the rules
for physical and mental guidance,
quoted in an early chapter, he also
added several for his moral and
spiritual guidance. These we copy,
as they are to be found written in his
journal, calling attention to the evi
dent fact that they are such as could
only emanate from a deeply pious
nature. " I. Preserve devoutness,
by — I. Contemplation of nature ; 2.
Of the attributes of God ; 3. Of my
own dependence ; 4. By prayer, at
night and morn, and at all times when
devout feelings come over me. II.
Preserve gratitude by reflections upon
God's mercies to me — I. In giving

blessings unasked ; 2. In answering
prayers. III. Restrain licentiousness
of imagination, which comprehends
many particulars that must not be
committed to paper, lest the paper
blush." The last shows his trans
parency and depth of sincerity. So
outwardly pure was his life that those"
who knew him best read this with'
surprise, for otherwise they never for
a moment could have thought that
such matters had ever been a trouble
to him. Indeed, only the purest and '
most sensitive of men could have
made such an* entry in his journal.
Saintly purify was the characteristic
he maintained in all his relations and
references to the opposite sex. This 1
is the impression which a perusal of
his allusions to them and his corre
spondence with them must give to all
minds. To the end of life the society
of women was "more attractive to him "
than that of men, and he sometimes
wondered whether it was their affec
tion or the beauty of their mind that '
attracted him to them. Perhaps it
may have been because he was, as
Miss Cobbe says of him, a woman in
the depth of his love.
At the time when the rales just re
ferred to were drawn up, his religious
sentiments had a tinge of Puritanism
in them. In 1834, he wrote to' his
nephew, a young man older than him
self : — " One thing in your letter did
displease me : I mean the unholy
manner in which you quoted words of
sacred writ. Such use of Scripture,
you know, is inconsistent with the
Christian spirit, and you will only need
to have its bad tendency pointed out
to avoid it in the future. " A month
later he again wrote his nephew : —
"Do you attend Mr. Barry's (Uni
tarian) church constantly? Are you
yet a member? If not, I do not
accuse you ; yet I think it is the duty
of everyone to employ all the means
of religion within reach, and this is
certainly a powerful one. It is not
an end to be obtained : it is one of

THE SAINT.

the means to promote spiritual-mind-
edness and true piety. Perhaps you
think keeping the law and being
merely a good moral man is religion :
I think not. Do not think I mean to
reproach you. It is only my intention
to warn." In another letter, written
a few weeks later, Parker told him :
— " I am glad you find delight in
worshipping where you do. I hope
God will hear your prayers, and
always grant you happiness in your
belief, which I will never exhort you
to change, though every conscientious
man would prefer all his friends to be
of his own persuasion. So a man is
a Christian, it makes little differ
ence whether he is a Calvinist or
a Lutheran, Papist or Protestant."
This last was the opinion of the
gracious young man ; further know
ledge and experience showed Parker
that it does matter whether a man
holds an enlightened or superstitious
belief; and hence his own desire to
reform the popular theology. Further
on in this correspondence with his
nephew he tells hjm : — "Remember,
there is no standing still in religion .
If you are not going forward,- you are
falling backward. Strive for greater
eminence in religion. Labotir to be
more constant in prayer, more exact
in self-watchfulness, more .perfect in
your outward conduct. But, above
all, strive, watch, pray, to be more
pure in heart. This is the one thing
needful. So far as you fail of this,
though you attend all the meetings in
the country, and pray with the force
of a martyr — ;nay, though you die a
martyr — you fail of religion ; you
come short of the requirements of
Christianity. Do not forget charity
for men's opinions, defects ; yes, for
their crimes. Do not slight and scorn
a man because you think he is less
religious than you." In other parts
of this correspondence, which all
took place while Parker was a student
at Divinity Hall, he thus further ex
presses his religious mind at the

time: — "If it is a man's duty to be
devout in prayer, it is no less so to be
devout in business. God never com
manded us to be charitable and kind
an hour in the morning, and suffered
us to be peevish and revengeful all
the rest of the day. We are not to
keep one day holy, and defile all the
rest." "By religion I mean total
obedience to the will of God in all
things, the most trifling as well as
the most important. This is the
religion of the Apostles, the religion
of Christ. Its points are self-distrust,
meekness, cheerfulness, joy, faith,
love. If any man on earth has cause
to be joyful, it is the Christian." " I
consider a man's duty to be this — to
do the most good and the least evil
possible. But how is this to be done ?
To whom is this to be done ? A man
of tolerable intellect, a little educa
tion, quite late in life becomes religious ;
feels an earnest desire to ' do good,'
to 'benefit mankind,' so he leaves his
business, and, half-educated as he is,
becomes a preacher. Now, the man's
motive may be the best possible ; his
desire to ' do good ' may be worthy of
angels : but he entirely mistakes the
meaning of assisting man. He actu
ally retards the growth of religion,
and puts bac k the truth, good as his
heart is."
Four months after writing the last
extract he entered on his last college
term, and again he committed a pious
soliloquy to the journal :— " April 2 1 .
It is now the commencement of a
new term — of my last term of study
in college. Where shall the end of
it send me — what will become of me
then ? What will eventually become
my destiny ? What preacher shall I
be ? And where shall I find a resting
place ? All these questions come up
with mighty force— they weigh heavily
at times upon my soul. A part of
the decision of these great questions
rests with me, a part upon something
exterior to myself — upon Providence.
For my own part alone feel I any

222

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

anxiety. God has ever protected me ;
and, even in the times when there
seemed no possible way of escape
froni present and impending disaster,
His hand has shown a way. Shall I
distrust it now ? Oh, no, I do not —
I cannot. The Almighty will doubt
less give me more than I deserve —
why should I fear ? Wherever I am
cast I can be happy. I will attempt
to do my duty. But there are others
dear to my heart Shall I disap
point their cherished hopes? Oh,
no I Much depends upon this little
term. May I improve its blessings
right." Just before the conclusion of the
term, when he preached for the first
time in public, he felt much annoyed
at himself for not having — through
spending the time immediately before
the service in "doing the agreeable "
to his friends — been able to enter better
into the spirit of it, and next day, after
recording the fact in the journal, he
is constrained to go on : — " May God
in his mercy grant me power to im
prove in this holy duty. May I grow
from strength to strength, increasing
continually in godliness and wisdom;
and thus show forth pure and holy
Christianity in my life, no less than
in my teachings. Oh, God, wilt thou
help me to become more pure in
heart, more holy and better able to
restrain all impetuous desires and
unholy passions ; may I ' put down
every high thing' that would exalt
itself against the perfect law bi God.
Help me in the intercourse of life to
discharge my duties with a more
Christianlike fidelity ; to love Thee
the more, and those wfth whom I am
to deal ! "
Afterwards, during his days of
" candidating, " we find the same
pious spirit breaking out in his letters
to Miss Cabot ; and when she ques
tions if he is so unworthy as he repre
sents himself, he replies: — "You have
none of these stormy, violent passions
that sweep tornado-like through my

heart So I speak truth when I re
peat my own un worthiness." Thus
wrote the young man who, a few
years later, was to have self-esteem
< given, by his opponents, as explaining
his highest motive of action ! About
the same time he wrote thus to Miss
Cabot he was studying Plato ; and
along with thoughts from that im
mortal writer copied into the journal,
there appear devout prayers for help
to manifest a consecrated life. " Give
me," he prays, " an understanding
heart ; let me not only know, but
feel, that my duty, my nature, my
destination, demand continued labour
and earnest action. Give me rest for
my soul. Help me to control im
petuous passions, to rule my own
spirit, to obtain a sublime command
over all appetite and desire, bringing
every thought into subjection to the
law of my being."
About the year 1840, he passed
through the conflict which most
thoughtful men have to go through
anent the difficult problem— Given
ah Infinitely Perfect God, how are
we to account for the moral and phy
sical evil to be found in His creation ?
For his full answers to this difficulty
we must refer the reader to his ser
mons, "Of the Economy of Moral
Error," and "Of the Economy of
Pain," as also to other of his works
in which he deals with the question ;
we content ourselves here with saying
that he found his best solution in the
revelation of God which he found in
his own heart. " Were I, " wrote he,
" to draw conclusions solely from or
ganic nature, what attributes should
I ascribe to the cause of the world ?
Certainly not just the same I now
give Him. But, looking into my con
sciousness, I find there a different
idea of a God ; so the first witness is
insufficient— the last perfectly compe
tent. I do not understand how all
the evil which man inflicts upon an
other animal, or one animal upon its
fellow, can consist with the ultimate

THE SAINT;

22$

happiness of that animal ; but, if
God is infinitely just, it must be so'.
I know how all things may work to
gether for the good of the extremest
suffering among men, but not among
brutes. Now, in estimating the phe
nomena of evil, my own faith says
there is a perfect system of optimism
in the world ; that each man's life is
, to him an infinite good. Of course
all his physical evils must be means
of progress, all his errors likewise
unavoidable steps in his course to
happiness. But to legitimate this in
the court of the understanding, where
all other truths are legitimated, 1 find
difficult. Faith has nothing to do
there. I will imagine a person who
denies that all things work together
for good, and suppose myself1 to reply
to the arguments I should bring in
such a case. I should not know how
to answer him : I should appeal solely
to faith for my own satisfaction."
It was evident from this that the
man whom the churches were so
ready to dub " infidel " was far from
being a man lacking faith. As he
wrote in a letter in 1846 : — "I have!
no lack of faith — not belief in the
Thirty-nine Articles, in the Creed, or
the Catechism' ; but trust in God. I
am content to walk by that I often
find I can feel further than I can see;
and, accordingly, I rest the great doc
trines of Christianity, not on reason
ing, but reason on irituition." This
complete trust in God again comes
out in the " Discourse of Speculative
Theism:" — "When I see the suffering
of animals, the father-alligator eating
up his sons and daughters, and the
mother-alligator seeking to Keep them
from his jaws ; when I see the spar
row falling at a dandy's shotf I know
that these things have been provided
for by the God of the alligator and
the sparrow, and that the universe is
lodged as collateral security to ensure
bliss to every sparrow that falls;"
An Oriental legend says that when
everybody arorm'd fhfe cai-case of a

dead dog, lying in the street, was
calling attention to its loathsomeness
and ugliness, Jesus came up and said,
' ' But how white and beautiful are its
teeth." In like manner, Parker's
buoyant temperament enabled him to
overcome the terrible realism of his
thought and find overwhelming good
in the things of most evil. "At
different stages of life," he wrote to
Miss Elizabeth Peabody, " I have
been amazed at the power and the
wisdom that are involved in the crea
tive act. But of later years, as I look
more through the surfaces of things,
or at least try to do so, it is the beauty
and loving-kindness of God that strikes
me most. I think with you that we
can apprehend the creative moment
through love, and through that alone.
It is this that solves all the mystery ;
it cares little for the details of the
work, but tells us at once — ' Out of
the depths of infinite love God drew
forth the world. Oh, mortal, who
ever thou" art, thank God that thou
art bom ; arid take courage, for thou
also art a child of infinite love, and
all of thy past is working on thy be
half. So fear not ; what though you
weep a little while you scatter the
seed, and" the cold rain of spring
drenches and chills you, from this
very field you shall fill your bosom
with sheaves of satisTaction. ' Tome
this thought," this feeling, is enough to
wipe the tear from my eye at any
time. It- is infinite counsel and in
finite comfort. It has been adequate
for all the trials I have yet found, and
I trust it 'will keep me' till the
world ends. I often wish I could
impart this same feeling to others.
But the attempts always remind me of
the truth in Plato, ' It of all things is
the most difficult to find out God, and
impossible to communicate Him to
others.' Yet it has come to me with
little conscious difficulty. I sometimes
try — yes, it is the object of my preach
ing — to lead all to this same ' watch-
tower in the skies ;' but they tell me?

224

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Look at the evil, the wretchedness,
he sin of the world — the wrongs that
patient merit of the unworthy takes,'
as if I could not see them all, and
feel some of them. I wish you would
tell me, my dear Elizabeth, some
better method of doing this. You
are the all-sympathiser, and must
know how to do this kindly office
also." The foregoing was written in 1840,
A year later, in a letter to the same
correspondent, he thus devoutly ex
presses himself on the subjects of
Christian tranquillity and the Divine
and human wills : — "As Christian
tranquillity is the fairest and costliest
fruit on the Christian stem, so it is
the last that matures. Even Paul,
great-minded and deep-hearted as he
was, could not find it till old age,
Paul the aged alone could say, '1
have fought the good fight. I have
finished my course. I know whom J
have served, and am thereby persuaded
that God is able to keep what J have
committed unto him. God hath not
given me the spirit of fear, but of
love and of a sound mind.' Even if
you are not yet triumphant, I know
that you will be. The human will
is strong and excellent ; but not
the strongest nor most excellent ;
when perfectly coincident with the
will of God, I suppose we are not
conscious of any personal will. Then
the infinite flows through us and we
are blessed." The devout America.n
had evidently his Nirvana as has the
devout Buddhist, though there might
not be exact agreement between them
on the matter of personal conscious
ness. Was not Parker also at one
with the devout Methodist in his
belief in final and complete sancti
fication ? It is wonderful to note how
closely men of widely divergent the
ologies agree in the heart of their
beliefs. In 1845, when just entering on his
work at Boston, and in the midst of
his manifold trials and persecutions,

he made the following religious re
flections in an entry in the journal : —
' ' I have but one resource, and that
is to overcome evil with good — much
evil with more good ; old evil with
new good. Sometimes when I re
ceive a fresh insult it makes my blood
rise for a moment ; then it is over,
and I seek, if possible, to do some
good, sacretly, to the person. It
takes away the grief of a wound
amazingly. To be true to God, and
'that one talent which 'tis death to
hide ' — this depends on me. To know
that I am thus true depends on others ;
and if they know it not, why that is
not my affair but theirs ! Sometimes
I wish that death would come and fan
me to sleep with his wings ; but faith
soon stops that murmur, and a ' Thy
will be done I' .is prayer enough for
me." Thus he resolved. The last
year of his life he wrote a letter to
a friend, which he begged him not to
show to anyone else, an extract from
which will show how nearly he suc
ceeded in his resolve. "No man,"
wrote he in that letter — "No man in
America, since Adams and Jefferson,
has been so abused in public and pri
vate. But I confess to you, Liver-
more, I have never felt a resentful
feeling against anyone which lasted
from sundown till sunrise, except in
two cases — atrqcious cases they were,
too. For a year I felt emotions I did
not like towards one man ; he took
pains to insult me whenever we met,
so I avoided him. But during that
time I never spoke an ill word of him.
At length I saw him in the street one
day, went over and took his cold, un
willing hand, and asked tenderly after
his little pnes. At length he caved
in ; and though he has since changed
neither character nor conduct, I feel
different towards him and free to
criticise his acts. The other man did
not trouble me a month."
Thus he was ever striving to be
religious— religious towards man and
religious towards God. He had more

THE SAINT.

225

than his share of trouble, but he was
determined to say and live, " Thy
will, not mine, be done." " If I could
be well," he wrote in 1848, " well
enough to work, to do a man's duty,
I should be glad. Yet that is not a
thing I ever mention in my prayers.
I am content, yes, content, to pay the
price of violating the laws of the
body in struggling for an education ;
though I knew not what I did."
Again, in writing to his friend, Dr.
Francis, in 1852, the same spirit of
religious resignation permeates him : —
' ' Really, my good friend, it seems to
me you ought to be happy. Think
of me, hated, shunned, hooted at —
not half a dozen ministers in the land
but they abhor me, call me ' infidel. '
I have no child, and the worst reputa
tion of any minister in all America.
Yet I think I am not ill-used, take it
altogether. I am a happy man.
None of these things disturb me. I
have my own duty to do, and joys to
delight in. Think of these poor
German scholars in Boston — poor,
companionless exiles, set down in
vulgar Tory Boston, shivering with
cold, yet thanking God that it is not
an Austrian dungeon. Why, you and
I might have 'glorified God in the
grass-market ' if we had lived 200
years ago, or 3000 miles east of New
England. I have had quite as good
a time in the world as I ever merited,
and daily bless God for favours un
deserved.'' This characteristic spirit of his, of
finding the hand of the good God in
all the trials which came to him, is
beautifully declared in the letter he
wrote to his congregation near the
close of his life. ' ' Several times in
my life," wrote he, " has it happened
that I have met with what seemed
worse than death ; and, in my short
sighted folly, I said, ' Oh, that I had
wings like a dove ! for then would I
fly away and be at rest ! ' Yet my
griefs all turned into blessings ; the
joyous seed I planted came up disci

pline, and I wished to tear it from the
ground ; but it flowered fair, and
bore a sweeter, sounder fruit than I
expected from what I set in earth.
As I look over my life, I find no
disappointment and no sorrow I could
afford to lose ; the cloudy morning
has turned out the fairer day; the
wounds of my enemies have done me
good. So wondrous is this human
life, not ruled by fate, but Providence,
which is Wisdom married unto Love,
each infinite I If I recover wholly, or
but in part, I see; new sources of
power besides these waters of affliction
I have stopped at ; I shall not think
I have gone through ' the Valley of
Baca' in vain, nor begrudge the time
that I have lingered there, seeming
idle ; rainy days also help to seed
the ground."
The anxiety he felt to make his
life truly religious led him to sensi
tively seek to make his services
and preaching so also. Of all the
criticism which the Melodeon and
Music Hall ministrations received —
and they received every kind — he
cared little except when their devo
tional character was questioned. So
eminently devotional was he felt to be
that this was most rarely done, yet
occasionally it was. When, for in
stance, Dr. S. G. Howe told a friend of
Parker's that he did not go oftener to
hear him, because he did not satisfy
his religious nature : he preferred the
Swedenborgian chapel — Parker was
wounded deeply. ' ' This is, in reality, "
wrote he in his private journal,
' ' the most painful criticism I ever
heard made on my ministry. I never
before heard of anyone as objecting
to my preaching that it was not re
ligious enough. Several have gone
away for various reasons — these be
cause I preached against war ; those
because I preached against slavery ;
yet others because I preached against
intemperance and the making drunk
ards of men ; others again because I
spoke of the misdeeds of the political
Q

226

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

parties. Some have left me because
I did not believe the popular the
ology, and so hurt their feelings (all
that is natural) ; several more because
the place was not respectable, and
the audience was composed chiefly of
' grocers and mechanics ; ' but this is
the first that I know of who has gone
elsewhere because the preaching was
not religious enough. But who knows
how many have been grieved away by
thesame thing? 'God help me to
know myself, that I may see how frail
I ami' Dr. Howe said that other
men went down into the deep places
of his heart more than I, and gave
him a glow of religion which I failed
to produce. Professor Porter accused
me of sentimentalism in religion. I
did not think that was true of a man
that wore a blue frock, and held the
plough, and mowed hay, and delivered
temperance lectures, and stormed
round the land preaching anti-
slavery, and making such a tumult as
I once made ; but it was nearer my
own judgment of myself than this of
Dr. Howe. I once loved pleasure ;
and religion kept me in. I loved
money, even now have a passion for
acquisition, and once resolved to
accumulate a hundred thousand dol
lars ; but religion forbade me to be
rich while the poor needed food and
the ignorant to go to college. I love
ease, but I don't take it. Religion
keeps me at this desk, and sends me
to a thousand things which even now
I like not to do. I love fame, and
for religion I took a path that I. knew
would lead me to infamy all my life ;
and if anything else ever comes of it,
it will be when I am wholly oblivious
to all such things. I love the society
of cultivated people, a good name,
respectability, and all that ; and re
ligious conviction has deprived me of
it all, made me an outcast and the
companion of outcasts, and given me
a name more hated than any in all
New England. I see men stare at
me in the street, and point, and say,

' That is Theodore Parker,' and look
at me as if I were a murderer. Old
friends, even parishioners, will not
bow to me in the street. I am cast
out of all respectable society. I
knew all this would come. It has
come from my religion ; and I would
not forego that religion for all that
this world can give. I have borne
sorrows that bow men together till
they can in nowise lift themselves up.
But my comfort has been the joy of
religion : my delight is the infinite
God ; and tbat has sustained me.
Yet I am glad of the criticism ; and,
true or not, I will profit by it."
There is deep genuine feeling — no
affectation — in these secret avowals.
They show abundantly that for which
we have quoted them, namely, how v
to him religion was the dearest and
highest concern of all. In the rough
classification he was in the habit of
making, for practical purposes, of the
human faculties, he placed first' the
religious ; second, the moral ; third,
the affectional ; fourth, the intellectual.
With him the Saint — he who wor
ships the absolute perfection — stood
highest of all ; the Hero — he who
maintains allegiance to eternal law,
came next ; then the Lover— he who
maintains loving fidelity to human
relations ; and the Thinker — he who
shows power of understanding, lowest
of the four. This, notwithstanding
that he himself stood so high as a
scholar, and valued observation, re
flection, and expression at so high a
price. Another proof of his religiosity is
to be found in the frequent prayers
scattered about his journal. We have
already recorded his remark that to
him prayer was as natural and simple
as breathing ; this his private records
verify. From the entry of almost all
kinds of thoughts and facts, his mind
and pen are carried up to aspiration.
Especially did the occurrence of
anniversaries have this effect upon
him. Here, for example, is a prayer

THE SAINT.

227

found entered at the end of the year
1854: — "Last night of the year. —
It is almost twelve : a new year close
at hand. O Thou Spirit who rulest
the universe, seeing the end from the
beginning, I thank Thee for the
opportunities of usefulness which the
last year afforded, for all the mani
fold delights which have clustered
round my consciousness. But how
little have I done, how little grown I
Inspire me to do more, and become
nobler in purpose, motive, method
of my life. Help me to resist new
temptations, and do the new duties
which the year brings with it. I
know not what a day shall bring
forth — honour or shame, perhaps a
gaol. Help me everywhere to be
faithful to Thee. So may I live and
serve my brethren more. Yet still
may I love my enemies, even as Thou
sendest rain on the just and the un
just." Other similar illustrations of
this prayerful tendency, already given
by us, will occur to the mind of the
reader. In concluding this chapter, we avail
ourselves of testimony to the saintly
side of Theodore Parker's character
from two or three who have had the
best opportunity of judging thereon.
Mr. Frothingham, who not only
knew him in life, but, as his bio
grapher, has had the privilege of
looking through all his private papers,
declares that in the latter there is an
assurance of the man's simple genu
ineness, of his honesty, sincerity,
faithfulness ; more than that, of his
strict dealing with himself, his hu
mility, modesty, unpretentiousness,
lowliness, and purity of spirit, which
none who peruse them can fail to
gain. From his own perusal of them,
he maintains Parker's right to be
enrolled amongst God's truest saints.
" His power to resign his will they
only knew who knew him intimately ;
and it was from his deep self-sub
mission that his self-assertion sprang.
Intense as was his own individuality,

he was as jealous of that of others as
of his own. He laid on himself a
solemn vow never to infringe on the
sacred personality of enemy or friend ;
and piously abstained from crushing
when he could not lead. The efforts
he made to keep himself down appear
in every volume of his journal, and
make passages of it as touching as
the confessions of St. Augustine or
the soliloquies of Paul."
Mr. Frothingham might have aptly
added to this the fact that one of
the chief subjects of public prayer
with Parker was "the period of am
bition, " which he treated as a time
of greater danger than even "the
period of passion" of the young
man's life. This extract from one of
his prayers — "and in the more dan
gerous hour when ambition tempts
the man, we pray Thee that with
greatness of religion we may bid
this enemy also stand behind us,
and wait till we bind his hands, and
make him bear our burdens, and
grind the mill whereby we achieve
greater glories for ourselves" — will
afford the reader one such example.
As respects that part of the saint
which consists in love of man, Mr.
Weiss thus emphatically claims it for
Parker. "He had," he writes in
the Life and Correspondence, "a
native love for man. It was not an
abstract recognition of new phrases
of Equality and Fraternity. His
nature was not of the cool and serene
kind which prefers truths to people,
and would never invite the latter ex
cept under compulsion. Every scho
larly attainment only seemed to widen
the channels for his human impulse :
it mantled in every gift, it beat to
shatter all doctrines which degraded
or depreciated man. He had all
Dr. Channing's reverence for human
nature, with a prompt, practical
friendliness, gentle to visit the humble,
terrible to defend them. Whenever
he found a truth, he placed it in the
glittering row which sits upon the

228

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

rugged forehead of humankind ; there
it looked handsomer to him than in
aesthetic and transcendental cabinets.
For all things look best where they
belong. " Mr. Frothingham adds, on
the same point : — ' ' The strength of
Parker's affection helped to confirm
his faith in conscience, and give in
tensity to his moral instinct. He
was a mighty lover. His friends
were all glorified by his feeling, till
they hardly knew themselves. He
lavished on them terms of endear
ment ; had pet names for them all ;
kept their anniversaries ; loved to
have memorials of them about him.
But his affectionateness by no means
confined itself to his friends. His
heart was human ; its humanity was
as remarkable as its tenderness.
Love gave him insight, knowledge,
prophetic vision ; taught him to see
the soul of truth in things erroneous,
the soul of good in things evil. He
never forgot a kindness, and his
readiness to forgive those who hated
him was as remarkable as his devo
tion to those who loved him."
The other testimony we avail our
selves of to Parker's saintliness is that
afforded by Frances Power Cobbe,
the Editor of his Complete Works.
"Theodore Parker's faith, " she writes
in her Introduction, " at least bore
this result : it brought out in him
one of the noblest and most complete
developments of our nature which
the world has seen; a splendid de
votion, even to death, for the holiest
cause, and none the less a most per
fect fulfilment of the minor duties

and obligations of humanity. Though
the last man in the world to claim
faultlessness for himself, he was yet
to all mortal eyes absolutely faithful
to the resolution of his boyhood to
devote himself to God's immediate
service. Living in a land of special
personal inquisition, and the mark
for thousands of inimical scrutinies,
he yet lived out his allotted time,
beyond the arrows of calumny ; and
those who knew him best said that
the words they heard over his grave
seemed intended for him : ' Blessed
are the pure in heart, for tBey shall
see God !' The lilies, which were
his favourite flowers, and which loving
hands laid on his coffin, were not
misplaced thereon. Truly, if men
cannot gather grapes off thorns nor
figs off thistles, then must the root of
the most fruitful life have been a
sound one.
' ' He was a great and good man :
the greatest and best, perhaps, which
America has produced. He was great
in many ways. In time to come his
country will glory in his name, and
the world wlII acknowledge all his
gifts and powers. His true greatness,
however, will in future ages rest on
this— that God revealed Himself to
his faithful soul in His most adorable
aspect— that he preached with un
dying faith, and lived out in his con
secrated life the lesson he had thus
been taught— that he was worthy to
be the Prophet of the greatest of all
truths, the Absolute Goodness of
God, the centre truth of the uni
verse."

THE SELF-IMMOLATOR.

229

CHAPTER XXI.
The Self-Immolator.
" Shall I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize
Or sailed through bloody seas."
" Not to ease and aimless quiet
Doth the inward answer tend,
But to works of love and duty
As thy being's end ;
" Earnest toil and strong endeavour
Of a spirit which within
Wrestles with familiar evil
And besetting sin ,
" And without, with tireless vigour,
Steadfast heart, and purpose strong,
In the power of faith assaileth
Every form of wrong."
Whittier (Favourite Hymns of Parker.)

THEODORE PARKER'S work
increased with his. years ; for
though he found it necessary to be
cpnstantly adding new duties and an
increase to old ones, he did not feel
that he had a right to give any of the
latter up. His studies must go on,
even though they had to be largely
continued while travelling about the
country or when he ought to have
been resting at home. His sermons
were more and more noticed in
the country, as well as attended by
larger crowds, and had to be written
more laboriously even than before,
because of the increased responsi
bility. The same may be said
of his lectures, which were so solid
and lengthy that they involved vast
study in their preparation, and a great
tax upon his physical powers in their
delivery. The parochial work of his
ministerial office- — visiting the sick,
comforting the afflicted, burying the
dead — was continued with a deep
sense of its delicate and important
nature. And this became increasingly
large, not only because of the con
scientiousness with which he per
formed it, but because of a multitude

of strangers, additional to the large
number regularly attending the Music
Hall services, soliciting and receiving
his pastoral consolation and services.
He himself considered that he had
been "called" to be "minister at
large of all the fugitive slaves in
Boston, " whether they were members
of his congregation or not ; and how
faithful he was to this "call" pre
vious chapters have shown. He was
not a whit less so in the discharge of
his philanthropic and spiritual offices
to all the other weary and heavily-
laden ones who applied to him to
help them to rest. Every afternoon,
when at home, he devoted to visiting
the homes of his own people and
others in Boston ; and frequently he
was called away twenty miles and
more to aid distressed ones with his
private ministerial offices. He used
to say that his parochial work tried
his capabilities more than any other
he had to perform. Though he was
himself such a mighty strengthener
and consoler — could deal with troubles
with so much common-sense, womanly
tenderness, and mighty faith in God
— he yet felt dissatisfied with his work

230

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

in this direction. He thought that, of
all others, the work of consoling and
advising human beings in their private
personal trials and afflictions was one
which ought to be filled by the noblest
genius .
Parker would have been more than
human if all this immense toil of body,
mind, and spirit had not broken him
down. It is trae he worked easily,
and in his later years was temperate
without being injuriously ascetical, as
he had been in some of the early
portions of his life — at college, for
instance, when he attempted to live
on dry bread alone ; did not keep
inordinately late hours, took much
beneficial walking exercise, and had
a large flow of animal spirits and
love of fun, even to the last It is
true, too, that he had great strength
in his youth — eould once carry a
barrel of cider in his hands, and when
eighteen or twenty, on occasion
worked at farm-work twenty hours
out of the twenty-four for several
days together ; and, after becoming a
minister, often worked from twelve to
seventeen hours a day in his study for
a considerable period. And, perhaps,
with less terrible overwork, and free
dom from such exposure as lecturing
involved him in, he might have lived
to the full ripe age attained by many
of his forefathers. But he had inhe
rited the consumptive tendency from
his mother ; the climate of his birth
place was unhealthy ; in youth he
had to experience the insufficiency
and unsuitability of food and clothing,
privation, and overtaxing of strength,
incident to exacting poverty ; and not
until too late to undo the mischief
which neglect of taking sufficient
sleep, exercise, recreation, rest, and
food, had wrought, did he become
aware of its damaging effects upon
the health of body and mind.
Early in his ministerial career,
symptoms of serious derangements
in bis health began to appear. We
learn this from frequent references

thereto which he makes in the journal,
the following being an example : —
" The other morning I arose, and one
side was numb ; both hands were so,
the left mainly. The right soon re
covered, and I shaved, but the left
kept mainly numb all the morning,
with pricking pains from time to
time." In other entries he complains
of ill-health preventing him from
working for days, or weeks, as the
case may have been. He began to
have a pain in his head, which he
accustomed himself to call his
' ' enemy, " and sometimes one in his
side. Soon after settling in Boston, he
wrote a letter to Miss Stevenson
which shows his state of health at
that time. "I was sorry," says he,
in the letter, "the moment that I
mentioned my complaint to you the
other day, for I saw that it gave you
more trouble than me. I don't often
tell my friends that I am ill : then, I
know not how, I felt it would be
wrong not to tell you. I have done
no work that I could avoid. I have
been idle this winter, till my con
science rebuked me sternly and does
now. I am passing my best days,
and doing but very little. My troubles
are not the result of any immediate
overdoing, but of causes that go back
to my childhood. I have often done
two days' work in one ; for I was
obliged to do it. It cost mea struggle,
alone and single-handed, to gain an
education. The foundation of. my
present troubles, I have no doubt,
was laid more than fifteen years ago
—before I came to Boston as a,
teacher. Since that, my life has been "'
one of care and anxiety ; not dimin
ished since my marriage. You know
the cause. I don't know what to do.
So long as I can stand upright, I do
well : the moment I resolve to lean a
little, I go plumb down ; for there is
nothing for me to lean upon : therefore
I never fall till the last minute. I
will be as careful as I can be, con-

THE SELF-LMMOLATOR.

231

sidering the circumstances of the
case. I can't go off a fortnight,
though I gladly would. We are just
putting the social meeting into
action, and I feel that I had better be
here, though, perhaps, I had better
not Then, too, whom can I get to
bend my own bow ? — not a long one,
not a tough one, perhaps, but one
that others don't like to handle. I
don't know whether I am destined to
a long life or not. Of my seven
father Parkers this side the ocean, all
but one have lived to be nearly eighty.
My candle stands in a current ot air,
and so, I suppose, will burn away
faster than if all about it was still.
I don't know that I need rest, I think
I need_^«», which I can't easily get.
J should like to spend one evening in
the week for three months with
* good fellows ' who sang — ' We
won't go home till morning ! ' How
ever, give yourself no more concern
about me, for this week I am a good
deal better. Last week I did nothing
at all, not even write a sermon ; for
an old one took its place the stormy
Sunday : and so, the ill-wind actually
blew me a sermon. Ah, Hannah I a
great many ill winds have blown me
good. Now, you child, I might turn
round and caution you, who need the
advice more than I do, but won't
follow it half so much, you good-for-
nothing ! ' Physician, heal thyself ; '
take thine own doses. There is no
preaching like practice. Cure up as
fast as you can, and I'll take care of
my head ; and it will last a good while
yet and bear some hard knocks. The
spring will soon come ; and its fresh
ness of leaves and blossoms will do
as much good to all of us as to the
bluebird and thrasher. Be a good
girl and don't trouble yourself about,
Your Grandfather."
Three years later, his health had
again broken down, and he wrote: —
"If I had one of the usual hum
drum parishes, I would leave it for a
year, and go off to Europe ; but this

is a parish which I cannot leave. I
feel as if I had squandered a fortune ;
for at the age of thirty-nine I am ill,
and lose more than half my time.
For the next six months I will take
especial care of my health, making
all else bend to that, and that to
nothing." On his birthday, August
24, 1853, he made this record in the
journal : — " I am this day forty-three
years old. I used to think I should
live as long as my fathers ; but cer
tain admonitions of late warn me
that I am not to be an old man. The
last three years have made great aber
rations in my health and vigour. I
walk and work now, with a will; then,
by the spontaneous impulse which
once required the will to check it. I
neither grieve nor rejoice at the
thought of departure ; but I will try
to set my affairs in such a condition
that I can at any time go over to the
other side when summoned, and leave
affairs in no perplexity. "
He was now entering on what he
felt to be the critical period of his
life — the few years which were to
decide whether or not he had to be
carried off, or be allowed to live to
be an old man ; for he could not shut
his eyes to the fate of his ten brothers
and sisters, all of whom, save one, at
tained mature years, and all of whom,
save one, died from forty-four to forty-
seven. After passing nearly three
years of this period, matters began to
look ominous ; for. we then find in the
journal this entry: — " Ap. 19, 1856.
— Last night I was to lecture at New
Bedford, and tried to speak, but was
so ill that I could not see, or hear, or
speak well. I left the room, and
went out with Mr. Robeson, and\
walked a few minutes. Went to an
apothecary's and drank about a
spoonful and a half of sherry wine,
which helped me. Spoke, but with
great difficulty. Am better to-day,
but slenderly and meanly. / take this
as a warning — not the first." Six
months later, when out lecturing, he

232

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

strained the muscle of his right thigh
in getting into a railway carriage,
came home in a bad condition, and
had to be confined to his room for
some time. He thought his general
health good at the time ; but he could
not walk much, and had a cough —
which he thought not pulmonic, and
going'away. But his anxiety to be of service to
men would not allow him to give his
constitution an opportunity of re
covering itself ; for, in addition to all
his other labour, he had now under
taken to preach on Sunday afternoons
at Watertown to an independent
society there that had no minister ;
and he did this for a year, perform
ing the services honorarily, with a
desire to support a movement for
which his influence was partly re
sponsible. It is true he prepared no
new sermon, preaching the one he
gave at Music Hall in the morning ;
but the journey to and fro in all
weathers, to a man in his state of
health, was more than ought to have
been undertaken or allowed. The
difficulty, however, was to prevent
him from sacrificing himself. His
friends remonstrated with him, as was
to be expected ; he would reply : —
" Look at the condition of the coun
try to-day ! — the slaveholders cla
mouring for more and more power ;
the government disposed to yield all
they ask ; the South united and arro
gant ; while the North is divided,
and disposed to be submissive. I
cannot stand idly by, a silent wit
ness of this deadly demoralisation.
I must exert every power I possess
to avert the awful evils that slavery
threatens, to the slaves first, but also
to the whole people ; and if my life
must be sacrificed, it cannot be sacri
ficed in a better cause than that of
opposition to this dreadful sin." No
doubt the hopelessness of remon
strance would after a time deter his
friends from offering it. To one who
had all through stood faithfully by

him, who came to see him not long
before he broke down, he said with
deep feeling :— " I am glad you have
come ; for I know you won't scold at
me. People come here and scold at
me for doing what I can't help doing.
I feel that the fate is upon me. God
has entrusted me with certain powers,
and I must use them in the service
of my fellow-men. Here are four
millions of my brothers and sisters
who are literally dumb. They are
not allowed to speak ; and they hold,
up their hands to me in earnest en
treaty, saying, ' Speak for us ! ' and
I must do for them all I can. I have
looked the matter carefully over, and
think I can go through the winter
safely and do my work. I come of a
long-lived stock, and hope with
care to survive ; but it matters little
whether I go through or go under,
if I do my duty as I ought." The
friend adds, "Never did I see any
one so thoroughly aware of the fact
that he was laying his life on God's
altar." Still, this allowed for, he did
the best he could to recover health.
He spent that summer vacation in the
society of his dearest friends, read as
little as he could help doing, and
made a recreation of translating from
the German poets.
In the following February he went
on a lecturing tour through Central
New York, in which he had to go
through severities- which ultimately
proved fatal. He himself thus told the
occurrences in a letter : — " Last Feb
ruary I went to Central New York.
Feb. 9th I was to lecture at Water-
ford, ioth at Syracuse, nth at Utica,
1 2th at Rochester, and then return
and reach Boston at midnight of
I4th-I5th. I should pass every
night in my bed except that of the
1 2th. But, on the contrary, things
turned out quite otherwise. The
railroad conductor left us in the cars
all night at East Albany, in the
midst of the inundation. Common
New England prudence and energy

THE SELF-IMMOLATOR.

233

would have taken us all over the
river. I had no dinner; no supper,
except what I had in my wallet [dried
fruit and biscuit] ; no breakfast the
next morning, save a bit of tough
beef in an Irish boarding-house.
When I awoke on the morning of
the ioth, I felt a sharp pain in my
right side, not known before. I got
to Syracuse that night, ioth, vid
Troy; lectured at Utica the nth,
and at n p.m. took the cars for
Rochester and rode all night, till 5
or 6 in the next morning, when I got
into damp sheets at Rochester and
slept an hour. I was ill all that day,
and at night had all the chills of an
incipient fever. But I lectured, took
the cars at 2 or 3 a.m., having waited
for them three or four hours in the
dep6t, and reached Albany in time
for the 4 P. M. train, Friday, and got
to Boston about 2 A.M. on Saturday,
having had no reasonable meal since
noon, Thursday. Sunday I preached
at Boston and Watertown, as my cus.
torn was. The next week I was ill,
but lectured four times ; so the next,
and the next, until, in March, I broke
down utterly and could do no more.
Then I had a regular fever, which
kept me long in the house ; but soon
as I could stand on my feet an hour,
I began to preach. This was a means
of cure, and it helped me much to
look into the faces of the people again I "
This attempt to accelerate cure by
preaching was a most serious experi
ment. In another letter, Parker gave
the details thereof; from which we
learn that after he had fairly broken
down, for a while he lay horizontally
twenty-two hours out of the twenty-
four, and gradually less each day,
though still confined to *his room.
He then made up his mind that one
of the best medicines would be the
usual service of Sunday. The doc
tors, all of them, said " No ! " all
the laical and clerical friends said
" No ! " and with still more em
phasis, all the women. He thought

that, out of ten chances, there were
seven that it would do him good, and
only three for harm. So he made
ready an old sermon "Of Integrity,"
adding a deal of new matter thereto.
A carriage took the sick minister and
his wife to the door of the Music
Hall, and with her help and a stick
he crawled into the house and walked
as bravely as he could to the pulpit.
He felt a little sinking at the heart as
he looked at the congregation — about
two thousand. But all the prelimi
nary services went off without diffi
culty. He apologised for being sick
and showed that it was not wholly his
fault, but the result of his great ex
posure on the last lecturing expedi
tion. Then came the sermon. He
spread out his feet as wide as he
could to make a wide basis, and kept
his hand always on the desk, so that
he should not fall over. Only two or
three times did he venture to lift both
hands at once . The service over, his
friends put on his coat, and his wife
and Dr. Geist helped him out and
into the cab, and he rode home. He
then found that his pulse, commonly
at sixty-four, stood at from seventy-
six to eighty-four till three o'clock,
and then went down. He felt a
little doubtful of the experiment for
a while ; but at five the tide had
begun to turn! At six he said he
" would not crow till he was out of
the woods ;" and at nine he felt clear
that the experiment had prospered.
The next day, spite of unfavourable
weather, it was plain that he had
been saved by the "foolishness of
preaching." In the letter from which we take
the foregoing particulars he adds : —
' ' The parish-meeting was last Sun
day, at twelve. They raised my
salary from sixteen hundred to two
thousand five hundred dollars ; and
offered me six months' vacation to go
to Europe, they supplying the pulpit.
I shall not take two thousand five
hundred, only two thousand dollars ;

234

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

and shall decline the generous offer
of a vacation. The kindly offer effects
a cure ; and so I need not take all
the medicine. The recent illness is a
warning which I shall carefully heed.
I never came quite so near the edge
of the precipice before. I might have
had either a brain fever or a lung
fever : I am let off with this trifle of
a slow typhoidal. Men seldom have
the typhoid twice. I had mine at
twelve and lay at Death's door a good
while, but was not taken in."
Intheyears 1857-8, when ill-health
was thus assailing him, a great com
mercial panic came over America,
and in consequence thereof there was
a great "revival of religion." We
suppose it largely came on the prin
ciple enforced by the Italian proverb,
that " all criminals turn preachers when
they are under the gallows." The
misfortune is that those who make
such good revival saints in adversity,
make very indifferent ones in times
of prosperity.
" The devil grew sick, the devil a saint
would be ;
The devil grew well, the devil a saint was
he."
Anyhow, as Mr. Frothingham
keenly describes the state of things,
at this time "New England was in
a convulsion of religious emotion,
torn between ecstasies of devotion and
agonies of penitence. Pious whippers-
in plied all their arts on the weak,
the nervous, the superstitious. Pray
ing bands went from town to town,
galvanizing the moribund into spasms
of supplication. Churches were open
all day, and relays of ministers kept
the evangelical car in swift motion
towards the kingdom. Posters in
the streets announced the time and
place for intercession. The drama
of redemption was exhibited with
new scenery and more imposing stage
effects. The good people who had
persuaded themselves that the reign
of vulgar superstition was at an end,
at all events in Boston, were con

founded when they saw the well-worn
imagery of the Apocalypse start into
life, and the faded pictures of damna
tion glow once more on the walls of
modern meeting houses. The fetish
ism they thought obsolete was ram
pant still in high places. Men in
black coats and white neckties beat
the tom-tom as vigorously as New
Zealanders, and called on their idol
as lustily as the priests of Baal." In
short, there appears to have been all
the outrageous means and appliances
set to work at that time whiqh Yan
kee Revivalists like Caughey, Moody
and Sankey, and others, have subse
quently familiarised Englishmen with
as well as Americans — Sankey's solo
performances, perhaps, excepted.
Of course, to these "spiritual dram-
drinkers," Theodore Parker and his
natural religion were most loathsome.
They termed him an emissary of
Satan, and said that all he did was
accomplished by means of hellish
influence. One man, who, though
feeling much of this, was yet so
charmed with his preaching that he
could not keep away from hearing
him when he had an opportunity,
asked himself how it was Parker had
such an influence over him. "And,"
said he to a friend of ours, " I came
to the conclusion that he was the Devil
himself incarnated in a human body! "
A revivalist, Elder Burnham, declared
at the close of a sermon :— " Hell
never vomited forth a more wicked
and blasphemous monster than Theo
dore Parker ; , and it is only the
mercy of Jesus Christ which has
kept him from damnation already."
But there was no mistaking the grow
ing influence of this man and his
views in America. He had attained
to a national reputation ; lectured
and preached all over the Northern
States ; had thousands upon thou
sands of readers of his printed ser
mons ; his ideas were carried all over
the land by visitors to Boston attracted
to hear him through his fame ; men

THE SELF-IMMOLATOR.

235

in high places spoke his name as that
of one who was a political and social,
no less than a religious, power ; he
was followed or acknowledged by
reformers and philanthropists. Clearly,
in looking out the sources of " God's
displeasure with America,"' as the
revivalists would phrase it, and look
for it, Theodore Parker must be in
cluded. Souls were being "lost"
through his influence ; he was a wolf
in the folds, and it was high time the
shepherds conspired to either "end
him or mend him." Of course, to
assassinate him would have accom
plished all that they desired, but that
was a course not permissible to them.
But might not "the prayers of the
righteous" move the Lord to "remove
him" by "the workings of His Pro
vidence ! " What was not permissible
to them was permissible to the Lord !
So, put plainer than they would like
to have it put, but, nevertheless, put
truthfully, they resolved to pray the
Lord to assassinate Theodore Parker !
This was at least the object sought
by some of the revivalists, as one of
the prayers quoted below will show.
In addition to allusions frequently
being made to Parker and his work
at other prayer-meetings, it was de
cided to devote one exclusively to
him. This took ' place on Saturday
afternoon, March 6th, 1858, in Park
Street Church, the head-quarters of
the Boston revivalists. A friend of
Parker's attended and took shorthand
notes of the prayers ; and a few ex
tracts from these petitions to the
throne of grace will abundantly show
the disgraceful method and spirit of
these " followers of the meek and
lowly Jesus." The meeting was
called for " Prayer for the Conver
sion of the Notorious Infidel, Theo
dore Parker." Parker preserved the
extracts we now give, as "samples
of the superstition of the nineteenth
century : —
" O Lord, if this man is a subject
of grace, convert him, and bring him

into the kingdom of Thy dear Son I
But if he is beyond the reach of the
saving influence of the Gospel, remove
him out of the way, and let his in
fluence die with him." [This was
Elder Burnham's prayer.]
' ' O Lord, send confusion and dis
traction intohis study this afternoon,
and prevent his finishing his prepar
ation for his labours to-morrow ; or,
if he shall attempt to desecrate Thy
holy day by attempting to speak to
the people, meet him there, Lord,
and confound him, so that he shall
not be able to speak I "
" Lord, we know that we cannot
argue him down ; and the more we
say against him, the more will the
people flock after him, and the more
will they love and revere him ! O
Lord, what shall be done for Boston,
if Thou dost not take this and some
other matters in hand ?"
' ' O Lord, if this man will still
persist in speaking in public, induce
the people to leave him and to come
up and fill this house instead of
that?" One brother exhorted the rest to
pray that God would ' ' put a hook in
this man's jaws, so that he may not
be able to speak."
" O Lord, meet this infidel on his
way, who, like another Saul of Tar
sus, is persecuting the Church of God,
and cause a light to shine around him,
which shall bring him trembling to
the earth, and make him an able de
fender of the faith which he has so
long laboured to destroy ! "
Another brother requested his bre
thren, whether in their places of busi
ness or walking in the street or
wherever they might be, to pray for
Mr. Parker every day when the clock
should strike one ! One does not
expect military men to be largely re
presented in prayer meetings ; but it
almost looks as if one had got into
this, and was applying the principle
of concentric firing to prayer. A
little more intelligence would have

236

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

shown him that to a God omnipresent
in time and space, there can be no
one o'clock.
Hardly more surprising are such
prayers than is the credulity which
sees answers thereto in occurrences
the most natural imaginable. Occur
rences which are accepted as having
no spiritual significance when they
come to "believers" — e.g., sudden
affliction or death, and the like — are
"judgments" when they come to
heretics, and much the same with
answers to irrational prayer. Parker's
failing health and the breaking down
of his constitution, in the thoughts of
the revivalists, were not to be ac
counted tor by natural laws, they
were an answer given by God to
their prayers ! Nay, actually a para
graph appeared in an American
"religious" newspaper attributing
Parker's consumption to the fervent
prayers of the elect I
Lately there has been a book issued
from Evangelical sources, detailing
many incidents in the life of " Finney
the Revivalist, "from which we make
the following extraordinary extract :
' ' It was the late President Finney
who caused the death of Theodore
Parker — who caused the immediate
causes of that death, and which
promptly put a stop to the Music
Hall abominations. It appears from
the recent published life of President
Finney, that, while conducting a re
vival in Boston, he was hindered by
the heretical and non-Evangelical
preaching of the Cromwell of radi
calism. He therefore called upon
Mr. Parker to persuade him to a
cessation of his labours. But Mr.
Parker refused even to see the Re
vivalist. It then occurred to Mr.
Finney that Parker should be prayed
down and out, and his mouth closed.
Prayer-meetings of the Evangelical
clergy were held for a purpose that
would have been inhuman had it not
been divine (1) The prayers were
successful. Parker became hopelessly

ill [he was so before the revival broke
out], was unable longer to speak in
public, or even to write in private.
He was forced to leave Boston ; and
dying, his work perished with him.
This, we take it, is chief among the
laurels of the great Revivalist " (!)
After this, who can say that any
thing Parker ever said against the
popular theology was half strong
enough. This kind of ghoulism is,
after all, essential to that theology
wherever it is consistently main
tained. It was precisely because
Parker saw so much of its terrible
logical outcomes that he felt and
fought so strongly against it. As to
what the revivalist did towards him,
he made fun of it. When relating it
in a letter to a friend in Rome, he
begs her not to tell the Pope about
it, or " I fear I shall miss my cardi-
nalship, and my black hat is almost
worn out. I think the robes will
come over in 'The Leviathan.'"
But he was deeply sorrowful to find
what an amount of latent superstition
the revival brought out It roused
up the old intense hatred he felt
towards the monstrous tenets of
the popular theology, which latterly
he had allowed to remain in abey
ance while he dealt with less con
troversial matters ; and he disbur
dened his soul by giving two discourses
in Boston, "A False and True Re
vival of Religion," and " The Re
vival of Religion which we Need,"
and four characteristic discourses be
fore the Progressive Friends, in
Chester County, Pennsylvania, in
June, 1858 :— 1 . " Of the Progressive
Development of the Conception of
God in the Bible." 2. "Of the Eccle
siastical Conception of God, and its
Inadequacy to meet the Wants of
Science and Religion." 3. "Of the
Philosophical or Natural Idea of God,
and its Fitness for all the Wants of
Science and Religion." 4. "Of the
Soul's Normal Delight in the In
finite God. "

THE SELF-IMMOLA TOR.

237

In the sermon, "The Revival of
Religion which we Need," there is
this fine passage, which may be taken
as Parker's answer to the blasphemies
of the revivalists: — "Ministers talk
of a ' revival of religion in answer to
prayer !' It will no more so come
than the submarine telegraph from
Europe to America. It is the effec
tual fervent work of a righteous man
that availeth much — his head-work
and hand-work ; gossiping before
God, tattling mere words, asking
Him to do my duty- — that is not
prayer. I also believe in prayer from
the innermost of my heart, else must
I renounce my manhood and the
Godhead above and about me. I
also believe in prayer. It is the up-
springing of my soul to meet the
Eternal, and thereby I seek to alter
and improve myself, not Thee, O
Thou Unchangeable, who art perfect
from the beginning ! Then I mingle
my soul with the Infinite Presence.
I am ashamed of my wickedness,
my cowardice, sloth, fear. New
strength comes into me of its own
accord, as the sunlight to these
flowers which open their little cups.
Then I find that he that goeth forth
even weeping, bearing this precious
aid of prayer, shall, doubtless, come
again rejoicing, and bring his sheaves
with him. "
Many of the Evangelicals called
upon him personally to try to ' ' con
vert " him ; others — clergymen, lay
men, and laywomen visitors— twrote
letters threatening him with eternal
damnation. He patiently took note
of all that was said, and remarked
that none of them were anxious to
make him a better man — only to get
him to believe theologically as they
did. Here is a letter he sent to one
such person.
"Dear Madam, — I am much
obliged to you for the interest you
take in my spiritual welfare, and ob
liged to you for the letter which has
just come to hand. I gather from it

that you wish me to believe the the
ological opinions which you entertain
and refer to. I don't find that you
desire anything more. I make no
doubt the persons who pray for my
conversion to the common ecclesias
tical theology, and those who pray
for my death, are equally sincere and
honest. I don't envy them their
idea of God when they ask Him to
come into my study and confound
me, or to put a hook into my jaws so
that I cannot speak. Several persons
have come to 'labour with me,' or
have written me letters to convert
me. They were commonly persons
quite ignorant of the very things they
tried to teach me ; they claimed a
divine illumination, which I saw no
proofs of, in them, in their lives, or
their doctrines. But I soon found
it was with them as it is with you :
they did not seek to teach me either
piety, which is the love of God, or
morality, which is the keeping of the
natural laws He has written in the
constitution of man ; but only to in
duce me to believe their catechism
and join their Church. I see no
reason for doing either. I try to use
what talents and opportunities God
has given me in the best way I can.
I don't think it is my fault that I
regret the absurd doctrines which I
find in the creed of these people who
wish to instruct me on matters of
which they are profoundly ignorant.
But the Catholics treated the Pro
testants in the same way, and the
Jews and the Heathens thus treated
the Christians. I find good and re
ligious men amongst all classes of
men, Trinitarians, Unitarians, Salva
tionists, and Damnationists, Pro
testants, Catholics, Jews, Mahome-
dans, Heathens. There is one God
for us all, and I have such perfect
love of Him that it long since cast
out all fear. Believe me, yours truly,
Theodore Parker."
Parker's health continuing to fail,
and he showing himself so determined

238

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

to go on with his work notwith
standing, a member of his congrega
tion determined to decoy him away,
for two or three weeks, with a
carriage tour through the most pic
turesque districts of North America.
Altogether he was taken sevenhundred
miles, riding about thirty miles a day,
and remaining ten or twelve hours a
day in the open air. All this pleasant
journey brought him into contact
with — trees, flowers, landscapes, the
conformation of the earth's surface,
geological strata, mowing of hay,
wheat cradling, discussions at the
country taverns — all had an interest
for the man who knew so much about
the matters involved, and all attracted
his attention or participation as he
passed leisurely over the country. But,
the pleasant journey over, hereditary
disease remained, and excessive toil
again began. Scores of letters had to
be answered, other work had accumu
lated, preaching,i lecturing, parish-
work, fugitive-slave work, Kansas
work, and new work of various kinds ;
and Parker would not allow himself
to shirk any portion of it. This, too,
notwithstanding a resolution of his
congregation, begging him to extend
his vacation until, in the judgment of
reliable medical advisers, it would be
warrantable for him to resume his
pastoral functions ; and telling him
that this was a duty which he owed to
himself, his family, his friends, and"
the cause of religion, humanity,and re
form. It was now, too, that the Fra
ternity Course of Lectures at Music
Hall began ; and, for the course of
this year, he wrote out and delivered
the lecture on "Franklin," gave the
one on "Adams," though not fully
written out, and those on "Jeffer
son " and " Washington " — which he
was not spared to deliver — were
partially prepared.
The consequence of all was further
disease and weakness. After an
effusion of water on the chest, which
had lasted eight months, had been

subdued, he had to undergo an opera
tion for the removal of a painful
fistula which had been developing in
the meantime. He lost twenty pounds
of flesh ; had cough, night-sweats,
and other dangerous symptoms.
In portions of two letters written to
Miss F. P. Cobbe, Parker thus con
tinues the story of his health, and
states his own feelings about it : — " I
have had a hospital operation per
formed lately, which laid me on my
bed for three or four weeks. I have
just recovered now, and can walk
about a little, say half an hour at a
time, or ride an hour or two, and sit
up most of the day. For several
Sundays others filled my pulpit ;
next Sunday I hope to speak for
myself, and the half-written sermon
lies already before me. I think I
have conquered the last of my
(corporeal) enemies, and trust a long
life of serious work is before me. I
have much left to do, much half done,
and yet more projected and prepared
for, but not yet adventured on.
Twenty years more of healthy solid
toil will finish it all, and leave me
but sixty-eight, an age not- unreason
able for me to desire or expect. "
"lama deal better than when Mr.
Channing saw me on the day of his
sailing. I don't wonder he thought
it would soon be all over with me.
Yet I knew better, even then feeling
an interior spring of life he could not
see. I went on improving until, the
very day of your letter, November 24,
I attended a funeral thirty miles off
in the country. The circumstances
were so sad and peculiar [a little boy
drowned by accident] that I could
not leave the afflicted ones to the
poor consolations of a stranger, who
did not believe, much less know, the
infinite goodness of God. I met with
an accident, through treading on a
piece of ice, in getting into the rail
road cars, which injured me badly in
delicate parts of the body, and I have
not walked since— three weeks. But

THE SELF-IMMOLATOR.

239

I ride out every day, and, contrary to
the advice of all the doctors, I preach
every Sunday, which does me good
and not harm. Otherwise, I live in
my library, and have my meals
brought up to me. An ugly cough I
had is nearly gone ; only the lame
ness continues. The surgeon fears an
abscess, which, after all, is perhaps
the most genial way of ending the
mischief. I suffer but little pain except
from the lack of tone and vigour
that comes of such long confine
ment. Do not fear ; I have the best
medical and surgical advice, though
I take no medicine but cod-liver oil,
which is diet and not drugs. I shall
be very cautious, and take special
pains to live, for I have a great deal
of work begun and not half done,
which another cannot finish. Besides,
the world is so interesting, and friends
so dear, that I find the love of life
much more than twenty or thirty
years ago."
His sanguine hopes were again
crushed as the end of the year drew
near. All but the preaching had to
be dropped, that too on some of the
Sundays, and on others it could only
be done by his grasping the desk
with both hands to enable him to
stand. On January 1, 1859, he made
an entry in his journal which shows
that he, too, was beginning to aban
don hope : — " It is Saturday night—
the eve of the first day of the new
year. I have finished my sermon for
to-morrow, and I have nothing to do
but indulge my feelings for a minute,
and gather up my soul. This is the
first new year's day that I was ever
sick. Now I have been a prisoner
almost three months, living in my
chamber or my study. I have been
out of doors but thrice since Sunday
last. The doctor says I mend, and I
quote him to my friends ; but I have
great doubts as to the result. It looks
as if this was the last of my new year's
days upon earth. I felt so when I gave
each gift to-day ; yet few men have

more to live for than I. It seems as
if I had just begun a great work ; yet
if I must abandon it I will not com
plain. Some abler and better man
will take my place, and do more
successfully what I have entered on.
The Twenty-eighth will soon forget
me— a few Sundays will satisfy their
tears. Some friends may linger long
about my grave, and be inly sad for
many a day." The next day he
preached on " What Religion may
do for a Man : a Sermon for the New
Year." It was the last time. He
himself subsequently said that as he
watched the people retiring from the
Hall, and he turned to leave the desk,
something within him said, "It is
the last time, O Parkie !" He looked,
forward, however, to occupying the
pulpit again the following Sunday,
and continued in this mind up to the
previous night. The congregation
assembled as usual, but instead of the
preacher there was the following note,
in pencil, sent them from his bed : — ¦
" Sunday Morning, Jan. 9, 1859.
"Well-beloved and long-
tried Friends, — I shall not speak
to you to-day; for this morning,. a
little after four o'clock, I had a slight
attack of bleeding in the lungs or
throat. I intended to preach on ' The
Religion of Jesus and the Christianity
of the Church ; or the Superiority of
Good-will to Man over Theological
Fancies. '
" I hope you will not forget the
contribution for the poor, whom we
have with us always. _ I don't know
when I shall again look upon your
welcome faces, which have so often
cheered my spirit when my flesh was
weak. " May we do justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with our God, and
his blessing will be upon us here and
hereafter ; for his infinite love is with
us for ever and ever !
"Faithfully, your friend,
" Theodore Parker."
The reader may imagine the pro-

240

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

found distress which the reading of
this short note from the beloved pas
tor gave to his congregation. Instead
of a service they held a meeting, at
which some of the leading members
gave expression to the exceeding grief
which filled the hearts of all. It was
decided that a year's salary should be
voted to him — more, if necessary — to
enable him to seek complete repose
and any change of climate which his
medical advisers might direct.
As usual, Parker himself had taken
the most hopeful view of his case.
He had called that "a slight attack
of bleeding, " which was in reality a
serious hemorrhage of the lungs. The
physicians were of opinion that tuber
cles were already formed and increas
ing, and that his inherited consump
tion had now advanced far upon him.
They declared the case almost hope
less — the chances of recovery not
more than one in ten. But even this did
not daunt Parker's hopefulness. ' ' If
that be all," he said, " I'll conquer.
I have fought ninety-nine against
one — yes, nine hundred and ninety-
nine against one — and conquered.
Please God, I 'will again ; sursum
corda." His physicians decided that
he must go to the West Indies at
once, thence to -Europe, thence to
Egypt, or wherever should appear
most likely.
Before leaving Boston, his congre
gation drew up a letter to him, but,
from prudential motives, it was not
handed to him till he was in the West
Indies. It was at once a token of
their deep affection for him and their
sense of the faithfulness with which
he had used his great abilities on their
behalf. They said in it : — " From
Sunday to Sunday, year after year,
with rare exceptions, when other
duties or necessities compelled your
absence, you have been at your post,
and have always discharged the great
functions of your office in a manner
Which has left nothing to be desired
on your part ; avoiding no responsi

bility, neglecting no trust, leaving no
duty undone, but working with an
ability, energy, perseverance, and
self-sacrifice of which it is not, per
haps, becoming in us to speak at
length in this place, but which we
cannot the less admire and approve.
Outside of the pulpit, we have always
found you equally faithful to your re
sponsibilities and duties in all the va
rious relations of Ufe. Nor have your
labours and your example been in
vain. You have taught us to discern
between the traditions of men and
the living realities of religion ; you
have brought home to our conscious
ness great truths of the intellect, the
conscience, the heart, and the soul;
you have shown us the infinite per
fection of God, and the greatness of
human nature, inspired us with a
higher reverence for Him, a deeper
trust in His universal providence,
with a larger faith also in man and
his capabilities. You have encouraged
us to oppose all manner of wicked
ness and oppression, to welcome every
virtue and humanity, to engage in all
good works and noble reforms. From
the experience of mankind, of nations,
and of individuals, you have drawn
great lessons of truth and wisdom for
our warning or guidance. Above all,
your own noble and manly and Chris
tian life has been to us a perpetual
sermon, fuller of wisdom and beauty,
more eloquent and instructive even,
than the lessons which have fallen
from your lips. In all our intercourse
with you, you have ever been to us as
a teacher, a friend and brother, and
have never assumed to be our master.
You have respected and encouraged
in us that free individuality of thought
in matters of religion, and all other
matters, which you have claimed for
yourself ; you have never imposed on
us your opinions, asking us to accept
them because they were yours ; but
you have always warned us to use a
wise discretion, and decide according
to our own judgment and conscience,

THE SELF-IMMOLA TOR.

241

not according to yours. You have
not sought to build up a sect, but a
free Christian community. You have,
indeed, been a minister to us, and we
feel that your ministry has been for
our good ; that through it we are
better prepared to successfully resist
those temptations and to overcome
those evils by which we are sur
rounded in life, to discharge those
obligations which devolve upon us as
men aiming to be Christians, and to
acquit ourselves as we ought. As we
have gathered together from Sunday
to Sunday, as we have looked into
your face, and your words have
touched our sympathies, and stirred
within us our deepest and best emo
tions, as we have come to know you
better year by year, and to appreciate
more fully the service which you have
been doing for us and for other men,
and the faithfulness with which you
have laboured in it, we have felt that
ours was indeed a blessed privilege ;
and we have indulged a hope that our
lives might testify to the good, influ
ence of your teachings- — a hope which
we humbly trust has, to some extent
at least, been realised. If we have
failed to approximate that high ideal
of excellence which you have always
set before us, the blame is our own,
and not yours. We cannot but
feel a just pride in the success of
this Church ; that in spite of all
obstacles it has strengthened and
increased from year to year, and that
the circle of its influence has contin
ually widened. Thousands of earnest
men and women in this and other
lands, who do not gather with us
from week to week, look to this
Church as their ' city of refuge ; '
their sympathies, their convictions,
and their hopes coincide with our
own ; they are of us, though not
with us. Most of them have never
listened to your voice, nor looked
upon your face, but the noble words
which you have uttered are dear to
their hearts, and they also bless God

for the service which you have done
for them, In all your labours for us
and for others, we have only one
thing to regret, and that is, that you
have not spared yourself, but have
sacrificed your health and strength to
an extent which, of late, has excited
our deepest solicitude and apprehen
sion. We thank God that He fur
nished you with a vigorous constitu
tion, which has stood the test of so
many years of incessant and un
wearied toil, in so many departments
of usefulness, and which has enabled
you to accomplish so much as you
have already done ; but there is a
limit to the endurance of even the
strongest man, and the frequent warn
ings which you have received within
the past year or two would seem to
indicate that Nature will not suffer
even the best of her children to trans
gress the great laws which she has
established for their observance, with
out inflicting the penalty of disobedi
ence, even though they are engaged
in the highest and holiest service
which man can render unto man.
We would not presume to instruct
you in this matter ; we only repeat
what you have yourself often taught
us." There was much more in the letter
in the same cordial and appreciative
strain. It is valuable as showing
the beautiful relationship existing
between the pastor and his great con
gregation. It was now that, notwithstanding
the hatred and persecution he had
formerly had, he found out how
deeply and extensively he was loved.
In addition to the letter from his con
gregation, private letters of sympathy
and manly or womanly affection
reached him in such numbers that
the sick man had to insert an adver
tisement in The New York Tribune,
acknowledging them and excusing
himself from replying to them all.
As this assured other friends that he
would not be led to injure himself by

,242

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

replying, they too now wrote. Among
them was one from a slaveholder,
who, notwithstanding, was con
strained to write to Parker : "In
any event you have, in common with
the good and great of all times, the
high ahd rare consolation to know
that the light you have shed is im
perishable, and will continue to shine
after the luminary has been removed.
Among the millions who gratefully
participate in that light, without hav
ing the honour to know you person
ally, I would humbly enrol myself;
trusting that you will pardon me if I
assume an improper liberty in thus
expressing my sense of obligation,
and the profound respect which I
sincerely entertain for your goodness
and worth. " " These heart-roses,"
says Mr. Frothingham, "covered his
sick-bed, and filled him with their
fragrance. So much of the odour as
he could he wafted back. As he lay
in his pain, tender thoughts came to
him of all he loved, of many who
had not loved him ; and in all direc
tions the white doves flew from his
window with messages of good will,
thanks for old kindnesses, gratitude
for confidence and sympathy, gener
ous acknowledgment of smallest ser
vices rendered and long forgotten by
the doer, sweet reminiscences of past
joy, praise for good deeds done and
good words spoken for freedom,
apologies for imaginary troubles or

offences — all in manly, simple lan
guage, without a weak expression of
complaint, with the natural submis
sion that belonged to his faith." In
one of these, which is in the spirit of
them all, he wrote' : " If I recover —
and the doctors tell me I have one
chance in ten — only nine chances
against me to one in my favour — I
shall be thankful for the experience
of affection and friendship which my
illness has brought from all parts of
the land ; if I do not recover, I shall
pass off joyfully, with an entire trust
in the Infinite Love which cares more
for me than I care for myself." To
another friend he wrote — "I am
ready for either alternative [i.e.,
death or recovery], but am still full
of hope that the human mortal life
will hold out long enough for me to
hammer over again some of the many
irons I have laid in the fire and got
ready for the anvil. It does seem to
me I shall have time left to finish
certain pieces of work. But I will
not complain of the dear Mother
(who long ago admonished me that
I must not cherish long hopes in a
short world) if the Kind Hand which
brought me here shall also take me
away to that world which eye hath
not seen, &c." "But I hope," he
wrote to another friend, "to return
from the Isles of Blessing, and do a
deal of work before I go to the Isles
of the Blessed."

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

243

CHAPTER XXII.
Through the Valley of the Shadow.
' The Lord is my Shepherd ; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures :
He leadeth me unto the still waters.
He restoreth my soul ; He guidelh me
In the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of. death,
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.;
Thv rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." The Twenty-third Psalm.

THE foregoing was the Psalm
selected by Parker for reading,
the morning he was leaving Boston
for Santa Cruz and Europe. But he
had hardly read as much of it as we
have transcribed before tears and
emotion prevented further reading,
and all present bowed their heads
with him in uncontrollable but trust
ful sorrow, and laid them upon the
bosoml of the dear Infinite Mother.
They— " Prayed in heaviness
That looked not for relief;
. But slowly did their succour come,
And a patience to their grief.
Oh ! there's never sorrow of heart,
That shall lack a timely end,
If but we turn to God, and ask
Of Him to be our friend."
Thus divinely soothed and strength
ened, our invalid traveller, accom
panied by his wife, Miss Stevenson,
and Mr. George Cabot, resolutely
went forth on his search for health.
The date was the 3rd of February,
1859. They first went to New York,
from whence, it had been arranged,
they were to sail on the 8th. Here
they were joined by Dr. and Mrs.
Howe, who were also to accompany
them on their voyage, and visited by
a few of the invalid's warm friends
and admirers. To the latter he said
little, responded gratefully to their
expressions of affection, but faintly to
their words of hope ; was silent and
thoughtful, though not unduly de
pressed. A dear friend from afar

placed flowers in his state-room —
violets for him, carnations for his
wife ; and he himself was noticed to
put one of the violets between the
leaves of his Bible to mark the text,
" I will be with thee in great waters. "
It soon became manifest that he
was determined in his quest — too
determined. He increased his illness
by striving too hard to get well.
Instead of allowing others to take
care of him, he would take care of
others, and of the whole of the affairs
of the journey. Instead of treating
himself as weakly, he would try how
strong and enduring he could be.
After the unpleasantness which came
from the rough weather of the first
few days, his natural surroundings as
he lay or sat on deck were highly
favourable to restoration ; but his
restless mind impeded their beneficent
operations. It went on like a loco
motive which had been started but
could not be stopped. Sick as he
was, he kept his pencil at work
making notes on all kinds of subjects.
" All my life schemes lie prostrate,"
" I stand up to the chin in my grave,
yet hoping to scramble out this side.
' Give to the winds thy fears.' "
" Fourteen years to-day since I rode
into Boston to preach at the Melo
deon. I enlisted for a thirty-years'
war ; but am wounded, and driven
off the field before half the time is
over." " R. W. Emerson is preach
ing at the Music Hall to-day." " I

244

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

wonder if they remember the anni
versary." " Those precious guns in
my study — what will become of them ?
They must be kept in a safe place.
They will belong to the common
wealth when I die." "Mr. Shack-
ford would be a good man to preach."
Even plans of work yet to be done
get entered. " I must write out and
finish my last sermon. I must write
my autobiography." He also pro
jected and began the letter to the
Twenty-eighth Congregational ' So
ciety. Whenever the boat stopped
he went on shore, note-book in
hand, and came back with many
added observations and reflections.
All the time he had the parochial
work of his congregation on his
mind, asking himself, as his letters
show, such questions as — "Who
preaches at the Music Hall ? What
was done at the annual meeting?
Who is sick ? Who is sick no more ?
How is poor old Mr. Cass, the grape-
pruner in Chambers Court. I must
order him a box of strawberries in
their season." As he well says, he
"can't keep the Twenty-eighth out
of 'his' head."
The day after his arrival at Santa
Cruz, though only barely able to
crawl about, he went to work as if
he had been sent out by a learned
society on a voyage of exploration.
He noted the climate, the rainfall, the
birds, fishes, animals, the women and
children, every tree, shrub, plant,
flower, classified the products and
minerals, collected thestatistics — num
ber of soldiers, the duties on various
articles, exports, increase of popula
tion, &c. ; attended marriages, visited
a sugar estate and learned the process
of sugar-preparing, found out the
clergyman and took counsel with him
as to what he was doing, and made
extracts from native books and Creole
poetry. Not only did he work like this at
research and noting, but he wrote
long letters to his friends, relating, in

an instructive and delightful manner,
his various discoveries and reflections.
He indulged in both extremes of
emotion ; at one time visiting the
cemeteries and writing down his im
pressions of them, and where he
would like to be buried if he died
there ; at others, writing letters to his
friends brimful of the raciest wit and
fun. The pigs of the island for
instance are described as ' ' long-nosed
and grave-looking animals, most of
them coal-black, and, like Zaccheus,
small of stature, looking as if they
had been through a revival, and were
preparing for the ministry." The
letters he thus wrote to friends during
the nine weeks he was at Santa Cruz
would in themselves make a goodly-
sized pamphlet, but there is to be
added to these Theodore Parker's
Experience as a Minister, which he
wrote while here, and which took his
wife and Miss Stevenson nine or ten
days to copy for the printers. Of the
latter he wrote ; — " It is a sick man's
book, written under many difficulties,
amid continual interruptions besides
what his own weakness occasions.
Yet I wrote this with bloody tears-
no work of mine, perhaps, cost me
such birth pangs— for I was too sick
to write, and yet must be delivered of
my work, and that, too, in such a
place ! "
The reader will not be surprised,
after reading all this of the doings of
the invalid, that his visit to Santa
Cruz produced little improvement
upon him. Upon leaving, he had to
write.-— "I leave the tropics with
more cough than I brought in. The
critical symptoms are worse, but others
are better. In no essential symptom
is my disease better, in several it is
worse — much worse. I have no
longer much hope in my bodily power
of recuperation ; no physical instinct
assures me of recovery. I have some
faith in the revivifying influence of
civilisation, which I have been exiled
from for four months ; some also in

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

245

this, that my affairs are not ready for
my departure — that I have not done
my work. But these are feeble argu
ments against a consumption, with a
cough which tells of the destruction
of my lungs. I must let myself slide
out of this life into the immortal."
He was too anxious about work already
begun, too greedy of new work which
on all sides he made for himself ; and
too much of his own physician — diag
nosing, and prescribing for himself
all the day over — to allow himself any
chance of recovery. Indeed, it would
appear that, paradoxically, his very
excess of life prevented him from
securing length of life. He had a
most trying voyage from the West
Indies to England, losing seven
pounds of flesh in the time, and the
cough and expectoration increasing.
Even the misery of sea- sickness was
triumphed over by his more terrible
malady ; which consequence, strange
to say, he described as "a great
comfort, which I am grateful for."
No doubt he meant that his con
sumption gave him less distress for
the time being.
He and his party reached South
ampton on the ist of June, 1859,
and though in such feeble condition
he would proceed on to London the
same day. " We reached South
ampton June ist, at 10 A.M., and
rode, in the p.m., seventy miles to
London. - You never saw such green-
hess as exists everywhere in England.
It rains almost every day, and so the
ground- is always moist and the air
damp. The crops in the fields were
of wheat, rye, clover, beans (a horse-
bean which I never saw cultivated at
home), potatoes, cabbages, and all
sorts of kitchen vegetables. England
looks like a garden, all is so nicely
cultivated ; the apple-trees were just
getting out of blossom, and the horse-
chestnuts were in full bloom ; roses
abundant ; of course there were pinks,
gilliflowers, marigolds, &c. &c ,
everywhere. Lilacs had passed their

bloom, but the prim and the white
thorn were in full feather."
In London he made his home, for
eleven days, at Radley's Hotel,
Blackfriars, a house which has since
been pulled down for the short new
street opposite Ludgate Hill Station.
Than to the great Modern Babylon
he could not have come to a worse
place for rest and recovery. He
wrote of it: — "Here I am as busy
as a nail-machine all day, and get
little rest, there are so many friends.
But I refuse all invitations to break
fast, dine, &c, and keep as quiet as
I can, doing nothing rash." But he
was much too rash. It was the time
of the London "season," and he did
all the sight-seeing, visiting, letter-
writing, &c, his strength would
allow. Indeed he did more of these
than most well-persons could have
done. The first morning he was in
London he wrote the following letter
to two well-known English ladies,
both at that time engaged in the same
work of philanthropy at Bristol : —
" Radley's Hotel, London, June 2, 1859.
" To Miss Cobbe and Miss Car
penter, BOTH MY VERY DEAR
Friends, — Let me unite you both
in one letter, the first I write on
English soil, while the tossings of the
sea still keep my head and hand un
steady. Many thanks for your kind
letters which reached me at Santa
Cruz, and the two which greeted me
yesterday on board the ship at
Southampton. A boat came along
side, and the boatman called out,
' Letter for Theodore Parker I ' Judge
of the trembling joy with which a
sick man read your words of kindly
greeting ! Thanks, many thanks, for
your words of welcome !
' ' I know you will wish to know
what effect the residence in the West
Indies has had. I cannot yet quite
say ; for the critical symptoms have
changed but little, if at all. But I
am a deal stronger, with a good
appetite, and reasonable strength and

246

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

spirits that, if not hilarious as when
well, are never sad. Indeed, I am
cheerful by temperament, as well as
by philosophy, and from principle.
In all my illness, and it is now in its
third year, I have not had a single
sad hour. I have not the average
love of life by instinct and, besides,
have such absolute confidence in the
infinite LOVE, which creates and
provides for the world and each indi
vidual in it, that I am sure death is
always a blessing, a step forward and
upward, to the person who dies.
My place in the world will soon be
filled by wiser and better men, who
may be guided by any wise word of
mine, and certainly will be warned
by my errors. So my departure may
be the best thing for the great cause
of humanity we all have so much at
heart. The burden of sorrow in that
case will fall on my intimates, and
heaviest of all on my wife ; for to her
I am all in all ! But even such sor
rows are blessed in the end they
serve. "However, I shall still hope for
returning health, and leave no stone
unturned to prolong life. I have
many things half ready for the press
which none beside ine could print.
In special, I have a short volume of
sermons on the 'Evidence of God
found in the World of Matter and of
Mind;' they were preached in 1858.
I like them better than anything I
have done before. Each was about
an hour and a quarter in the delivery,
and what was spoken could be re
called from the notes of the phono-
grapher who daguerreotyped all my
words. But I did not preach more
than half of what my brief contained :
the unpreached matter will be lost
without me ; hard to write it out.
Besides, I have volumes more in that
state. " Dear friends, do not think me
rash to have wasted my strength in
this way, for I must preach every
week, and I had not time to write

out fully all that related tothe matter
I preached upon. Besides, I must
labour in some other way to obtain
the means to publish and circulate
my new works — for I have been my
own Tract Society. Had I lived in
England I should have printed more
and lectured less : in America I must
do as I did.
" My American friend Lyman has
not arrived, so we are all alone in
this great Babel of modern civilisa
tion. I have seen nobody but the'
bankers, Bates and Sturgis (Baring
Brothers, and Co.), old acquaint
ances, and genial, kindly men. I
hope to see Martineau, Newman,
and others of the nobler sort, but
must be prudent and not talk much
with thoughtful men.
" When I reached Santa Cruz I
went, or rather crawled, for I could
hardly walk, to the graveyard, and
selected my place of rest if the angel
of death should say, ' Thus far, O
body, but no farther ! ' It seemed
odious to lay my bones in ground
where the bottom of the grave was
dry as the top, and where no grass
can grow, but only abominable
sedges six or eight feet high. Yet I
found a sufficient place under a tama
rind and a silk cotton tree (Bombex
ceiba) though unlovely. But when I
trod on English ground I felt that
the clods of the valley would be
sweet to the crumbling flesh. I
would not object to laying my bones
where, save six generations, my
fathers have left their ashes for eight
hundred years. Yet I shall prefer to
take home a sound body.
" Yours faithfully,
"Theodore Parker.''
The next day his " American friend,
Lyman," arrived in London from
America, whence he had come to
take charge of, and devote himself
to, his beloved pastor.
Among those who visited him at
Radley's were, Mr. Brabant, father-
in-law of Mr. Hennell, the author of

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

247

"Christian Theism," &c. , Miss Wink-
worth and her sister [" Mrs. William
Shaen and Miss Winkworth came to
see us, and sat an hour or so ; they
are sisters, intelligent, cultivated, and
thoughtful women, full of literature,
ideas, and humanity. You know the
Boojc of Hymns one of these talented
sisters has translated from the Ger
man."], Mr. and Mrs. James Marti
neau, Professor H. D. Rogers and
his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, Mr.
Mark E. Marsden (who called to see
if there was any chance of getting
him to preach at South Place Chapel ;
which, of course, there was not, but
he was thanked for the cordial invi
tation, and a promise given that it
would be accepted if spared, and
sufficiently restored, when returning
from the Continent), Mr. Seward,
the American Statesman (who was
then in London), Mr. Cholmondeley,
Mrs. Ellen Craft, and several others.
The peculiar circumstances sur
rounding the visits of the two persons
last named, made them especially
touching and delightful to Parker.
Mr. Thomas Cholmondeley, a nephew
of Bishop Heber, once a pupil of
Arthur Hugh Clough, and afterwards
a student in Germany, had been in
America five years before ; had heard
Parker preach ; had called on him at
his house ; and had been impressed
by his power, and interested in his
character. No sooner did he hear
of his being in London, than he
found his way to Radley's, and deeply
touched the invalid by the demon
stration he gave of respect and grateful
feelings. On leaving, Mr. Cholmon
deley said, with much hesitation, and
modest embarrassment : — "This tra
velling is a matter of great expense —
perhaps, in consequence, you might
not be willing always to do something
that you would prefer, or to go where
motives of pleasure and comfort would
otherwise carry you. That ought not
to be. Pardon me, if I say, I know
one deeply indebted to you, who de

sires to show it, who would be proud
to increase the chances for your re
covery ; in fact, he stands before
you." Thanks to his own industry,
and the generosity of his American
supporters, Parker was able to decline
the generous offer ; but he accepted
the precious love it indicated— that
fell on a tender heart and made a
deep impression. This noble scion
of the English nobility came into
considerable family possessions soon
after, but in 1864 he died at Florence
— the same city in which Parker
breathed his last — and is probably
buried in the same Campo Santo.
But, perhaps, most delightful of all
was the visit he received from Ellen
Craft. He thus spoke of it in a letter
to a friend : — " One of the last persons
who came to visit us, the night before
we went away, was Ellen Craft ! I
count that an honour. The last time
I saw them before was the day of
their flight from Boston. You re-
memember George T. Curtis and his
pack (of fellow-creatures) had been
barking at them for several weeks —
seeking to rend them to pieces. I
married William and Ellen in solemn
sort in a house on ' Nigger Hill, ' and
put a Bible and a sword into his
hands, and bade him use both with
all his might I I had given him a
pistol before. It did me good to
meet her again in Blackfriars, Lon
don, where the kidnapper would not
be held in very high honour. I
thought of the time when Hannah
and John Parkman and I rode out to
Brookline to bring Ellen into my
house, where I might keep her in
safety. I took a hatchet along with
me for defence ; I afterwards had
better fighting-tools, and borrowed a
pistol of Dr. Bowditch as I returned.
Poor thing ! she feels better now
than when she lived in my upper
chamber, and we did not let the girls
go to the street-door to let any
visitors in. I hope these times will
not come again to Boston."

248

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

In the few visits he made while in
London, he was disappointed at
finding Henry Thomas Buckle, the
gifted author of " The History of
Civilization in England," not at
home. He ranked high in Parker's
estimation, the latter thinking his
book one of the greatest productions
of the century ; and the following
letter will show what a high opinion
Buckle in return held of Parker : —
" Eltham Place, Eltham Road,
" near Blackheath, July 5, 1S59.
" My dear Sir, — I have been in
town for a few days on business, and
found your card on my table in Ox
ford Terrace. I cannot tell you how
much I regret that we should not
have met. The great respect which I
feel for you as the most advanced
leader of opinion in one of the two
first nations of the world, would of
itself suffice to make me eager for the
pleasure of your personal acquaint
ance. And when I add to this the
memory of your obliging and friendly
letters to me, you will easily believe
me when I say how much I have been
disappointed at being unable to call
upon you and make arrangements to
see you. But the severest of all
calamities has befallen me, and has
so prostrated my nervous system that
I am now enjoined the strictest quiet.
Your conversation would arouse in
me so many associations, and excite
me to so many inquiries respecting
your noble country, that I feel myself,
alas, unequal to meeting you ; and,
as you might possibly hear from some
of my friends in London, I have been
compelled to give up all society. In
such cases, the more I am interested
the more I am hurt. I do not know
how long you are likely to stay in
England ; but it would give me great
pleasure to hear from you, and that
you understand the cause of my ap
parent inattention.
" Believe me to be most truly yours,
" Henry Thomas Buckle."
In <i letter which Buckle wrote to

Parker in 1858, in answer to inquiries
from the latter, he gave the following
interesting particulars of himself,
which many readers will be glad
to peruse : — " I dc not like reading
at public libraries, and I purchase
nearly all the books which I use. I
have at present about 20,000 volumes
... I was born at Lee, in Kent, on
the 24th of November, 1822. My
father was a merchant. His name
was Thomas Henry Buckle, and he
was descended from a family, one of
whom was well-known as Lord Mayor
of London in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. He died in 1840. My
mother, who still lives, was a MUs
Middleton, of the Yorkshire Mkl-
dletons. As a boy, my health was
extremely delicate, and my parents
were fortunately guided by the advice
of that good and wise man, Dr.
Birkbeck (whose name I believe is
not unknown in America), who for
bade my receiving any education that
would tax the brain. This prevented
me from being, in the common sense
of the word, educated, and also pre
vented my going to college. When
I was in my eighteenth year my father
died (January, 1840), and left me in
independent circumstances, in a pecu
niary point of view. My health
steadily improved, and to this moment
I had read little except 'Shakespeare,'
the ' Arabian Nights,' and ' Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress,' three books on
which I literally feasted. Between
the ages of eighteen and nineteen I
conceived the plan of my book —
dimly indeed — but still the plan was
there, and I set about its execution.
From the age of nineteen 1 have
worked on an average nine to ten
hours daily. My method was this.
In the morning I usually studied
physical science, in the forenoon
languages (of which, till the age of
nineteen, I was deplorably ignorant),
and the rest of the day history and
jurisprudence. In the evening, general
literature. I have always steadily

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

249

refused to write in reviews, being
determined to give up my life to a
larger purpose. I have, therefore,
produced nothing except the first
volume of my History, and the Lec
ture on the Influence of Women."
Another friend, whom Parker had
not as yet seen, Frances Power Cobbe,
was also not to be met with in London,
It was a disappointment to him, as
she was one whose spiritual life he
had saved, who had corresponded
with him for eleven years, and he
thought of her books as amongst the
greatest yet produced by a woman's
pen. He had written of her "In
tuitive Morals : " — ' ' I admire the work
throughout ; the plan, the execution,
and all the details. It is a noble
work, in many points reminding me
of some of the best things in Leib
nitz, in others coming close upon
Milton in its tone and language.
The learning also surprises me."
He had also procured its re-publica
tion for her in America. Unable to
meet with her in London, he directed
to her the following note : —
" Radley's Hotel, June 11, 1859.
" My very dear Miss Cobbe, —
Your kind note came duly to hand,
and the flowers are fresh and bloom
ing still on the table before me as I
write. I have seen the Martineaus,
Newman, Tayler, Ierson, and many
others. Mr. Bright and many of his
coadjutors I have also seen, and
by his courtesy got a place under
the gallery and heard the great
debate on Thursday night." [In an
other letter he more fully says of
this : — " Mr. Bright got us (Lyman
and me) a place to attend the
House of Commons, and we heard
the great debate which led to the
expulsion of the Derby Ministry.
Bright made a fine speech — honest,
sincere, manly, and sufficiently elo
quent for the House of Commons,
which laughs at sentiment."] "But I
am losing daily here in the smoke
and chill of London. To-morrow

we hasten to Paris, where we shall
stay a few days, and then take our
departure for the Rhine and Switzer
land. It is a great luxury to see the
Apthorps again and my dear Desor,
with whom I shall pass some weeks.
'To be weak is to be miserable.'
Here I am in the focus of civilisa
tion and can do nothing ; a little
excitement is a little too much, and
I must get into a quiet place. It
has grieved us all that we could not
see you ; but, if I return next year and
in any tolerable condition, I must
have that pleasure. I hope I shall
often hear from you on the Continent.
The .Barings will always have my
address, and I will besides keep you
advised of my whereabouts. Mrs.
P. sends hearty thanks for the flowers,
and I have put away the silken
thread which bound them among
other precious things. Both of the
ladies send you their hearty regards.
Let me add the best wishes and
thanks of yours truly, T. P."
We ought to couple with the fore
going letter to Mary Somerville's
"best and cleverest woman I ever
met " (for so in her autobiography
that gifted woman terms Miss Cobbe)
the following letter to Miss Mary
Carpenter, the philanthropic lady
with whom Miss Cobbe was then re
siding and labouring : —
" Montreux (Pension Ketterer), Suisse,
" June 23, 1859.
"My dear Miss Carpenter, —
It grieved me very much to find that
I must leave London without seeing
you or Miss Cobbe. Really it was
too bad, after all your very generous
intentions. But when I return to
England we will make amends for it,
and take our revenge. I need not
tell you how much interest I take in
your noble work at Bristol. Many
things are called Christianity, a
name dear or hateful as you define it
one way or the other ; often it means
repeating a liturgy and attending
church or chapel ; sometimes it meant

250

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

burning men alive ; in half of the
United States of America it means
kidnapping, enslaving men and wo
men ! The Christianity which your
admirable father loved, taught, and
lived, was piety and morality, love
to God, love to man, the keeping of
the natural laws God writes on sense
and soul. It is this which I honour
and love in you, especially as it
takes the form of humanity and loves
the unlovely. The greatest heroism
of our day spends itself in lanes and
alleys, in the haunts of poverty and
crime, seeking to bless such as the
institutions of the age can only curse.
If Jesus of Nazareth were to come
back and be the Jesus of London, I
think I know what (negative and
positive) work he would set about.
He would be a new revolution of in
stitutions, applying his universal
justice to the causes of ill ; but also
an angel of mercy, palliating the
effects of those causes which could
not be at once removed or made well.
You are doing this work, the work
of humanity ; it seems to me you
have a genius for it Accept my
hearty thanks for all your kind in
tentions, and believe me, faithfully
yours,
"Theodore Parker."
Of the many invitations he had to
breakfast, dinner, lunch, tea, while
in London, he only accepted one,
and that was to lunch with the Rev.
James Martineau, at his house in
Gordon Street. Here he met with
Professor F. W. Newman and Pro
fessor John James Tayler, also the
Rev. H. Ierson, then successor of
W. J. Fox, at South Place, now
Secretary of the British and Foreign
Unitarian Association, and others.
Of this meeting with Parker, the
Rev. Dr. Martineau has kindly fur
nished us with the following note : —
" Of his last visit, sixteen years ago,
I can even now hardly bear to think :
so keen was the pang which his deep
and hollow voice carried to my heart.

He spent a couple of hours with me
and met a few friends, including my
late colleague, Mr. J. J. Tayler, at
lunch. He was bright and fresh as
ever, except for an occasional droop
ing as of spent strength. But no one
else could well be bright, in presence
of those sunk cheeks and that fearful
voice. We talked of many things
and persons ; but the one dominant
impression — that here was the last
meeting and parting with our dying
friend — overwhelmed every other, and
I have no distinct memory except of
the signs of a terrible sorrow. He
had not, however, entirely relin
quished — though only faintly indulg
ing — the hope of recovery ; for I re
member in the last grasp of his- hand,
how embarrassed 1 was to give suit
able response to some conditional ' au
revoir ' which he uttered."
Parker himself wrote of this lunch
eon afterwards: — "We lunched at
the Martineaus' one day — the only
time I have taken a meal abroad
since I left home (I wonder if some
of my ancestors were not Hibernians,
for this is the second Irishism in this
letter I) : there I saw Mrs. Martineau.
She and her husband had called on
us before, and her nice daughters,
three of them ; the married one is
with her husband, growing hops in
Kent. Pleasant people they all are,
in whom the nice artifice of culture
has not impaired or concealed the
instincts of generous nature. I love
such girls. Rev. Mr. Tayler and
several younger men were at the
lunch — interesting and instructive
people, all of them." Also in London
he went to the Queen's stables, to
Chief Justice Campbell's Court at
Westminster Hall, along the Thames,
to several new and second-hand book
shops, to the residences of Charles
Mackay and others, to the Guild
hall, St. George's Yard, Vulture Inn,
Fish Street Hill, Billingsgate, the
Tower of London, the Reform Club,
the British Museum, the Museum in

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

251

Jermyn Street, where he heard Pro
fessor Huxley lecture on "Fishes,"
the Museum of the Royal College of
Surgeons, &c. But he notes of him
self: " Too feeble to do much."
He was evidently taken with the
physique of the English women and
children: — "How handsome the
English women are ! Fine large
animals, they have good hair, good
teeth, good eyes, and a noble com
plexion (Mrs. Bodichon, who offered
us many attentions, is a good type).
The children, I think, must be the
finest in the world — what a show of
them at Hyde Park, at Kensington
Gardens, and many other places in
London!" On one of the days he went to St.
Paul's Cathedral, thus noting what
he found going on : — "At St. Paul's,
yesterday, the wealth, beauty, and
famous birth of England sat under
the great dome of the Cathedral,
while the servants and ignobly born
stood without ; eight thousand chil
dren sat alone, and , fainted with
hunger while they listened to a
wretched sermon on human depravity
or sung the litanies they had been
made to commit to memory." In
London, as at Santa Cruz — where he
had had to run away from listening
to an orthodox sermon—" the eccle
siastical theology is the greatest hum
bug in the world."
On the Sunday he went to Little
Portland Street Chapel and heard
James Martineau, then the minister
there. His impressions are thus
briefly recorded : — " June 5. —
Heard Martineau. Sermon on self-
surrender, full of rich religious feel
ing, and showing the fine culture of
the man. But the costume and the
printed service-book are a hindrance
to progressive thought, and to all
freedom. "
The "costume" here referred to
was the black gown, and " the
printed service-book" the liturgical
" Common- Prayer for Christian Wor

ship in Ten Services " still in use in
some few Unitarian Chapels, and
which has long been a stumbling-
block, and a rock of offence, to many
conscientious Unitarian ministers and
laymen. In a. letter written after leaving
London, to his physician in Boston,
Parker himself gave the following
description of his time in the English
metropolis : — " After I reached Lon
don, the dampness — they called it,
' uncommon fine weather it is, for
June ! ' — the clouds, and the deadness
of the air, full of coal smoke, irritated
the cough still more, and of course
increased the expectorations. I was
very prudent. I accepted no invita
tions to breakfast or dine. I once
lunched with Martineau. I made no
visits, except one or two of necessity,
and those but a few minutes in dura
tion. Of course, I could not avoid
seeing some hundred persons, perhaps,
some of them most enlightened and
interesting men and women. Many
hospitalities were offered me, but I
could accept none. ' To be weak is
to be miserable ! ' I was out in the
evening time, once till half- past eight,
once till ten — it is hardly dark at
nine, and dawns at half-past two
a. m. ! — but did myself no harm
thereby. Judge of my forbearance.
I left the House of Commons at half-
past eight (when I had a most distin
guished seat), though Sir James Gra
ham and Lord Palmerston were to
speak before midnight ; besides, I
went into none of the great churches,
not even Westminster Abbey ! I
never went to the theatre, and took
special pains not to get fatigued.
Professor Rogers happened to be in
London for three months, and was
exceedingly attentive, kind, affection
ate, and wise. He insisted on my
staying with him, but I did not ;
nor even accept his invitations to
meet famous savans, and talk with
them." He left London on Sunday

252

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

June I2th, at half-past five in the
morning, and reached Paris at a
quarter-past five P.M., travelling (via
Folkestone and Boulogne) nearly
three hundred miles. Charles Sum
ner, just recovering from the as
sault of the senator-scoundrel/Pres-
tonjjwas there, and on the Monday
the two friends drove about for six
hours, and, the drive over, Parker
went about on foot for more exercise,
while Sumner went home to rest.
Parker worked as hard in Paris as he
had done in London, all the time
protesting how careful he was and
how little he did. He had hardly
an inactive hour while out of bed,
yet he wrote to his Boston physician,
' ' I became a mollusc — an oyster, at
the West Indies, and exercised almost
exclusively those nerves of vegetation
which you discovered. But I had in
me a letter to the Twenty-eighth Con
gregational Society, and I must bring
it forth. After that, I dropped down
into my molluscous condition, and
when I saw one of the actual tenants
of the mud at London (they grew on
trees at St. Croix) I said, Am I not
a clam and a brother? I never
opened my mouth upon oyster or
even shrimp, except to speak to
them respectfully, lest I should com
mit the crime against nature, and de
vour my own kind. In Switzerland
I will be as gentle as a child that is
weaned of its mother, and behave
myself like a sucking child. "
While in Paris he consulted the
most eminent physicians there as to
his prospects of recovery and the
best means to use. As usual, the re
sult was most unsatisfactory; each dif
fered from the other, and the patient
drew up an amusing table giving the
contradictions of each other which
his American and Parisian physi
cians had presented. On the 19th of
June he went to Dijon, then on to
the Lake of Geneva and Montreux,
reaching the latter place on the 22nd.
Here he met with his dear friends

from America, Miss Hunt and Mr.
and Mrs. Apthorp, who had been
travelling in Europe for some time
before. On the 25th of June he wrote
a long letter to his congregation, to be
read to them when assembled at their
annual picnic on Wellington HiH.
At Montreux, as elsewhere, he went
to work like a busy savan : hunted up
the books giving the history of the
neighbourhood, gathering all the in
formation he could about it, made
collections of odd Celtic names, put
down subjects for sermons ( " the
habit of thinking sermons has be
come automatic, and acts Uke an
instinct now " ), wrote letters to
friends, took excursions to Vevay,
Chillon, Lausanne, Ferney, and
other pleasant places of the neigh
bourhood (he could still walk as
many as five miles without fatigue),
and gathered all the news he could
about the Franco- Austrian War, then
going on in the North of Italy, within
150 miles of his place of sojourn.
From Montreux he went for a six
weeks' sojourn at the Chalet of Pro
fessor Desor, the eminent Scientist,
and afterwards Vice-President of the
Swiss House of Representatives...
This was at Combe Varin, Neu-
chatel, in the midst of the loveliest
scenery of Switzerland, and com
manding glorious views of the high.
Alps, from the peaks of the Bernese
Oberland to Mont Blanc. Parker
had known Desor when the latter
was in America, and for years a cor
respondence, on scientific and other
learned matters, had been kept up
between them. Here, breathing this
pure atmosphere, three thousand feet
above the valley, bathing himself in
the sunshine of the hot summer, fel
ling trees in the woods, experiencing
the delightful spirituelle influences
which came from the sublime scenery,
and the society and conversation of
high-souled and learned men, the in
valid greatly improved, and it began
to seem that, after all, an arrest of the

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

253

disease might be made. So much
did he increase in weight, that he
reached a hundred and fifty-eight
and a third pounds — more than he
had weighed for twenty-nine years.
One day he carried more than seventy
pounds from the boat to the railway
carriage without straining.
As, to Parker, it was apainful thing
to receive a salary for duties he was
unable to discharge, he now sent in
his resignation to his congregation.
They, in answer, passed resolutions
congratulating him upon his im
proved health, but " respectfully and
affectionately " declining to accept
the resignation.
It was at this time, too, that Parker
wrote his last brochure : — " A Bum
ble Bee's Thoughts on the Plan and
Purpose of the Creation" — a very
clever satire on the scientific method
of the Bridgewater Treatises, point
ing out the absurdity of men making
finalities and committing intellectual
suicide. It formed part of an album
to which each of the savans (Moles-
chott, the chemist and physiologist
was one) then visiting at Desor's con
tributed an article — and which was
afterwards published as a memorial
of Parker and Kiichler— the latter
being a Lutheran D.D. who, in the
earlier part of the time was with the
party, and died suddenly of apo
plexy when returning to his' home.
Parker also wrote many letters from
Desor's, treating at great length of
all manner of private and public
matters, and showing that he was
caring much more for the well-being
of his friends and the world at large
than for the recovery of his own
healthandthe prolongation of his own
existence. " I am only one little
spurt of water running into the great
ocean of humanity; and if I stop
here (in Europe) I shall not be missed
there (in America)."
After coming down from the moun
tains, back to Montreux for a time,
and paying a farewell visit to Desor,

at his town house in Neuchatel, during
the vintage time, the invalid and his
party made their way to Rome ; that
place, after much deliberation as to
chances and prospects, having been
selected as the best wherein to pass
through the autumn and winter
seasons. It was on the 19th October,
1859, that the "Eternal City" was
reached. Quartered in private lodg
ings, and having the society of his wife,
Miss Stevenson, Dr. Appleton, — his
friend and physician — Mr. and Mrs.
Apthorp, Miss Hunt, and others,
he had all done for him by others that
was possible, if his own restless mind
would have allowed him to have done
the best possible for himself. But it
seemed as if, in spite of his own best
intentions, he must go on working so
long as power of mind and body
remained. Hardly was he settled
in Rome before he went down the
street, and, happening to see, on a
stall, a Dutch book on the existence
of God, for which he had long been
looking, he bought it, and very
soon he had mastered its contents.
By the end of the week he had made
up his mind to devote the winter to a
thorough study of Rome — its geology,
its flora and fauna, its archaeology,
and its architecture. Accordingly he
filled his shelves with learned works
in different languages on Rome and
Italy, read them closely, and daily
went out to examine the places re
ferred to in the legend or history he
was studying. He perused all the
newspapers he could lay his hands
on, in order that he might be able to
converse with those he met upon the
passing events of the time. Now he
had no longer to write sermons and
lectures, he wrote letters to friends
in Europe and America — letters which
none but a scholar could have penned
— longer and far more interesting than
the generality of sermons, if not of
lectures. To G. W. Ellis he wrote a
summary of the epochs of Roman
History, treating of the Rome of

254

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Nature, of the pre-Romans, of the
Roman kings, of the Roman Con
suls, of the Emperors, of the Popes,
in the dark ages, in the middle ages,
and in modern times — a most power
ful piece of comprehensive writing.
To his brother Isaac, a farmer, he
wrote an account of agriculture in the
Papal States. To others he penned
descriptions of the inner and outer
workings of the Roman Church, and
comments on the ecclesiastical matters
of America and other countries ; re
ferences to the household matters of
the Romans ; amusing observations
of popular manners ; well-arranged
tables of statistics bearing on the
trade, numerical strength of the dif
ferent classes, &c, of the people
around him. With keen swift per
ception he had soon found out what
books were on sale at the stalls or in
the shop windows, and he even
stopped to find out all he could about
any fruit or plant with which he -had
not previously been familiar.
Robert and Mrs. Browning, the
poet and poetess, W. W. Story,
the sculptor and litterateur, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, the novelist, Bryant,
the poet, Gibson, the sculptor, and
others were in Rome at the time, and
Parker occasionally met them in
society, and whether the subject dis
cussed was a new pamphlet like " Le
Pape et le Congres, " the best way of
guarding against malarious soils, or
the manufacture of lace, the invalid
had full information to bestow, giving
his listeners the impression of a living
encyclopaedia. ' ' What a wonderful
man," one day, said Robert Browning
to Mrs. Apthorp, "none of us knew
the facts of which he told us. "
To know everything about every
thing was the insatiable craving of his
mind, and this was never stronger
than during the winter he spent in
Rome. Never surely was there an
other man who so literally fulfilled
the command—" Whatever thy hand
(finds to do, do it with all thy might."

Even his attempts to carry out the
best advice were over-done. The
advice to spend as much time as
possible in the open air led him to
spend even wet days there, walking
six or seven hours of the day, and ex
ploring the sites of ancient squares,
gardens, temples, theatres, &c, for
miles around, with his umbrella in his
hand. Though fast losing flesh, and
becoming more nervous and despond
ing, his power of walking did not
abate. Every day he must comedown
and up the hundred and twenty steps
from his apartment, and within a
month of his death he took a twenty-
four miles ride on a donkey out among
the mountains. He further injured
himself with attending the churches ;
for, in the desire, no doubt, to forget
himself and his illness, he could not
keep away from the shows and ser
vices. His own dark earth-prospects,
however, did not lead him to forget
others. Each death of a friend in
America he heard of, called forth
the writing of an affectionate and
touching missive to the bereaved ones.
Hisf deep, large faith in God and
immortality never deserted him, and
he did not even so much as complain
of his lot, except when his strong
nature, in its unwillingness to break
up, forced repining tones from the dis
ordered instrument "of a thousand
strings. "
Even when his body was well-nigh
exhausted he continued to show
astonishing mental power. Within
three weeks of his death, when pros
trate, one eye closed with feebleness,
a friend who had been to Florence for
two weeks came in, and in answer to
his question — " What news?" —
showed him two or three unpublished
translations, by Owen Meredith, from
the Romance dialect. He asked her
to read them to him, and as she did
so animation and speech became
aroused in him. Taking the papers
from her hand he read them aloud,

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

255

explained obscure points as he pro
ceeded, and ended by giving a history
of the dialect, and an account of the
sources whence the poems were taken,
as if his life had been devoted to a
study of this particular kind of litera
ture. About a month before his death he
had a great longing for the presence
of his friend, Professor Desor — who
had been prevented from coming (as
hehad promised) by his circumstances.
"Let us see you here soon," Parker
wrote to him, " for you are the medi
cine I need most of all, and may do
me just the good thing I need to set
me on my legs again. " Desor came,
but it was too late. The sight of him
gave strength for a moment, but it
was found that his presence, except
for short periods, was too exhaust
ing. The faithful friend, however, con
tinued residing near him to the end,
and from his pen we have the follow
ing narrative of the latter days. Pro
fessor Desor writes : — " The miseries
of the Papal rigime, together with the
damp climate and some annoyances,
had affected his state to a singular
degree, so that when I was able to
rejoin him, I found him changed as if
ten years older. He was no longer
the Parker of Combe- Varin ; he was
an old man. Surrounded by the
tenderest care on the part of his wife
and his friends ; treated with fraternal
solicitude by his physician, Dr. Apple-
ton, who was also his friend and con
fidant ; he alone, of all, had not lost
his courage. Neither had he entirely
renounced the prospect of profiting
by his sojourn in Italy to study its
flora and geological structure. After
having made a few excursions by
carriage into the interior, it was evi
dent to everyone that the projected
tour was impossible ; and he was not
slow also to recognise it. In the
meantime we were still waiting for
the fair weather, which had long been
due. The month of April, generally

so fine at Rome, was cold and rainy.
To thwarted hopes succeeded un
easiness and a morbid desire to quit
Rome and its frightful climate as soon
as possible, in order to reach Florence.
His condition was so much worse that
we became anxious as to the issue of
the journey. He, on the contrary,
would not hear a word about post
poning it. One day, when I found
him reclining on his bed alone, I
thought it my duty to apprise him of
my apprehensions concerning the
journey. ' Should you fail upon the
route, to die in a tavern ! ' He smiled
and asked me to sit down near him ;
he took my hand and said, ' Listen
to me, my friend. You know that I
have some command over myself and
that I have sometimes put my will to
the test. Well : I will not die here ;
I will not leave my bones in this de
tested soil ; I will go to Florence,
and I will get there — that I promise
you.' Then resuming, with a less
emphatic tone, he added, ' Let me
once get upon my couch at Madame
Molini's, in Florence, there may
happen what will. I don't promise
beyond that.' It would have been
imprudent and cruel to oppose this
decided wish. We started the next
day for Florence, by the way of Peru
gia, but not until Dr. Sarjent, the
physician who was called in consulta
tion, had approved our plan.
' ' The journey from Rome to
Florence by vetturino lasted five days,
during which our patient displayed
admirable fortitude. He was too
feeble to visit with us the celebrated
sites and places which occurred along
our route. Whenever we reached a
hotel, his first and almost only want
was to rest. But he insisted that we,
his travelling companions, should
visit everything accessible, and be
careful to lose nothing out of regard
for him. When we returned, he loved
to hear in detail our impressions, and
made us tell our observations upon
the nature and accidents of the soil,

256

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

the peculiarities of the flora, the as
pects of the country, and its inhabit
ants. He shared our indignation
every time that we were victimised by
some of the numerous stratagems
which the police of His Holiness are
so adroit in exploiting to the detri
ment of travellers. That only in
creased his impatience to get out of
this country, doubly cursed, as he
said, by political and ecclesiastical
tyranny. So he enjoined us with
warmth to apprise him when we
crossed the frontier, and not to hesi
tate to wake him if he was asleep.
This we did. After having left the
last station of the Papal police, A-hen
I bade him notice at a distance by
the side of the road a post, newly
painted red, white, and green, he
roused as if electrified, and his eyes
threw upon me one of those piercing
and eloquent glances which only
come from a heart profoundly moved.
One who has done so much for
liberty loves to meet it on his way.
At that point we crossed into the
Kingdom of Italy ; and he knew that
if he died, his bones would at feast
repose in a land henceforth free.
" Having arrived at Florence, it
happened as he had foreseen and
predicted. Overcome by the fatigues
of the journey, he had but one desire
— to rest. He reached his bed, never
more to quit it. "
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who,
though she had so long corresponded
with him, and had received such in
valuable aid from his writings and
friendship, had not hitherto met him,
was now come to Florence and was
anxiously waiting to see him. She
thus describes how she found him
when she first entered his chamber : —
"He lies quite quietly on his bed,
with his back to the light — his eyes
are always trembling. I do not think
he sees anything, except vaguely.
They say he must have made a great
effort, to be as collected as he was
with me." She then goes on to de

scribe their interview : — "He received
me when I went to his bedside very
tenderly, saying, ' After all our wishes
to meet, how strange it should be
thus at last ! You are not to thinjc
or say you have seen me — this is only
the memory of me. Those who love
me most can only wish me a speedy
passage to the other world. Of course
I am not afraid to die ' (he said this
with what I. could have supposed his
old fire), 'but there was so much to
do.' I said, ' You have given your
life to God — to H is truth and His work,
as truly as any old martyr of them
all.' 'Ido not know,' he replied;
' I had great powers committed to me ;
I have but half used them.' I gave
him a nosegay of tea-roses and lilies
of the valley, and there came over his
face the most beautiful smile I ever
saw on a human countenance. I
wonder how anyone can have spoken
of his face as plain or Socratic. To
me it seems the noblest, most loveable
face in the world. He said afterwards,
' Do not speak of what you feel for
me. It makes me too unhappy to
leave you.' Then, suddenly, with
wonderful effort and power, he began
discussing Italian literature — then the
flowers of America. I saw he had
talked enough, and tried to go away.
It seems my visit did him no harm.
He spoke of me afterwards very
tenderly, Mrs. Parker said, and told
her she must see me every day. He
could not see me often ; it was a great
pleasure, but it made his heart swell
too high. He had a good night, and
this morning again wished to see me.
Alas ! he wandered in mind nearly all
the time, about what he would do in
America, how he would lie still in his
house and be very comfortable and
happy, only his face lighted up as
before "at the sight of the lilies of the
valley. (He had said he liked them
best.) He asked what day it was.
I said, ' It is Sunday — a blessed day ! '
' True, it is a blessed day,' said he,
suddenly, seriously, 'when one has

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

257

got over the superstition of it ! ' He
then seemed to fall off into vague,
but not painful, dreams, and to doze ;
so I just kissed his hand gently, and
left him without speaking." At
another interview he said earnestly to
her, eagerly taking her by the hand :
" I have something to tell you —
there are two Theodore Parkers now.
One is dying here in Italy, the other
I have planted in America. He will
live there, and finish my work. " He
sent out and had purchased a bronze
inkstand as a present to Miss Cobbe,
which, when brought to him, he felt
over — for he could no longer see, and
with a solemn and tender ' ' God bless
you ! " he handed it to her. Ever
since, it has held the ink which has
fed Miss Cobbe's industrious pen, and
is treasured and shown by her as one
of her dearest possessions.
She has told us in another account
that he lingered on for a few days,
gently falling asleep, as it seemed, and
dreaming, after the wont of the dying,
that he was going on a journey, going
home after his long wanderings, and
only waking at intervals to give a few
parting gifts to friends, and to com
fort his wife, and to say tenderest
words of thanks for the little offerings
of flowers or aught else brought to
him. He had now completely overcome
the temporary tendency to be petulant
and exacting, which had come over
him when his life began to tear itself
from the body. The gentle considera
tion which had always distinguished
him had more than returned : he asked
humbly for the little services he
needed, and gratefully thanked the
friends who gave them. To the last
—even in his ramblings — he was
caring for others. . " Lay down your
head on the pillow, 'Bearsie,' and
sleep ; for you have not slept for a
long time," said he on one of the last
nights ; and in his fancyings that they
were again back in America, he was
bidding his wife and Miss Stevenson

to go round to the houses of members
of his congregation upon kind errands,
and with affectionate messages. To
one or two American friends he sent
dying messages, begging for care and
protection for his wife after he was
gone. The last few days were passed in
great weakness, but without the least
suffering. The powerful mind had
now so weak an instrument to play
upon that the mental music altogether
ceased ; the faculties gradually faded,
and physical sensibility became less
and less.
On the ioth of May he lay motion
less ; his countenance wore the ex
pression of a little child falling away
into innocent slumber. Then it was
that the great soul passed away from
its earthly to its heavenly ministry.
The translation occurred so softly,
that the most anxious of those watch
ing around his bed knew not the pre
cise time when the last breath was
drawn. Even after death the sem
blance of infantile sleep remained on
the face as his head lay on the pillow,
garlanded with the rich pink and
white roses of Tuscany. Never was
the rapture of repose more legible on
the face of death. It seemed as if
God had taken up the last words of
his last sermon, " Friend, come up
higher," and then benignantly said —
"Well done, good and faithful ser
vant I Well hast thou spent thy
talents ten times ten ! "
Immediately after his decease, Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe arrived in
Florence, and was sorry to find her
self too late to pay the last token of
respect to her great fellow-abolitionist
which she had intended. At her
request Miss Cobbe related to her all
the details of his last hours, repeating
the words aheady quoted about his
unfinished labours, and adding, "To
think that life is over — that work is
stopped I "
But not so thought Mrs. Stowe —
"And do you think: did he think
s

258

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

J

that Theodore Parker has no work
to do for God now ? " Thus appealed
to, Miss Cobbe could not but fall in
with the gifted American woman's
view. Parker himself had held it, for he
had once declared, in a sermon, that,
in the future life, the good could never
remain satisfied until every soul had
been brought to holiness and happi
ness — nay, even if the fabled devil
existed, there would -be a society
formed in heaven for the reformation
and salvation of the devil.
If, as Mr. RathBone Greg most
reasonably fore-feels, in heaven,
' ' there will be missions of mercy to
rescue the despairing; missions of
aid to strengthen those who strive ;
missions of consolation to comfort
those who weep ; missions of in
struction to guide the blind ; missions
of conflict to combat and conquer
evil ; worlds to be guided and re
deemed ; worlds to be ' brought out
of darkness into His marvellous
light ; ' loving souls needed to bind
up the broken-hearted ; serene souls
to breathe peace to the cumbered,
the harassed, and the way-worn ;
and fiery souls to do loyal battle
with the powers of evil " — then indeed
the work of Theodore Parker cannot
have ended with his soul's departure
from earth, but he is likely to be one
of the noblest and best workers of
the world-transcendental as he was
of the worlds of matter and of man.

Three days later, on a Sunday
afternoon, his wife and friends fol
lowed his corse to the grave which
had been prepared for its reception
in the beautiful Campo Santo — the
Protestant cemetery — of Florence.
An old friend then in the city — the
Rev. Mr. Cunningham, read over
the grave, in accordance with Parker's
own wish, the Beatitudes of the
Gospel. This and the solemn thoughts
and feelings of the mourners formed
the sole service. White lilies, fitting
emblems ! were laid upon the coffin,
and the words, "Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God "
seemed especially to have been spoken
for such as he. ' The Sunday was a
feast-day in Florence; the streets
were filled with gay people ; banners
were hung out of the windows under
which the mourners passed to the
place where he was to sleep. At
first it struck like a dissonance to
their hearts, but friends of Theodore
Parker could not sorrow "as those
who have no hope." They remem
bered what he had been, and still
must be in a higher life than ours,
and they said one to another, "For
us, too, this is , a festal-day — the
solemn Feast of an Ascension."
The grave is near the centre of the
grounds, at the foot of a cypress
tree. It is enclosed in a border of
white marble, and at the head is a
plain slab of the same material, with
this simple inscription : —

THEODORE PARKER,
Born at Lexington, Mass.,
United States of America,
Aug. 24, 1810,
Died at Florence, May io, i860.

It is a fitting resting-place for the
earthly tenement of such a soul.
Above, there is almost ever a sky as
cloudless as his faith ; on and about
the grave, there grow in profusion the

flowers and shrubs he loved so well ;
while an American pine and the
Italian cypress at its head tell, the
one of the land he loved and served
so devotedly, the other, by its tall,

Pakkek's Grave: Florence.

IP- 25S.

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

259

up-pointing, spire-like form, of the
celestial sphere to which the man
has gone.
The European Continent possesses
many attractions, natural, archaeolo
gical, artistic ; but to us the greatest
of them all is that modest grave in
the little Campo Santo of Florence.
If ever 1 we make a pilgrimage, that
will be our Mecca. - We would fain

stand there, lay an immortelle upon
that earthly bed, and relieve our
bursting heart by thanking God for
the liberty and light, the strength
and solace, the joy and hope — the
new and higher life we have had
given unto us through the life and
teachings of America's greatest and
grandest Son.

" Yes, holy one, thou the Good Shepherd wert,
Enduring hardest service for thy sheep,
Hearing their bleatings with a human heart,
Not losing such as thou wert put to keep ;
But feeble wanderers from the field astray
Thou on thy shoulders took, and did'st bear
From hireling thieves and murdering wolves away,
And watched o'er them with a guardian care.
Thou wert the human Shepherd of the sheep,
Leading them forth to pasture all the day ;
At night to folds which did iu safety keep."

b6o

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

APPENDIX.

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH.
" It is the greatest possible Praise to be praised by men who are themselves deserving
of Praise." — From the Latin. »
I. RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S TRIBUTE.

' ' TT E whose voice will not be heard
11 here [in the Music Hall] again
could well afford to tell his experiences:
they were all honourable to him, and
were part of the history of the civil
and religious liberty of his times.
Theodore Parker was a son of the
soil, charged with the energy of "New
England ; strong, eager, inquisitive of
knowledge ; of a diligence that never
tired ; upright ; of a haughty inde
pendence, yet the gentlest of com
panions ; a man of study, fit for a
man of the world ; with decided
opinions, and plenty of power to state
them ; rapidly pushing his studies so
far as to leave few men qualified to
sit as his critics. He elected his post
of duty, or accepted nobly that assigned
him in his rare constitution — wonder
ful acquisition of knowledge ; a rapid
wit that heard all, and welcomed all
that came, by seeing its bearing.
Such was the largeness of his recep
tion of facts, and his skill to employ
them, that it looked as if he were
some president of council to whom
a score of telegraphs were ever bring
ing in reports; and his information

would have been excessive, but for
the noble use he made of it, ever in
the interest of humanity. He had a
strong understanding, a logical me
thod, a love for facts, a rapid eye for
their historical relations, and a skill
in stripping them of traditional lus
tres. He had a sprightly fancy, and
often amused himself with throwing
his meaning into pretty epilogues;
yet we can hardly ascribe to his mind
a poetic element, though his scholar
ship had made him a reader and
quoter of verses. A little more feeling
of the poetic significance of his facts
would have disqualified him for some
of his severer offices to his generation.
The old religions have a charm for
most minds, which it is a little un
canny to disturb. It is sometimes a
question, shall we not leave them to
decay without rude shocks? I re
member I found some harshness in his
treatment both of Greek and Hebrew
antiquity, and sympathised with the
pain of many good people in his
auditory ; whilst I acquitted him, of
course, of any wish to be flippant
" He came at a time, when, to the

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 261

irresistible march of opinion, the
form still retained by the most ad
vanced sects showed loose and lifeless;
and he, with something less of affec
tionate attachment to the old, or with
more vigorous logic, rejected them.
It is objected to him that he scattered
too many illusions. Perhaps more
tenderness would have been graceful ;
but it is vain to charge him with per
verting the opinions of the new gene
ration. The opinions of men are or
ganic. Simply those came to him who
found themselves expressed by him ;
. and had they not met this enlightened
mind, in which they beheld their own
opinions combined with zeal in every
cause of love and humanity, they
would have suspected their own
opinions, and suppressed them, and
so sunk into melancholy or malignity
of feeling, of loneliness, and of hos
tility to what was reckoned respect
able. It is plain to me that he has
achieved an historic immortality here;
that he has so woven himself in those
few years into the history of Boston
that he can never be left out of your
annals. It will not be in the acts of
city councils, nor of obsequious
mayors, nor in the State House ; the
proclamations of governors, with
their failing virtue — failing them at
critical moments — that the coming
generations will study what really
befell ; but in the plain lessons of
Theodore Parker in this Music Hall,
in Faneuil Hall, or in Legislative
Committee Rooms, the true temper
and authentic record of these days
will be read. The next generation
will care little for the chances of
elections that govern governors now ;
it will care little for fine gentlemen
who behave shabbily ; but will read
very intelligently in his rough story,
fortified with exact anecdotes, precise
with names and dates, what part was
taken by each actor ; who threw him
self into the cause of humanity ; who
came to the rescue of civilization at a
bard pinch, and who blockedits course.

' ' The vice charged against America
is the want of sincerity in leading
men. It does not lie at his door.
He never kept back the truth for fear
to make an enemy. But, on the other
hand, it was complained that he was
bitter and harsh ; that his zeal bumed
with too hot a flame. It is so difficult,
in evil times, to escape this charge !
— for the faithful preacher most of all.
It was his merit — like Luther, Knox,
Latimer, and John Baptist, to speak
tart truth when that was peremptory,
and when there were few to say it.
But his sympathy with goodness was
not less energetic. One fault he had :
he over-estimated his friends, I may
well say it, and sometimes vexed
them with the importunity of his
good opinion, whilst they knew better
the ebb which follows exaggerated
praise. He was capable, it must be
said, of the most unmeasured eulogies
on those he esteemed, especially if
he had any jealousy that they did not
stand with the Boston public as highly
as they ought. His commanding"
merit as reformer is this, that he in
sisted, beyond all men in pulpits — I
cannot think of one rival — that the
essence of Christianity is its practical
morals : it is there for use, or it is
nothing ; and if you combine it with
sharp trading, or with ordinary city
ambitions to gloss over municipal cor
ruptions, or private intemperance, or
successful fraud, or immoral politics,
or unjust wars, or the cheating of
Indians, or the robbery of frontier
nations, or leaving your principles at
home, to show on the high seas, or in
Europe, a supple complaisance to
tyrants, it is an hypocrisy, and the
truth is not in you ; and no love of
religious music, or of dreams of Swe
denborg, or praise of John Wesley,
or of Jeremy Taylor, can save you
from the Satan which you are.
"His ministry fell on a political
crisis also : on the years when South
ern slavery broke over itsold banks,
made new and vast pretensions, and

262

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

wrung from the weakness or treachery
of Northern people, fatal concessions
in the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
Two days, bitter in the memory of
Boston — the days of the rendition of
Sims and of Burns — made the occa
sion of his most remarkable discourses.
He kept nothing back. In terrible
earnest he denounced the public
crime, and meted out to every official,
high or low, his due portion. By the
incessant power of his statement, he
made and held a party. It was his
great service to freedom. He took
away the reproach of silent consent,
that would otherwise have laid
against the indignant minority, by
uttering, in the hour and place wherein
these outrages were done, the stern
protest. There were, of course, mul
titudes to defame and censure the
truth-speaker. But the brave know
the brave. Fops, whether in draw
ing-rooms or churches, will utter the
fop's opinion, and faintly hope for
the, salvation of his soul : but his
manly enemies, who despise the fops,
honoured him ; and it is well known
that his great hospitable heart was
the sanctuary to which every soul
conscious of an earnest opinion came
for sympathy — alike the brave slave
holder and the brave slave-rescuer.
These met in the house of this honest
man ; for every sound heart loves a

responsible person — one who does
not in generous company say gene
rous things, and in mean company
base things ; but says one thing, now
cheerfully, now indignantly, but al
ways because he must,, and because
he sees that whether he speak or re
frain from speech, this is said over
him, and history, nature, and all
souls testify to the same.
" Ah, my brave brother ! it seems
as if, In a frivolous age, our loss were
immense, and your place cannot be
supplied. But you will already be
consoled in the transfer of your
genius, knowing well that the nature
of the world will affirm to all men,
in all times, that which for twenty-
five years you valiantly spoke ; that
the winds of Italy murmur the same
truth over your grave, the winds of
America over these bereaved streets ;
that the sea which bore your mourners
home affirms it, the stars in their
courses, and the inspirations of
youth ; whilst the polished and plea
sant traitors to human rights, with
perverted learning and disgraced
graces, rot and are forgotten with
their double tongue, saying all that
is sordid for the corruption of man."
— Address delivered at the Service to
Commemorate Parker's death, held at
the Music Hall, Boston, June 17,
i860.

II. TRIBUTE OF JAMES MARTINEAU, D.D., LL.D.

" Gladly then do we gird up our
hearts to follow the bold and noble
steps of Theodore Parker over the
ample province of thought which he
traverses in his Discourse on Religion.
However startling the positions to
which he conducts us, and however
breathless the impetuosity with which
he hurries on, the region over which
he flies is no dreamland, but a real
one, which will be laid down truly
or falsely in the minds of reflecting
men : his survey of it is grand and

comprehensive, complete in its bound
aries, if not always accurate in its
contents ; and the glass of clear and
reverential faith through which he
looks at all things, presents the most
familiar objects in aspects beautiful
and new. . . .
"So vast a mass of matter, re
quiring for its management a very
various skill, cannot, it may be sup
posed, be dealt with by one man,
otherwise than superficially. Yet
there is a mastery shown over every

Tributes to parker 's work and worth. 263

element of the great subject ; and the
slight treatment of it in parts no
reader can help attributing to the
plan of the work, rather than to the
incapacity of the author. From the
resources of a mind singularly exu
berant by nature and laboriously en
riched by culture, a system of results
is here thrown up and spread out in
luminous exposition : and though the
processes are often imperfectly indi
cated by which they have been
reached, they so evidently come from
the deep and vital action of an under
standing qualified to mature them
that an opponent who might stigma
tise the book as superficial would
never venture to call the author so.
There are few men Jiving, we suspect,
who would like to have a contro
versy with him on any one of his
many heresies. The references in
his notes, though often only general,
are, when needful, sufficiently specific
and various to show an extent of
reading truly astonishing in so
young a writer " [Parker was only
thirty-two when he published the
work Dr. Martineau was now re
viewing] ; "yet the glow and brilli
ancy of his page prove that the accu
mulative mass of other men's thought
and learning has been but the fuel
of his own genius. The copiousness
of German erudition, systematised
with a French precision, seems here
to have been absorbed by a mind
having the moral massiveness, the
hidden tenderness, the strong enthu
siasm of an English nature.
" The least perfect of his achieve
ments appears to us to be the meta
physical ; he is too ardent to preserve
self-consistency throughout the parts
of a large abstract scheme ; too im
petuous for the fine analysis of in
tricate and evanescent phenomena.
His philosophical training, however,
gives him great advantages in his
treatment of concrete things and his
views of human affairs ; and in no
thing would he, in our opinion, more

certainly excel than in history— J
whether the history of thought and!
knowledge or of society and in4
stitutions. \
"As to the form in which our
author presents his ideas, our readers
must judge of that from the passages
we may have occasion to quote.
We have small patience at any time
with the criticisms on style in which
'Belles Lettres men' and rhetori
cians delight; and where we speak
to one another of the solemn mys
teries of life and duty in God, such
things affect us like a posture-master's
discussions of Christ's sitting attitude
in the Sermon on the Mount, or
some prudish milliner's critique on
the penitent wiping his feet with her
bair. Men who neither think nor
feel, but only learn, pretend, and
imitate, may make an art out of the
deepest utterances of the human
soul ; but from these histrionic beings,
who would applaud the elocution of
Isaiah, and study the delivery of a
' Father, forgive them ! ' such a
man as Theodore Parker recalls us
with a joyful shame. He reasons,
he meditates, he loves, he scorns, he
weeps, he worships, aloud. It may
be thought very improper that a man
should thus publish himself, instead
of some choice, decorous excerpts,
fit for the public eye. As, in prayer
to God, it is deemed in these days
no sin ' to utter, instead of our real
desires, something else which we
should hold it decent to desire ; so,
in addressing men, it is esteemed
wise, not to say, or even to inquire,
what we do think, but to put forth
what it might be as well to think.-
Weary of all this, and finding no
thing but a holy dulness and sickly
unreality in the conventional theology
of pulpit and the press, we delight
in our author's irrepressible unre
serve. No doubt there are rash
judgments ; there is extravagant ex
pression ; the colouring of his emo
tions is sometimes too vivid, the edge

264

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

of his indignation too sharp. But he
believes, and therefore does he speak.
You have his mind. These things
are true to him. . . .
" Honour then to the manly sim
plicity of Theodore Parker. Perish
who may among Scribes and Pharisees
— ' orthodox liars for God' — he at least
' has delivered his soul.' . . .
" His vast reading, and his quick
sympathy with what is great and
generous of every kind has given an
eclectic character to his philosophy.
His mind refuses to let go anything
that is true and excellent. . . .
" In the ' Discourse on Religion,'
he has nowhere stated the principles
of his ethical doctrine, or bridged
over the chasm which separates it
from his theology. But the purity
and depth of his conceptions of cha
racter, his intense abhorrence of false
hood and evil, the moral loftiness of
his devotion, and the generous severity
of his rebuke, are in the strongest con
tradiction to the serene complacency
of a mind suspended in metaphysic
elevation above the point where truth
and error, right and wrong, diverge,
and looking down from a station
whence'all things look equally divine.
" If there is anyone who for his
judgment on the historical evidence
for the miracles, chooses to denounce
him as ' no Christian ;' who conceives
that a literary verdict, referring the
Gospels to the second century instead
of the first, outlaws a man from ' the
Kingdom of God ;' who can read this
book, and suppose in his heart that
here is a man whom Jesus would have

driven from the company of his dis
ciples ; we can only wish that the
accuser's title to the name was as ob
vious as the accused's. Alas for this
poor wrangling ! To hear the boast
ful anger of our stout believers, one
would suppose that to take up our
faith on too easy terms, and to be
drawn into discipleship less by logic
than by love were the very Sin
against the Holy Ghost ! Jesus
thought it might not be too much
to expect of his enemies, that, being
eyewitnesses, they might ' believe his
works ;' but of his friends it was the
mark, that they would ' believe him.'
But now-a-days, who are our ' patient
Christians,' ever busy with indict
ments against all counterfeits ? Why,
men who think it supremely ridiculous
to accept anything or being as divine,
unless visible certificates of character
be written on earth, air, and water,
and Heaven will pawn the laws of
nature as personal securities.
" We part with Theodore Parker
in hope to meet again. He has, we
are persuaded, a task, severe perhaps,
but assuredly noble, to achieve in this
world. The work we have reviewed
is the confession, at the threshold of
a high career, of a great Reforming
soul, that has thus cleared itself of
hindrance, and girded up itself for a
faithful future. The slowness of suc
cess awaiting those who stand apart
from the multitude will notdismayhim.
He knows the ways of Providence too
well." — Review of Parker's Discourse
of Religion in the Prospective Review
for February, 1846.

III. TRIBUTES OF WENDELL P^IILLXfS,
America's Greatest Orator.

" When some Americans die, when
most Americans die, their friends tire
the public with excuses. They con
fess this spot ; they explain that stain;
they plead circumstances as the half
justification of the mistake ; and they
beg of us to remember that nothing

but good is to be spoken of the dead.
We need no such mantle for the green
grave under the sky of Florence ; no
excuses, no explanations, no spot !
Priestly malice has scanned every inch
of his garment : it was seamless ; it
could find no stain. History, as in

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 265

the case of every other of her beloved
children, gathers into her bosom the
arrows which malice had shot at him,
and says to posterity, ' Behold the
title-deeds of your gratitude ! ' We
ask no moment to excuse : there is
nothing to explain. What the snarl
ing journal thought bold, what the
selfish politician feared as his ruin, it
was God's seal set upon his apostle-
ship. The little libel glanced across
him like a rocket when it goes over
the vault : it is passed, and the royal
sun shines out as beneficent as ever.
" When I returned from New York
on the 13th of this month, I was to
have been honoured by standing in
his desk ; but illness prevented my
fulfilling that appointment. It was
eleven o'clock in the morning. As
he sank away the same week under
the fair sky of Italy, he said to the
most loving of wives and of nurses,
' Let me be buried where I fall ;' and
tenderly, thoughtfully, she selected
four o'clock of the same Sunday to
mingle his dust with the kindred dust
of brave, classic Italy.
"Four o'clock ! The same sun
that looked upon the half-dozen
mourners that he permitted to follow
him to the grave, the same moment
of brightness lighted up the arches
of his own temple as one whom he
loved stepped into his own desk, and,
with remarkable coincidence, for the
only time during his absence, opened
one of his own sermons to supply my
place ; and, as his friend read the
.Beatitudes over his grave on the banks
of the Arno, his dearer friend here
read from a manuscript, the text : —
' Have faith in God.'
" It is said that in his last hours,
in the wandering of the masterly
brain, he murmured, ' There are two
Theodore Parkers ; one rests here
dying ; but the other lives, and is at
work at home.' How true ! At that
very moment he was speaking to his
usual thousands ; at that very instant
his own words were sinking down

into the hearts of those that loved
him best, and bidding them, in this
the loneliest hours of their bereave
ment, ' have faith in God. ' He al
ways came to this [the Anti- Slavery]
platform : he is an old occupant of it.
He never made an apology for coming
to it. I remember, many years ago,
going home from the very hall which
formerly occupied this place. He
had sat where you sit, in the seats,
looking up at us. It had been a
stormy, hard gathering, a close fight ;
the press calumniating us; every
journal in Boston ridiculing the idea
which we were endeavouringtospread.
As I passed down the stairs home
ward, he put his arm within mine, and
said, ' You shall never need to ask
me again to share that platform.' It
was the instinct of his nature, true as
the bravest heart. The spot for him
was where the battle was hottest.
He had come, as half the clergy came,
a critic. He felt it was not his place ;
that it was to grapple with a tiger,
and throttle him. And the pledge
that he made he kept ; for whether
here or in New York, as his reputa
tion grew, when that lordly mammoth
of the press, The Tribune, overgrown
in its independence and strength,
would not condescend to record a
word that Mr. Garrison or I could
utter, but bent low before the most
thorough scholarship of New England,
and was glad to win its way to the
confidence of the West by being his
mouthpiece — with that weapon of
influence in his right hand, he always
placed himself at our side, and in the
midst of us, in the capital state of
the empire.
" You may not think this great
praise : we do. Other men have
brought us brave hearts ; other men
have brought us keen-sighted and
vigilant intellects ; but he brought us,
as no one else could, the loftiest/
stature of New England culture. Hej
brought us a disciplined intellect,!
whose statement was evidence, and'

266

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

whose affirmation the most gifted
student took long time before he ven
tured to doubt, or to contradict.
When we had nothing but our cha
racters, nothing but our reputation
for accuracy, for our weapons, the
man who could give to the cause
of the slave that weapon was in
deed one of its ablest and foremost
champions. " Lord Bacon said in his will,
' I leave my name and memory to
foreign lands, and to my own country
men after some time be passed. ' No
more fitting words could be chosen,
if the modesty of the friend who has
just gone before us would have per
mitted him to adopt them for himself.
To-day, even within twenty-four
hours, I have seen symptoms of that
repentance which Johnson describes, —
" When nations, slowly wise and meanly
just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust."
" The men who held their garments
aside, and desired to have no contact
with Music Hall, are beginning to
show symptoms that they will be glad,
when the world doubts whether they

have any life left, to say, ' Did not
Theodore Parker spring from our
bosom ? ' Yes, he takes his place,
his serene place, among those few to
whom Americans point as a proof
that the national heart is still healthy
and alive. Most of our statesmen,
most of our politicians, go down into
their graves, and we cover them up
with apologies : we walk with reverent
and filial love backward, and throw
the mantle over their defects, and
say, ' Remember the temptation and
the time ! ' Now and then one, now
and then one, goes up silently, and
yet not unannounced, like the stars at
their coming, and takes his place :
while all eyes follow him, and say,
'Thank God that it is the promise
and the herald : it is the nation alive
at its heart. God has not left us
without a witness ; for His children
have been among us, and one half
have known them by love, and one-
half have known them by hate — equal
attestations to the divine life that has
passed through our streets.'" — Ad
dress at the Sessions of the New-Eng
land Anti-Slavery Society, May 31,
i860.

WENDELL PHILLIPS' SECOND TRIBUTE.

' ' There is one thing every man may
say of this pulpit : it was a live reality,
and no sham. Whether tearing theo
logical idols to pieces at West Rox
bury, or here battling with the every
day evils of the streets, it was ever a
live voice, and no mechanical or
parrot tune : ever fresh from the
heart of God, as' these flowers,
these lilies — the last flower over
which, when eye-sight failed him,
with his old gesture he passed his
loving hand, and said, ' How sweet ! '
As in that story he loved so much to
tell of Michel Angelo, when in the
Roman palace Raphael was drawing
his figures too small, Angelo sketched
a colossal head of fit proportions,
and taught Raphael his fault : so

Parker criticised these other pulpits,
not so much by censure as by crea
tion ; by a pulpit proportioned to the
hour, broad as humanity, frank as
truth, stern as justice, and loving
as . Christ. Here is the place to
judge him. In St. Paul's Cathedral
the epitaph says, if you would know
the genius of Christopher Wren,
'look around.' Do you ask proof,
how full were the hands, how large
the heart, how many-sided the brain, '
of your teacher; listen, and you
will hear it in the glad, triumphant
certainty of your enemies — that you
must close these doors, since his
place can never be filled. Do you
ask proof of his efficient labour, and
the good soil into which that seed

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 267

fell : gladden your eyes by looking
back, and seeing for how many
months the impulse his vigorous hand
gave you has sufficed, spite of boding
prophecy, to keep these doors open.
Yes, he has left those accustomed to
use weapons, and not merely to hold
up his hands. And not only among
yourselves : from another city I re
ceived a letter, full of deep feeling :
and the writer, an orthodox church
member, says : —
'"I was a convert to Theodore
Parker before I was a convert to  .
If there is anything of value in the
work I am doing to-day, it may, in
an important sense, be said to have
had its root in Parker's heresy ; I
mean the habit — without which ortho
doxy stands emasculated, and good
for nothing — of independently passing
on the empty and rotten pretensions
of churches and churchmen, which I
learned earliest, and, more than from
any other, from Theodore Parker.
He has my love, my respect, my ad
miration. '
" Yes, his diocese is broader than
Massachusetts. His influence extends
very far outside these walls. Every
pulpit in Boston is freer and more
real to-day because of the existence
of this. The fan of his example
scattered the chaff of a hundred sap
less years. One whole city is fresher to
day because of him. The most sickly
and timid soul under yonder steeple,
hide-bound in days and forms and
beggarly Jewish elements, little
dreams how ten times narrower and
worse it was before this sun warmed
the general atmosphere around. As
was said of Burk i's unsuccessful im
peachment of Warren Hastings,
' never was the great object of punish
ment, the prevention of crime, more
completely obtained. Hastings was
acquitted ; but tyranny and injustice
were condemned wherever English
was spoken.' So we may say of
Boston and Theodore Parker. Grant
that few adopted his extreme theo

logical views, that not many sympa
thise in his politics : still, that Boston
is nobler, purer, braver, more loving,
more Christian, to-day, is due more
to him than to all the pulpits that vex
her Sabbath air. He raised the level I
of sermons, intellectually and morally. I
Other preachers were compelled to
grow in manly thought, and Christian
morals in very self-defence. Asi
Christ preached of the fall of the
Tower of Siloam the week before,
and what men said of it in the streets
of Jerusalem ; so Parker rang through
our startled city the news of some
fresh crime against humanity — some
slave-hunt or wicked court, or prosti
tuted official — till frightened audiences
actually took bond of their new
clergyman that they should not be
tormented before their time.
Men say he erred on that great
question of our age — the place due to
the Bible. But William Craft, one of
the bravest men who ever fled from
our vulture to Victoria, writes to a
friend, ' When the slave-hunters were
on our track, and no other minister
except yourself carpe to direct our
attention to the God of the oppressed,
Parker came with his wise counsel,
and told us where and how to go ;
gave us money. But that was not
all : he gave me a weapon to protect
our liberties, and a Bible to guide our
souls. I have that Bible now, and
shall ever prize it most highly.'
" How direct and frank his style !
just level to the nation's ear. No
man ever needed to read any of his
sentences twice to catch its meaning.
None suspected that he thought other
than he said, or more than he con
fessed. ' ' Like all such men, he grew daily ;
never too old to learn. Mark how
close to actual life, how much bolder
in reform, are all his later sermons,
especially since he came to the city ;
every year his step
' Forward persevering, to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpassed.'

268

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

' ' There are men whom we measure
by their times, content and expecting
to find them subdued to what they
work in. They are the chameleons of
circumstance ; they are seolian harps,
toned by the breeze that sweeps over
them. There are others who serve as
guide-posts and landmarks : we
measure their times by them. Such
was Theodore Parker. Hereafter the
writer will use him as a mete-wand to
measure the heart and civilisation of
Boston. Like the Englishman, a year
or two ago, who suspected our great
historian could not move in the best
circles of the city when it dropped
out that he did not know Theodore
Parker ; distant men gauge us by our
toleration and recognition of him.
Such men are our nilometers : the
harvest of the future is according to
the height that the flood of our love
rises round them. Who cares now
that Harvard vouchsafed him no
honours ? But history will save the
fact to measure the calculating and
prudent bigotry of our times.
"Some speak of him only as a
bitter critic and harsh prophet.
Pulpits and journals shelter their plain
speech in mentioning him under the
example of what they call his ' un
sparing candour.' Do they feel that
the strangeness oi their speech, their
unusual frankness, needs apology and
example ? But he was far other than
a bitter critic ; though thank God for
^every drop of that bitterness; that
came like a wholesome rebuke on the
dead, saltless sea of American life !
Thank God for every indignant pro
test, for every Christian admonition,
that the Holy Spirit breathed through
those manly lips ! But, if he deserved
any single word, it was 'generous.'
Vir generosus [magnanimous man] is
the description that leaps to the lip of
every scholar. He was generous of
money. Born on a New England
farm, in those days when small in
comes made every dollar matter of
importance, he no sooner had com

mand of wealth than he lived with
open hands. Not even the darling
ambition of a great library ever
tempted him to close his ear to need.
Go to Venice or Vienna, to Frankfort
or to Paris, and ask the refugees who
have gone back — when here, friendless
exiles but for him, under whose roof
they felt most at home. One of our
oldest and best teachers writes me
that telling him once, in the cars, of
a young lad of rare mathematical
genius, who could read Laplace, but
whom narrow means debarred from
the university, ' Let him enter,' said
Theodore Parker : ' I will pay his
bills.' " No sect, no special study, no one
idea, bounded his sympathy ; but he
was generous in judgment where a
common man would have found it
hard to be so. Though he does not
go ' down to dust without his fame,'
though Oxford and Germany sent
him messages of sympathy, still no
word of approbation from the old
grand names of our land, no honours
from university or learned academy,
greeted his brave, diligent, earnest
life. Men confess that they voted
against his admission to scientific
bodies for his ideas, feeling all the
while that his brain could furnish half
the academy ; and yet, thus ostracised,
he was the most generous — more than
just — interpreter of the motives of
those about him, and looked on while
others reaped where he sowed, with
most generous joy in their success.
Patiently analyzing character, and
masterly in "marshalling facts, he
stamped with generous justice the
world's final judgment of Webster ;
and, now that the soreness of the battle
is over, friend and foe allow it.
" He was generous of labour.
Books never served to excuse him from
any of the homeliest work. Though
'living wisdom with each studious
year,' and passionately devoted to his
desk, as truly as was said of Milton,
'the lowliest duties on himself he

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 269

laid.' What drudgery of the street
did that scholarly hand ever refuse ?
Who so often and constant as he in
the trenches when a slave case made
our city a camp ? Loving books, he
had no jot of a scholar's indolence or
timidity but joined hands with labour
everywhere. Erasmus would have
found him good company, and Me
lancthon got brave help over a Greek
manuscript : but the likeliest place to
have found him in that age would
have been at Zwingle's side on the
battlefield, pierced with a score of
fanatic spears ; for, above all things,
he was terribly in earnest. If I might
paint him in one word, I should say
he was always in earnest.
" Fortunate man I he lived long
enough to see the eyes of the whole
nation turned toward him as to a
trusted teacher ; fortunate, indeed, in
a life so noble that even what was
scorned from the pulpit will surely
become oracular from the tomb ;
thrice fortunate, if he loved fame and
future influence, that the leaves which
bear his thoughts to posterity are not
freighted with words penned by sickly
ambition, or wrung from hunger, but
with earnest thoughts on dangers that
make the ground tremble under our
feet, and the heavens black over our
head — the only literature sure to live.
Ambition says, ' I will write and be
famous.' It is only a dainty tourna
ment, a sham fight, forgotten when
the smoke clears away. Real books
are like Yorktown or Waterloo, whose
cannon shook continents at the mo
ment, an echo down the centuries.
Through such channels Parker poured
his thoughts.
" And true hearts leaped to his side.
No man's brain ever made him warmer
friends ; no man's heart ever held
them firmer. He loved to speak of
how many hands he had in every city,

in every land, ready to work for him.
With royal serenity he levied on all.
Vassal hearts multiplied the great
chief's powers ; and at home the
gentlest and deepest love, saintly,
unequalled devotion, made every
hour sunny, held off every care, and
left him double liberty to work. God
comfort that widowed heart !
"Judge him by his friends. No
man suffered anywhere who did not
feel sure of his sympathy. In sick
chambers, and by the side of suffering
humanity, he kept his heart soft and
young. No man lifted a hand any
where for truth and right who did not
look on Theodore Parker as his
fellow-labourer. When men hoped
for the future, this desk was one stone
on which they planted their feet.
Where more frequent than around his
board would you find men familiar
with Europe's dungeons, and the
mobs of our own streets? Wherever
the fugitive slave might worship, here
was his Gibraltar ; over his mantel,
however scantily furnished, in this
city or elsewhere, you were sure to
find a picture of Parker.
" The blessings of the poor are his
laurels. Say that his words won
doubt and murmur to trust in a loving
God : let that be his record. Say
that to the hated and friendless he
was shield and buckler : let that be
his epitaph. The glory of children
is the fathers'. When you voted
' That Theodore Parker should be
heard in Boston,' God honoured you.
Well have you kept that pledge. In
much labour and with many sacrifices
he has laid the corner-stone : his work
is ended here. God calls you to put
on the top stone. Let fearless lips
and Christian lives be his monument. '
— Address delivered at the Service to
Commemorate Porker's Death, held in
the Music Hall, Boston, June 17, i860.

270

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

IV. TRIBUTE OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON,
(The Pioneer of the American Anti-Slavery Movement). ~5*

" Mental independence and moral
courage characterised Theodore Par
ker in respect to all his convictions
and acts. He was not technically
' a Garrisonian abolitionist, ' though
often upon that platform, but voted
with the Republican party, though
faithfully rebuking it for its timidity
and growing spirit of compromise.
He was no man's man, and no man's
follower, but acted for himself, bravely,
conscientiously, and according to his
best judgment.
" But what of his theology? I do
not know that I can state the whole
of Parker's creed, but I remember a
part of it : — ' There is one God and
Father over all, absolute and immu
table, whose love is infinite, and
therefore inexhaustible, and whose
tender mercies are over all the works
of His hand ; and, whether in the
body or out of the body, the farthest
wanderer from the fold might yet have
hope. ' He believed in the continual
progress and final redemption of the
human race ; that every child of God,
however erring, would ultimately be
brought back. You may quarrel with
that theology, if you please : I shall
not. I like it ; I have great faith in it ;
I accept it. But this I say in respect
to mere abstract theological opinions
— the longer I live the less do I care
about them, the less do I make them
a test of character. It is nothing to
me that any man calls himself a Me
thodist, or Baptist, or Unitarian, or
Universalist. These sectarian shib
boleths are easily taken upon the lip,
especially when the offence of the
cross has ceased. Whoever will, with
his theology, grind out the best grist
for our common humanity, is the best
theologian for me.
" Many years ago, Thomas Jeffer
son uttered a sentiment which shocked
our eminently Christian country, as

being thoroughly infidel : — ' I do not
care, ' said he, ' whether my neighbour
believes in one God, or in twenty
gods, if he does not pick my pocket'
Thus going to the root of absolute
justice and morality, and obviously
meaning this : if a man pick my
pocket, it is in vain he tells me, in
palliation of his crime, I am a be
liever in one true and Uving God.
That may be ; but you are a pick
pocket, nevertheless. Or- he may
say, I have not only one God, but
twenty gods : therefore, I am not
guilty. Nay, but you are a thief!
And so we always throw ourselves
back upon character ; upon the fact
whether a man is honest, just, long-
suffering, merciful ; and not whether
he believes in a denominational creed,
or is a strict observer of rites and
ceremonies. This was the religion of
Theodore Parker, always exciting hii
marvellous powers to promote the
common good, to bless those wbjo
needed a blessing, and to seek andlo
save the lost ; to bear testimony In
favour of the right in the face of dn
ungodly age, and against a 'frowning
world.' We are here to honour his me
mory. How can we best show our es
timation of him? By trying to be like
him in nobility of soul, in moral hero
ism, in fidelity to the truth, in disinte
rested regard for the welfare of others.
" Mr. Parker, though strong in his
convictions, was no dogmatist, and
assumed no robes of infallibility.
No man was more docile in regard to
being taught, even by the lowliest.
Mr. Phillips has done him no more
than justice, when he said that -he
was willing and eager to obtain in
struction from any quarter. Hence
he was always inquiring of those
with whom he came in contact, so
that he might learn, if possible,
something .from them that might aid

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 271

him in the great work in which he
was engaged.
" When the question of ' Woman's
Rights' first came up for discussion,
Uke multitudes of others, Mr. Parker
was inclined to treat it facetiously,
and supposed it could be put aside
with a smile. Still it was his dispo
sition to hear and to learn ; and as
soon as he began to investigate, and
to see the grandeur and world-wide
importance of the ' Woman's Rights '
movement, he gave to it his hearty
support before the country and the
world. How he will be missed by those
noble, but unfortunate, exiles who
come to Boston from the old world

from time to time, driven out by the
edicts of European despotism ! What
a home was Theodore Parker's for,
them ! How they loved to gather
round him in that home ! And what
a sympathising friend, and trusty
adviser, and generous assistant, in
their times of sore distress, they
have found in him ! There are many
such in Boston and various parts
of our country who have fled from
foreign oppression, who will hear
of his death with great sorrow of
heart, and drop grateful tears to
his memory." — Address at the Ses
sions of the New-England Anti-
Slavery Society, at Boston, May 31,
i860.

V. TRIBUTE OF DR. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE,
(Author of " Ten Great Religions," "Steps of Belief ," &°c.)

" I remember meeting him on the
cars on that fatal winter which laid
the foundation of the disease which
took him away. He had a carpet
bag with him filled with German,
Greek, and Latin books — those old
books in vellum of the seventeenth
century — volumes which it is a pain
merely to look at, so hard reading do
they seem to be. On Monday morn
ing he filled his carpet-bag, and went
to the place where he was to lecture
on the Monday night : all day long
he studied -his books, and at night
delivered his lecture. Then, on Tues
day, he would go to the next place ;
studying bis books all day, and lec
turing at night. So he would go on
through the week, until Friday ; when
he would be, back again to Boston,
with his carpet-bag exhausted, with
every one of those books gutted of
its contents, with the whole substance
of them in his brain ; so that he
knew all about every one of them,
and could give a perfect analysis of
them all from beginning to end. On
Saturday morning he would sit down
to write his sermon for the next day ;

on Saturday afternoon, go and visit
the sick and bereaved of his Society ;
on Sunday morning, preach his ser
mon, and in the afternoon drive out
to Watertown, and preach there ;
and, on Sunday evening, he would
lie on the sofa, and talk to his friends.
That was his way of working.
' ' I got a letter, only yesterday, from
Wm. H. Channing, an old friend of
his, who, speaking in the most tender
and affectionate terms of his depar
ture, said that he had, by over- work
ing the intellectual part of his facul
ties, by too great fidelity in study,
killed out, to some extent, another
masterly faculty, which he had ob
served, but of which those who did
not know him might be ignorant,
namely, his gorgeous imagination.
Mr. Channing said he was a man/
who had, with all his logical power,!
with all those reflective faculties,!
with all those immense powers ofl
grasp and reception — the powers by!
which he held on to and retained!
what he had learned, and the?
powers by which he brought them
into one great system in order to set

272

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

them before men — with all this he
had the imagination of a poet, but
did not let it work ; he was so busy
studying all the time.
"Now, there were other students
along with him when he was a boy ;
and I have known a great many stu
dents, but their way of studying was
very different from his. When
Parker studied, it was not merely
with the concentration of certain
faculties, for the sake of working
out a certain problem, and there put
an end of it ; or merely to gather
together certain things, and put them
into his brain, and there an end of
it. No : he had a great idea before
him all the time ; and every word he
uttered was a living word ; and all the
thoughts that came from him came
from him as fresh, glowing thoughts,
full of love to God and love to man.
"Now, with regard to the second
thing which goes to make a man
great. What was Parker's way of
action? It was a grand way of
action. His activity was as large,
determined, persistent, complete, and
thorough as his intellectual working
was. What he did was on a plan
reaching through years, on a plan
arranged when he was a boy — the
whole of his life mapped out before
him, with all he meant to do each
year previously arranged, and the
reason for it fixed in his own mind :
then he went to his work, and did
it ; lived to accomplish it. But
what sort of work was it ? It was
simply this : it was to lift man to
ward God. That was the work which
Parker gave himself to do in the
wprld ; that was the work for which
he gathered together all this know
ledge ; that the work for which he so
trained his intellect to be acute, per
sistent, and comprehensive. It was
to raise men to God. With his eye
on God, he turned to man to lift him
up ; and wherever he found a man
who needed to be raised, or a class,
a race, or a nation, that needed to be

lifted up, there he felt his work to be.
On that point I say no more, because
it is the least necessary to speak of
his work, since that is patent and
known to all.
' ' But there is one other element of
greatness in man. Besides the head
and the hand, there is the heart
What was the greatness of heart in
Theodore Parker ? His habit was,
in speaking of the Almighty, not to
call Him the Almighty. He spoke
of the 'Absolute Father' in his
philosophy and in his theology ; but
when he came to speak of Him from
the pulpit, as a Christian man speak
ing to Christian men, as a brother
talking to brethren and sisters of
what they needed, it was 'Father'
and 'Mother' — 'the great Father
and Mother of us all.' The tender^
feminine heart of Theodore Parker
was not satisfied with the name of
' Father ' unless he united with it
that of ' Mother.' So tender was
he, so affectionate was he, that no
one was ever near to Parker as a
friend, as an intimate companion,
without wondering how it was that
men could ever think of him as hard,
stem, severe, cold, and domineering ;
because, in all trie private relations
of life, he was docile as a child to
the touch of love ; and it was only
necessary," if you had any fault to
find with anything that he bad said
or done, to go to him, and tell him
just what your complaint was, or
what your difficulty was ; and, just as
likely as not, he would at once admit,
if there was the least reason in the
complaint, that he was wrong. He
was as ready to admit himself in the
wrong as to maintain his stand for
the everlasting right.
" I do not know how to describe
— with what figure, borrowed from
nature or art, or history, to describe
— how Parker appears to me in all
this varied and accumulated great
ness of mind, of heart, and of hand,
better than by telling you the inci-

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 273

dents of one day of my life. Wheii
I was passing out of Italy once by the
St. Gothard route, we were in Italy
in the morning, on the Italian side
of the mountains, surrounded by
Italian voices, and by the music of
Italian nightingales, and within sight
of the opening vineyards. Then we
> began the ascent of the mountains,
rand, as we ascended, we passed
' through the valley of pines, until at
last, on that 15th of May, we came to
the snow. Then we took the little
sleds, and went on upon the snow,
higher and higher, until we were
Isurrounded with great fields of snow,
dazzling white in the sun ; and on
one side we saw the fall of a terrible
avalanche, with its roar of thunder.
So we passed on until we reached
the summit of the mountain ; and
then, descending on the other side,
we came at last to where again the
snow ceased ; and there, taking the
diligence, we went on our way down
the side of the mountain, through
gorges and ravines, and glaciers even,
the country around growing more
and more green, changing from spring
to summer, until at last, when we
came down toward the Lake of
Lucerne, we passed through orchards
full of apple-blossoms, and finally

crossed the beautiful Lake to the
town of Lucerne, there to receive
a whole bundle of letters from home
— from father, mother, brother,
sister, and child — to end the day.
When I think of that day's journey
— beginning in Italy, and ending in
Germany ; beginning under an Italian
sun, at mid-day surrounded by snow-
fields and glaciers, and at its close
amid the apple-blossoms of Germany
— it seems to me that that varied and
wonderful day is a sort of type of the
life of our friend Theodore Parker ;
its youth Italian, all fresh and gush
ing with ten thousand springs of
early, boyish life, and hope and
animation, and with all the varied
study and activity of the child and
youth ; its early morning passed in
the stern work of climbing up the
mountain side ; its mid-day with
God's everlasting sun over his head,
and the great broad fields all around,
over which his eye looked ; and all
through its afternoon hours, passing
on into an ever-increasing influence
of spring and summer, and ending
at last in the sweet bosom of affec
tion, gratitude, and love." — Speech
at the Session of the New-England
Anti-Slavery Society at Boston, May
31, i860.

VI. TRIBUTE OF EMER. PROF. FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN,
(Author of " The Soul," " Theism, Doctrinal and Practical," Src.)

"What will be the judgment of
mankind a century hence in biogra
phical dictionaries? Something of
this sort may appear : —
" ' Theodore Parker, the most
eminent moral theologian whom the
first half of the nineteenth century
produced in the United States. When
the churches were so besotted as to
aphold the curse of slavery because
they found it justified in the Bible—
when the Statesmen, the Press, the
^Lawyers, and the Trading Commu

nity threw their weight to the same
fatal side — Parker stood up to preach
the higher law of God against false
religion, false statesmanship, crooked
law, and cruel avarice. He enforced,
three great JuncJgjneBtaitruflis-^God,
HoIrnessTan'dlmirigjtality. _He often
nsTfetrtrre^ancITortune to rescue the
fugitive slave. After a short and
very active life, full of good works,
he died in blessed peace, prema
turely worn out by his perpetual
struggle for the true, the right, and

274

LIFE OF THEODORE PA RKER.

/the

the good. His preaching is the
crisis which marked the turn of the
tide in America from the material to
|the moral, which began to enforce

the eternal laws of God on trade, on
law, on administration, and on the .
professors of religion itself.'" — Phases
of Faith, p. 203.

VII. TRIBUTE OF THE LATE F. W. ROBERTSON, OF BRIGHTON.

' ' Theodore Parker he admired for
the eloquence, earnestness, learning,
and indignation against evil, and
against forms without a spirit, which
mark his writings." "Much that
Theodore Parker says on the subject
of inspiration is very valuable, though
I am of opinion that Martineau has,
with much sagacity and subtlety,

corrected in the review certain ex
pressions which are too unguarded,
and which, unless modified, are un
true." " Dissenters anathematise
Unitarians, and Unitarians of the
Old School condemn the more spi
ritual ones of the New." — Life and
Letters. EditedbyStopfordA. Brooke,
M.A.

VIII. TRIBUTE OF DR. ALBERT REVILLE,
(French Protestant Pasteur, Author of " A Manual of Religious Instruction," &=c.)

"' Arrived at the end, we must ask
ourselves what remains of that bril- |
liant existence which we have sketched,
and to what extent Parker's vision
was prophetic when, on his death- |
bed, he saw himself doubled, and
continuing his work in America,
while his body dissolved in an Italian
soil. " Parker founded neither a church
nor a school. His ministry, his
words, his writings, his entire life,
was a demonstration of spirit and
power, rather than the construction
of anything visible and organised ;
consequently it is difficult to indicate
the positive results of his efforts,
I although the latent energy of the
(principles which he proclaimed, and
jthe impressions which he left behind,
are incontestable.
" What a fine comment have the
last five years [the years including
the American War] furnished on the
social and religious teachings of the
Boston preacher. Hardly had his
ashes grown cold, when the Union
arrived on the border of that Red Sea
which he had so often foretold. It
arrived there without suspecting the
depth of the water, and imbued with

illusions and prejudices which could
not but make the passage more diffi
cult and painful than the most clear
sighted could have foreseen.
" If now we go back to days pre
ceding this fearful duel, we may say
without the least exaggeration that
Parker shines in the first rank of those
who cried to the North most ener
getically, Be on your guard ; and
who contributed most largely to
arouse the mind of the people out of
that torpor into which it had been
thrown by material prosperity. The
Massachusetts volunteers were the
first in the hour of the greatest peril
to make their bodies a rampart
around the Federal capital, seriously
menaced by the insurgent army. The
silver and gold of New England
never ceased to flow forth, even in
the darkest hours, to sustain the
good cause. At length the day!
came when the President of the
United States saw himself able to
proclaim the abolition of slavery;
which he did amid the plaudits of
that same crowd that selfish sophists
had so long tried to blind, touching
interests the most manifest. Parker's
ashes may well have thrilled with

TRfBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 275

when touched by the news re-
_ iberating from the other side of
the Atlantic. We have no wish to
glorify our hero by letting - persons
little instructed in American affairs
take the impression that the Boston
pastor was the principal author of
that patriotic revolution. But we
must not underrate the glorious part
'Which belongs to him ; and if only
you know the man, you will compre
hend the influence which he exercised
on those eminent citizens of the Union,
Wendell Phillies, Chase, Seward,
Sumner, Hale, Banks, Horace Mann,
and others, his friends, his admirers,
his";, fellow-combatants, with whom
he ceaselessly conversed and corre
sponded, encouraging them, con
soling them, commending them,
sometimes frankly blaming them,
always feeling a warm interest in
their noble endeavours, always ready
to enhance his public instructions by
his generous and faithful example.
i,Who, moreover, can measure the
amount of liberal feeling which his
JEtimerous lectures poured into the
Afferent States of the Union ? How
often ears of corn, ripened before
others under the rays of that frank
and enlightened liberalism, foretold
the hour of the coming harvest ! All
that cannot be calculated, but it has
weight — immense weight — in the
scales of the history of God's king
dom on earth.
" Theodore Parker undermined sla
very by his bold criticism of the Bible
more, perhaps, than by the discourses
fectly prompted by the horror the
observance called forth in his mind.
And as a theology, more liberal than
that which prevailed around him, was
in his hands a marvellous instrument
of political liberalism, so the future
will show us America profiting by its
political liberalism to realise, sooner
Ittd better than any other nation, the
religious liberalism after which the
soul of our age is sighing. For all
liberalisms, like all liberties, are

linked together. It is chiefly as a
religious thinker and writer that
Theodore Parker belongs to the
future. ' ' What ought we in general to think
of Parker's religious work? This
question interests the old world
not less than the new. We may de
scribe Parker's religion as Christian
Theism, and the characteristic of that
mode of religion is this — that to one
or two very simple, and, if I may so
speak, very sober doctrines, it adds a
great richness of applications to indi
vidual and social life. For ourselves
there is not the slightest doubt that
all the currents of our modern life
lead us to that side of religion ; and
we are not shaken in that conviction
by the cries of terror uttered by those
who desire at any cost that we should
remain immured in a past where we
should be stifled, any more than by
the frivolous predictions which fall
from those who, disowning one of the
most ineradicable instincts of human
nature, go about declaring that we
are hastening on to the end of all
religion. There will arise in the near
future a prolific synthesis of religion
and liberty, under the aegis of spirit
ualism. Under what form and to
what point has Theodore Parker con
tributed to prepare this magnificent
future ? We must not look for a pro
fessor of systematic theology in
Theodore Parker: he is an originator,
he is a singer inspired with the future.
You may reject many of his ideas,
but if you at all love religious liberty
and social progress you cannot but
warmly sympathise with the man. It
is much less a system of doctrine he
will give you than impressions, conso
lations, hopes, courage, faith. His
religion is not an abstract theory, but
a spontaneous fact of his nature. As
he himself remarked, ' his head is
not more natural to his body than his
religion to his soul.' His science, his
erudition, very great in reality, and of
the best grain, are not the servants,

276

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

but the auxiliaries, the friends, of his
unshaken faith in the living God, and
aid him to put away everything in the
dogmas and institutions of former
days which hindered him from enjoy
ing the Heavenly Father's immediate
presence, and from bathing in the
waters of infinite love. Truth in
Parker is, -you feel, a necessity, a
passion of his nature, on account of
which you pardon his outbursts ; such
is the courage and loyalty of his soul.
Let us remember that the age is going
forward, that modern society in its
imperious exigencies calls henceforth
for more radical and exact solutions
than the compromises which up till
now have been accounted satisfac
tory. For that, need is there of the
generous audacity of Parker, going
straight ahead, without troubling him
self about the dust he raises in pass
ing through so many ruins, his eyes
ever fixed on the everlasting light.
Moreover, it would be unjust to see in
him only the severe and energetic
wrestler. There is in his nature— and
this constitutes its charm — by the side
of and below his revolutionary ardour,
a pure and rich mysticism, delightful
to contemplate. His profound faith
in the living God carries him beyond
the poor world in which we live, and
transports him before the time into
the region of celestial harmonies. He
is one of those thinkers who, to un
sparing censure of the men and the
things of their own times, have joined
the most serene anticipations of the
definite future of humanity. To the
feverish agitations of his career as a
reformer, his religion is that which
the depths of the ocean are to the sur
face which the winds toss into con
fusion. After every tempest the in
violable calm of the abyss resumes its
mastery over the entire mass, which,
again peaceful and smiling, reflects
the boundless azure of the sky.
i "To sum up, Parker was essen-
1 tially a prophet ; and he is one of
those contemporaneous appearances

which, better than laborious rej-
searches, enable us to understand
certain phenomena which at first sight
one would think belonged exclusive Ikr
to the past. What were the prophets
in the bosom of Israel? Not diviners,
not utterers of supernatural oraclesl
as is too often fancied They wer*
the organs of a grand idea — a simple]
austere, even abstract idea — hidden in|
the heart of the national tradition,
the idea of pure monotheism. In
order to disengage that idea from
what disfigured it, from the people's
sins, which caused it to be misappre
hended, from the abuses of a priest
hood and a throne interested, as they
thought, in its remaining forgotten,
the prophets persisted in their path
of duty in spite of all opposition ;
and notwithstanding the ill-will of
which they were the objects at every
step, they came forth from the old
soil of Israel always with a deeper
faith and a stouter heart For their
force sprang from the fact that at the
bottom the spirit of Israel conspired
with their spirit, and the more hos
tility that spirit encountered the more
did it become conscious of itself, and
the more it asserted itself clearly
and demonstratively. Kings, priests,
people — all might find the prophets
unendurable, but within a secret voice
declared to them that nevertheless the
prophets were in the right In the
same way the spirit of Protestantism
and of the American constitution took
possession of Theodore Parker near
his father's workshop, as of old the
spirit of monotheism seized the pro
phet by the side of his plough or
under his wild fig-trees. This man,
who might have lived at ease beneath
the shadow of his pines, in the midst
of the flowers of his parsonage, and
who goes out to preach from city to
city ' against the people's sins '—this
man, overruled by an idea simple,
grand, implicitly contained in the re
ligion of his childhood and the con
stitution of his native land — the idea

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 277

Je free development of the human
(nality — who consecrates bis ex-
re to the task of disembarrassing
that idea from all the shackles created
by interests, by vices, by sacerdotalism,
by official prerogatives ; this man, who
refuses every compromise, who has
tkind of indulgence for political or
imercial necessities ; who, in spite
the many bitter cups he is forced
ta drink, joyously proclaims on the
""'ise-tops, and foretells with an as-
uicethat is disconcerted by nothing,
efinal victory of truth and liberty —
This Man is a Prophet.
^ "Not only for the United States
Wis Parker a prophet His patriot
ism was not exclusive ; he felt himself
.to be literally a citizen of the world,
and if he loved America so well it is
because in her he saw the predestined
soil where some day the ideal, dreamt
of in our Europe, would receive full
E&lisation. For us also, at the mo
ment when long-established edifices
and traditions nod to their fall ; when
it is anxiously asked whether they
will not, in their fall, crush both those
who uphold and those who assail
them, such a man as Parker is a
prophet of consolation and hope. He
is, 'fright ; no cowardly fears ! what
ever happen, man will remain man.
In his very nature, such as God has
made it, there will ever be the revela
tions and the promises which produce

beautiful lives and beautiful deaths.
And what more is needed ? Happy
the churches who shall find in their
essential principles the right to open
themselves without resolution to that
imperishable Christianity of which
Theodore Parker was the inspired!
preacher ! The fundamental truth]
which he maintained, namely, that in
the last analysis everything rests on
conscience ; that God reveals Himself
to whosoever seeks after Him ; that
the salvation of man and society, on
earth as well as in heaven, depends
not on dogmas, not on rites, not on
miracles, not on priesthoods, not on
books, but on ' Christ in us ;' on a
pure and honest heart, on a loving;
soul, on a will devoted and active : —
this truth will live and cause us to live
with it. And the Church for which
he prayed, which shall be spacious
enough to contain all the sincere, all
the disinterested, all the morally great,
all the innocent, and all the repentant
— that Church, truly universal, which
in the past already unites so many
noble souls separated by barriers now
tottering — that Church will never
perish. Even the death of the prophets
would not for an hour retard the
triumph of the truth which they
preach, and the moment ever comes
when humanity,confused andyetgrate-
ful, perceives that it was ignorantly
stoning the.organs of the Holy Spirit. "

IX. TRIBUTE OF O. B. FROTHINGHAM,
(Author of " The History of Transcendentalism," &"£.)

' ' With_Eaikex„the~*eligious- senti-
mentwas supreme. It had roots in
hurBKEg wholly distinct from its
mental or sensible forms of expres
sion, completely distinguished from
|heoldgy, which claimed to give an
isocount of it in words, and from cere
monies, which claimed to embody it
ui rites and symbols. Never evapora
ting in mystical dreams, nor entangled
in the meshes of cunning speculation,
it preserved its freshness and bloom

and fragrance in every passage of his
life. His sense of the reality of
divine things was as strong as was
ever felt by a man of such clear in
telligence. His feeling for divine
things never lost its glow, never was
damped by misgiving, dimmed by
doubt, nor clouded by sorrow. The
intensity of his faith in Providence,
and of his assurance of personal im
mortality, seems almost fanatical to
modern men who sympathise in

278

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

general with his philosophy. Yet to
him it was native, instinctive (in the
sense of spontaneous and irresistible),
born of reverence, aspiration, trust,
affection, which were ineradicable
qualities of his being. So far from
dreading to submit his faith to tests,
he courted tests ; was as eager to
hear the arguments against his belief
as for it ; was as fair in weighing evi
dence on his oponents' side as on his
own. He knew the writings of
Moleschott, and talked with him
personally. The books of Carl Vogt
were not strange to him. The philo
sophy of Ludwig Buchner, if philo
sophy it can be called, was as familiar
to him as to any of Buchner's disci
ples. He was intimate with the
thoughts of Feurbach. He drew
into discussion every atheist and ma
terialist he met ; talked with them
closely, confidentially ; and rose from
the interview more confident in the
strength of his own positions than
ever. Darwin's first book ' On the
Origin of Species,' which was brought
to him in Rome, contained nothing
that disturbed him. He thought it
unsupported iu many of its facts, and
hasty in its generalisations ; but the
doctrine itself was not offensive to
him. Science he counted his best
friend ; relied on it for confirmation
of his faith, and was only impatient
because it moved no faster. All the
materialists in and out of Christen
dom had no power to shake his con
viction of the infinite God and the
immortal existence ; nor would have
had, had he lived till he was a cen
tury old : for, in his view, the con
victions were planted deep in human
nature, and were demanded by the
exigencies of human life. The service
they rendered to mankind would have
been their sufficient justification had
he found no other, and in this respect
they interested him chiefly.
" Parker may merit the name of a
founder — not of a sect, certainly ; he
never dreamed of that: nor of a

Church ; ' for he believed more in
ideas than in institutions : say, then,
that he merits the name of crystallieer,
for he supplied the statement about
which many floating thoughts gathered.
If he did not make a terminus, he laid
a new track along which many will
travel towards the one central ter
minus— the truth.
" The ethics of Theodore Parker
grew from the same root as his re
ligion, and were part of the same
system. These, too, rested on the
spiritual philosophy — the philosophy
of intuition. Conscience for him
was authority, divine, ultimate.
What that voice commanded — and
he did not go to Pennsylvania Avenue
or Wall Street to learn -what it com
manded — he obeyed, even if it com.
manded the cutting off of the right
hand, or the plucking out of the
right eye. 'He would not com
promise a principle, wrong a neigh
bour, injure a fellow-creature, take
what was not fairly his, tell a false
hood, betray a trust, break a pledge,
turn a deaf ear to the cry of human
misery, for all the world could give
him. No casuist he. The school
of fidelity was for him the school of
wisdom. "Was he a philosopher? If by
'philosopher' be meant a man of
pure reason, he was not one; for
with him reason, affection, and con
science went inseparably together;
but if by ' philosopher' be meant 'a
rational man,' he deserves to be
called one. He had the prime quality
of mental integrity ; he was a sincere
lover of the truth; was no diplo
matist of ideas — would neither de
ceive himself nor others, if it could be
avoided ; no politician of thoughts,
no juggler with speech. He desired
the ultimate fact. The charge of
intellectual pretence or affectation
cannot, without malignity, be brought
against him. He was a devoted
' lover of wisdom, ' and therefore, by
definition, a philosopher.

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 279

"His mental endowments were
extraordinary. What power of ac
quisition ! What power of retention !
He was a thorough workman ; he
left no stone unturned beneath which
might lie a fact. He had a better
eye for form than for colour ; a better
eye for moral expression than for
either. The thing of most moment
to say of Parker is that he was pre
eminently a man of uses. His gifts,
natural and acquired, he held in
trust for his fellow-men. The higher
the gifts, the deeper the responsi
bility. The gifts, as he could not
but be aware, were great : the sense
of duty was, therefore, incessant ; in
a less capable man it would have
been excessive. But bis keen en
joyment of life, and the ease with
which he performed his task, de
prived the burden of service of its
apparent weight ' Let him that is
greatest amongst you be your min-
eftter, and him that is chief amongst
you be the servant of all,' was per
petually in his heart, but not as it is
with the ascetic or the self-immo-
lator. His gifts were so rooted in
the common earth, had such a strong
savour of the ground, derived such
; fragrance and colour from the soul of
¦tiumanity, it seemed so little to grow
them, that their ceaseless consump
tion by pilgrims, wayfarers, and
cattle even, caused no thought of
waste, but rather suggested the in
exhaustible resources of the nature
from which they grow. Pure reli
gion, noble institutions, just laws,
humane customs, sweet morals, lovely
manners, all slept in the common
sods of humanity, and needed but
gracious air and sunshine to ripen
like flowers of paradise. To supply
the air and sunshine he felt to be a
privilege, not ~ toil ; and when the
labour became more severe — the
blasting of rocks, the felling of trees,
the breaking up of fallow ground,
Woe ploughing deep furrows across
stubborn fields — he was cheered in it

by the vision of the fertility that was
to follow.
" Faith in humanity— this was his
secret ; love for humanity — this was
his inspiration; sympathy with hu
manity — this was his consoler. This
faith was his key to literature, art,
philosophy, society. Had he lived
to be an old man, he would have
illustrated his principle more amply ;
he could not have more forcibly de
monstrated it
' ' He was a worker — he lived for
uses ; a reformer, who spent his life
in efforts to make society more
shapely. Everything he had was
turned instantly to service. No gift
was folded in a napkin ; no pot oi
gold was buried in the cellar ; no
fine accomplishment was hung up as
ornament, or kept on the centre table
for the entertainment of visitors.
He was no dilettante. His conscience,
if nothing else, would have made it
impossible for him to be a mere
scholar toying with books. The
great work which was the dream of
many years was conceived, not in the
interest of literature, but in the
interest of mankind.
' ' The highest genius is that which
creates uses, and of this he possessed
something. The world at large felt
that he did ; and the testimony of the
popular consciousness, though not
finely discriminating, is sound. That
he is destined to hold a nobler place
in the regards of mankind may be
anticipated. " The influence of his thought has
been very great, not more in the
realm of opinion than in the realm of
character ; and it is destined to be still
greater. A gentleman of intelligence,
who, in the days of the Unitarian
controversy, had left his church and
minister because he had* exchanged
with Theodore Parker, resumed his*
old connection some time during the
war. It occurred one day to his
minister to ask pleasantly the reason
of his return. He replied, ' I went

280

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

away because I could not bear the
smallest seeming of encouragement
to Theodore Parker ; but, when I saw
the influence of his mind on our
soldiers, I was forced to make a
different estimate of the man.'
"The youth of America needs the

influence of that mind to-day, and
will need it for many days to come.
He was a true American if ever there
was one ; the best working-plan of
an American yet produced." — Theo
dore Parker, a Biography, published
at Boston, U.S., 1874.

X.

TRIBUTE OF REV. H. W. BELLOWS, D.D.,
( The New York Preacher and Philanthropist).

' ' To a large minority of the younger
Unitarians of the present day, both
in England and America — not to
mention Holland, Norway, and Swe
den, where, we are assured, transla
tions of his works are widely read and
admired — Mr. Parker stands as the
American representativeandchampi'on
of the consistent Unitarian spirit in
theology, that bold and free spirit
which looks ever steadily, bravely,
and hopefully onward, and reports
faithfully whatever it sees, without
regard to past judgments or fear ot
future consequences. The perception
of his defects and idiosyncrasies had

not blinded impartial students of his
life and times to the wide and marked
influence of his laborious, heroic
career, or to the importance of the
part he was providentially called to
play in the development and stimu
lation of liberal religious thought iu
America. We have heard Mr. Parker
compared to the east wind, which is
not apt to be very gentle in its purify
ing progress, but can as little be
spared, in seasons of unwholesome
natural calm, as men like Parker in
times of theological and social torpor."
— The Liberal Christian.

XI. TRIBUTE OF PROF. GERVINUS,
(Of Heidelberg, the Eminent Writer on the Philosophy of History).

"Honoured Sir, — The lines from
your own hand are so precious to me
that I hasten thankfully to reply.
The announcement in your letter that
we already have the pleasure of
personally knowing you — in fact, with
out being aware of it — took me not
disagreeably by surprise. When we
saw you at our house in 1844, it was,
in fact, before we knew who Parker
was ; for it is only since the German
translation of your writings that we
have become acquainted with you —
American books are so seldom sent to
us. And, unfortunately, so many
people pass through this little gather
ing-point of the great routes that the
interesting visitors rejoice us less in
the mass of indifferent ones ; but that
you should have been lost to us in

this manner disturbs us greatly. It
must, however, humiliating as it is,
be confessed. My wife, who is an
enthusiastic admirer of yours, was in
a sort of despair. We rejoice every
day at the happy ideaof Herr Ziethen
to translate your works. I hope that,
gradually, this will have wide and
deep results. We possess your liberal
standpoint in theory, in learning, in
the schools ; we have it in the broad
circle of the world, among all people
of common sense ; but we repel it from
the place whence it ought to be taught
and planted, so that morality and re
ligion might not disappear with ob
scurantism. Everybody among us
knows how it stands with the religious
convictions of the majority, only the
pulpit does not dare to say it ; that

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 281

is the domain of official hypocrisy.
Consequently, the callingof the clergy
man has been altogether corrupted ;
let sermons sound ever so high, the
whole profession is one of the most
despised in Germany. I hope that
the impression of your discourses will
be favourable to a practical theology

among us. I can remark how much
they have improved the orthodox
themselves. I do what I can to cir
culate them, in order to make pro
paganda of the theologians." — From
d Letter to Parker, written December,
1856.

XII. TRIBUTE OF THE INQUIRER (UNITARIAN) NEWSPAPER.

"The fame of Theodore Parker
aud his noble work is growing more
brilliant with every receding year.
That Fugitive Slave Law itself was
the Act of a Northern statesman who
was at least intimately connected with
the Unitarian body, and was zealously
upheld by statesmen and politicians
and lawyers — especially of the Boston
school — who were avowed Unitarians.
That was a dark blot on the history
of American Unitarians ; and it would
be better to leave it in obscurity than
drag it again to the light of day. But
there was one great man —
" '^Faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshakened, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal ;
Nor numbers nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant
mind,
Though single.'
And of Parker, as of Abdiel, it
might also be said that —
"'he pass'd
Long way through hostile scorn,
A tut with retorted scorn his back he turn'd'
When this man set himself to his life-
work of withstanding and subverting
to the foundation this gigantic in

iquity ; when he not only thundered
in the pulpit' against the national sin,
but armed himself to resist the Fugi
tive Slave Law even unto the death ;
when all his acts and predictions are
more than justified by that great re
sult which was due chiefly to him and
to reformers like him ; when all brave
thinkers and true workers everywhere
— except in Boston — have learned to
love and revere his name, and are
erecting a monument to his memory in
their hearts, what can we think of the
petty backbiting criticism, both here
and in America, which makes it a
serious charge against him — a strong
ground for refusing to republish his
greatest book — that he once said, half
in jest, half in earnest, of some Uni
tarian ministers, ' stuff them with
good dinners, and freedom, theology,
religion, may go to the devil for all
them ' ? The real thing to be con
sidered is, was it not truest some at
least ; and might not far worse things
have been said of the Divines who
practically exalted the laws of the
Devil above the laws of freedom,
conscience, and God?"— Article on
Theodore Parker and the Boston Uni
tarians, August, 1876.

XIII. VARIOUS TRIBUTES.
(Expressed at the Meetine in London of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association,
March 7, 1876, at which the action of the Association in issuing Parkers works was
affirmed by one hundred votes to fifteen.)

The Rev. Charles Clarke,
F.L.S., Minister of the Old Meeting
House, Birmingham : — He was sur
prised to hear Sir James Lawrence

say that Parker did not claim to be a
Christian. It should not be forgotten
that there were various sorts of Chris
tianity. Parker had no doubt rejected

282

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

many of them ; he was not a Trini
tarian Christian ; he was not a Chris
tian after the manner of Dr. Priestley
or of Mr. Lindsey as to many of his
theoretical conclusions ; but as to his
Christlike spirit, he was of the same
broad and the same noble type as
those illustrious confessors ; the ho
mage which he has paid to Christianity
arid its Founder was a homage far
higher than could be rendered by the
general run of human beings. His
nature was exceedingly intense ; his
genius entirely religious ; his devotion
to mankind and their interests abso
lutely disinterested ; and the discri
minating homage which such a man
would pay to Christianity and its
Founder ought to be spoken of in the
highest terms, instead of being alluded
to as a thing to be discredited and
disparaged-:— (loud cheers). Looking
over the list of names of those who
had called the present meeting, he
saw the names of some gentlemen
who no doubt had to do with large
centres of population ; but that class
of persons was hardly represented so
strongly on the list as it was in the
council, some of whose members had
spent their whole lives in connec
tion with the industrial centres of
the country, and who well knew the
feelings and wishes of the people,
and had known thousands of in
stances in which the book in question
had proved a great blessing to work
ing men — (hear). Many of them
would admit that, after all, the Uni
tarianism of Parker's book was the
Unitarianism which was in their own
minds and sermons, and in the very
atmosphere. His views were not
strange ones, many of them being
derived from Channing himself. There
was nothing in his works, except in
connection with the subject of mira
cles, which might not be logically
traced to Channing, whom they all
appreciated and admired so much.
And not only were those principles
contained in Channing's works, but

in the books of English authors ; as,
for instance, the work recently pub
lished by Dr. Vance Smith : the
minds were of different classes, but
the principles were in reality similar.
It had pained him more than he could
express to hear Theodore Parker
spoken of as a blasphemer. He con
sidered that no man had more faith-
fully served God, and more earnestly
and devotedly followed Christ than
he — (hear). His desire in connection
with that book would be, not to
make it serve a literary interest,
but to issue a book which would do
vast good to the people of the country.
Parker was no longer among us —
if he were now among us, knowing
as they did his character for noble
disinterestedness, they would all give
him a most cordial welcome — (loud
cheers) — and they would deem it a
privilege to help him to the means
of going through the land to appeal
to the minds and hearts of their
fellow countrymen.
Harry Rawson, Esq., Publisher,
Manchester. — He wished to say a
few words to justify his opinion that
Parker's works should be included
in the operations of the Association.
He believed that those writings had
saved many thousands of persons in
this country, and perhaps in others,
from the blankness of Atheism, and
he knew as a fact that the book [ The
Discourse of Religion] especially ob
jected to had enabled many once
doubting souls to remain within the
lines of Christian communion. There
were useful and acceptable ministers
labouring at the present time who
ascribed it to Parker that they had
been enabled to retain their positions.
One of them writing to him (Mr.
Rawson) said, "I owe it entirely to
Theodore Parker's definition of reli
gion that for the last seventeen years
I have been a Christian minister,"
and he knew of others who had
borne similar grateful testimony.
He might also be permitted to make

TRIBUTES TO PARKER'S WORK AND WORTH. 283

a personal allusion, which he would
not make in the present instance but
that he believed it was typical of
others. There was a time in his own
mental history when it had become
with him a grave and serious question
whether he could hold connection
with any of the existing Christian
organisations. He acknowledged
with deep gratitude that it was to
Theodore Parker that he was in
debted for being able to see his way
more clearly in the matter, and to do
a little for the good cause — (cheers).
But he appealed with still more con
fidence to other considerations. He
asked anyone who had read Theo
dore Parker's works and studied his
life to say whether or not the follow
ing estimate of his views was truthful :
the unity of God, His fatherhood,
His immanence in the universe he
had made ; that Christ was the'
highest representation of God that
we know ; that this world is disci
plinary ; that immortality awaits us.
If that was not a form of Unitarian
Christianity, he for one had strangely
misunderstood it. But let them tum
to the heroic life of that great Ame
rican. If to .instruct the ignorant,
to protect the ragged child, to be
friend the friendless youth cast into
. the vortex of a city's temptation, to
pour the oil of sympathy into the
bleeding heart of the outcast woman
and open to her the door of reclama
tion to virtue ; if to purge from cor
ruption the well-springs of a nation's
morality ; if to strike off the manacles
from the slave at the imminent peril
of his own life, and bid the oppressed
go free ; if these were not the works,
if this was not the life of a Christian,
he had utterly misread the New
Testament. In a Church to which
such a spirit belonged he should
deem it an honour and a privilege to
hold the lowest place. A Society
which, were it possible, would re
pudiate such a man, would present
no attractions to him, and it would

be with the greatest difficulty that he
could take any part or lot in it what
ever. It was, therefore, surprising.
to him that Parker was regarded
with such active hostility by many
of his excellent friends.
The Rev. R. A. Armstrong,
B. A., Minister of High Pave
ment Church, Nottingham. — Chris
tianity was that profound conscious
ness of the abiding and immanent
presence of God in nature, of the
openness of the Father to the com
munion of man, which gave to Jesus
all his power, and which to this day
was the greatest power that could
move men's minds. That spirit dwelt
in the heart of Parker to a degree in
which it dwelt in the hearts of few
men, and he enforced it with a power
and eloquence to which few men
could pretend. Under these circum
stances, were not those members of
the Council who had asserted the
principle that Parker's Discourse
should be published bound to carry
it to the issue ? Not to do so was to
put a slight upon the book and upon
its author. If the real objection was
that there was a cheap edition yet
unsold, let those who so argued take
it and advertise it loyally and truly.
It mattered little through what print
ing press it was issued ; the forces of
the Association should be put behind
the book, in order to spread it
amongst that enormous class of Eng
lishmen who were seeking for some
source of religious inspiration ; for to
them he verily believed it would be a
real salvation — (cheers). Those who
wished for the spread of Theodore
Parker's works were making no selfish
demand for themselves, but were urging
the publication for the good of others ;
and believing that there were hun
dreds and thousands in this land
hungering and thirsting for such a
gospel as Theodore Parker could
give them, how could they refuse to
lift up the arm of the Association to
help them ?

284

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

The Rev. J. W. Lake, Minister
of Higk Street Chapel, Warwick. —
He had been a Unitarian Minister
for sixteen or seventeen years, and
the only inspiration which he had to
enter the ministry was that which he
derived from Parker's " Discourse of
Religion." Until he read that book
he felt that he could not possibly
retain connection with a Christian
community. Since then, his deepest
and devoutest inspirations had been
gathered from the same volume, and
therefore he could not consent to any
withdrawal of it from the largest pos
sible circulation that could be given
to it.
James Hopgood, Esq., Ex-Pre
sident of the British and Foreign
Unitarian Association. — He was al
most in entire unison with every
speaker but one or two, so far as
his opinion of the doctrines con
tained in the " Discourse of Re
ligion" was concerned. He re
garded it as one of the grandest
books that was ever written —
(cheers). Dr. James Martineau, Prin
cipal of Manchester New College.—
He was in the habit of distributing
Theodore Parker's noble work [The
Discourse of Religion] wherever he
could, with a prayer that its pene
trating power might reach the hearts
of others as it had his own. The
time had not yet, come when Theo
dore Parker's book could be brought

forward with advantage to them
selves ; but it was very possible that
in the course of a few years that
which Mr. Shaen now said was no
Christianity and no Unitarianism
[Parker's Doctrines] might become
the dominant Christianity and the
dominant Unitarianism. He would
yield to no one in his admiration for
Parker's book.
The Rev. H. W. Crosskey,
F.G.S., Minister of the Church of
the Messiah, Birmingham. — By suc
cessive votes, the publication of Par
ker's Discourse had been determined
on, and then the point arose whether
Parker was a Unitarian and a Chris
tian ; and unless a settlement was
taken on that they must be regarded
as deciding against it. He believed
that the Free Churches of England
were ripe for this a thousand times
bver — (cheers). In a week or two
he would have to speak -at Cam
bridge, but he could not venture to
face a Cambridge audience if the
undergraduates had it in their power
to say that the Association had
tabooed the works of a great author
because they objected to some of his
expressions — (cheers). From their
work among the people of this coun
try, those who supported the Council
knew that there was a spiritual power
in Theodore Parker's works, and
they were labouring in the spirit
which led Luther to say, " God help
me, Amen, I can no other."

NOTE ON THE ANCESTRY OF THEODORE PARKER.
Mr. W. A. Abram, F.R.H.S., of Blackburn, author of The History
of the Hundred of Blackburn, has kindly communicated to us the fol
lowing note on the English families of Parker, from one of which the
Parkers of New England descended : —
Since my attention was directed by
my friend Mr. Dean to the subject of

the English ancestry of Theodore
Parker, I have searched accessible
depositories of genealogical informa

tion for evidence of the connection
with one of two or three old families
of Parker, seated at places on the
Lancashire - Yorkshire border, of
Theodore Parker's first American

NOTE ON PARKER'S ENGLISH ANCESTRY.

285

progenitor, Thomas Parker. I have
not yet discovered any positive evi
dence in this matter ; and it could
&rhly be by a considerable expendi
ture of time and labour in the search
olf Parish Registers and other ancient
records that such a question could be
cleared up, if at all. One must,
tljierefore, be content for the nonce
Sfrith reasonable conjecture. Ameri
can biographers of Theodore Parker
i peak of a tradition in his family of
1 lescent from an English stock of
Parkers who possessed estate in East
Lancashire or West Yorkshire.
Thomas Parker, who migrated to
New England in 1635, made the
voyage in a ship equipped by Sir
Richard Saltonstall, Knt. This Sir
Richard Saltonstall was then living
in London, it is stated ; but he was
I the eldest son of Samuel Saltonstall,
of Roots, in Hipperholme, parish of
Halifax, in West Yorkshire, and
grandson of Gilbert Saltonstall, of
Halifax. He was also nephew of
the Sir Richard Saltonstall who was
Lord Mayor of London in 1597. A
slight clue as to the point of our
inquiry seems to be furnished in the
fact that a grand-daughter of Sir
Richard Saltonstall, Lord Mayor of
London, married, in 1629, Edward
Parker, Esq., of Browsholme, in the
Forest of Bowland, Co. York. This
Edward Parker had no brother
Thomas entered in the family pedi
gree ; but younger sons too often
drop out of sight in the early genera
tions of families of landed gentry, as
presented in genealogies drawn out
chiefly with the object of glorifying
the representatives-in-chief. Edward
Parker, Esq., had a brother William,
born in March, 1608, and a brother
Nicholas, born in September, 1610.
There is just room for an intermediate
son, born in 1609, which was the year
of birth of Thomas Parker, ancestor
of Theodore, who was 74 years old
at the date of his death, in 1683, at
Reading, U.S. There are, however,

other families of the name in the same
district as likely, perhaps, to have
furnished a junior member to the
great migration of Puritans from Old
England to New England in the year
1635. Parkers of Browsholme were
Royalist partisans in the Civil War
of 1 642- 1 65 1. But the branch of
Parkers seated on an estate at Ex-
twistle, near Burnley, in Lancashire,
at the same period, were strong Puri
tans ; and John Parker, gent, of
Extwistle Hall, attended a rendez
vous of Parliamentarians at Padiham,
summoned by Cols. Shuttleworth and
Starkie, in October, 1642, at the
outbreak of hostilities in the Civil
War. Thesame " JohnParker.Esq.,"
was a lay member of the third classis
of the Lancashire Presbytery, set up
in 1646. It is, therefore, quite likely
that he may have had a son among
the Puritans who betook themselves
to New England a few years earlier
than these dates, out of the way of
the oppression of Laud. Turning to
the pedigree of Parker of Extwistle,
I again find no Thomas Parker in
this generation. But the record is
obviously scanty here. Only two of
John Parker's children are named —
Robert, the eldest, bom in 1604, and
Nicholas, born in 1606. I have no
doubt he had other issue ; and per
haps a third son, Thomas, bom in
1609, might be the founder of the
New England branch. John Parker's
wife was a Yorkshire lady, Elizabeth,
daughter of Cuthbert Holdsworth, of
Sowerby, a near neighbour of the
Saltonstalls of Hipperholme; and
when Sir Richard Saltonstall char
tered his ship for New England, we
can suppose that a portion, at least,
of the batch of intending colonists
would be mustered out of the families
of friends of the Saltonstalls in the
district about Halifax and westward
on the borders of Yorkshire and Lan
cashire. I have tried to get some
token of the relation of the New
England Parkers to some respect-

286

LIFE OF THEODORE PARKER.

able stock in the Old Country in the
armorial bearings borne by. the
family of Theodore Parker. Weiss,
in his "Life of Theodore Parker,"
alludes to " a coat of arms, profusely
blazoning leopards' heads, stars, and
a stag pierced by an arrow for a
crest, that has the motto semper antle,
which many of the descendants did
their best to vindicate." This de
scription is not heraldic in its terms,
nor very precise ; but the arms noted
by Weiss seem more to resemble
those bome by Parkers of Extwistle
and Cuerden, Co. Lancaster, than
those of Parkers of Browsholme, Co.
York. The arms of Parker of Ex
twistle are : — " Gules, a chevron be
tween three leopards' heads, or, in the
mouth of each an arrow, fessways,
argent ; " and the crest is a buck,
trippant, transpierced with an arrow.
Here we have the " leopards' heads,"
and the " stag pierced by an arrow, "of
the coat seen by Weiss, which I as
sume him to imply was borne by the
New England Parkers. The " stars "
referred to may have been heraldic
"mullets," added for difference. The
arms of the Browsholme Parkers are
essentially different : — " Vert, a chev
ron between three stags' heads cabossed,
or; " crest, a stag trippant. I may
add that both these ancient English
families of Parker still flourish, and
are among the most considerable
gentry whose estates border upon
Ribblesdale. Browsholme Hall is a
fine old mansion, situate on the hill
slope overlooking the Hodder, about
four miles west of Clitheroe. The
hall was built in 1603. Extwistle
Hall, situate among the moors, some
two miles east of Bumley, is now de
serted and in ruins ; but the estate
still belongs to the family, repre
sented by Robert Towneley Parker,
Esq., whose residential seat is Cuer
den Hall, in the parish of Leyland,

near Preston. With respect to the
origin of the surname of Parker, I it
is manifestly derived from the office of
park-keeper, park-ranger, or, in bri^f,
parker, fulfilled by some early merin-
ber of families bearing the name.
There was a park in the King;'s
Manor of Ightenhill, near Burnley ;
and the first personage among tnie
traced ancestors of the Parkers ift
Extwistle was "Johannes Parcariili?!
de Ightenhill " (John the Parker < pf ¦
Ightenhill Park), who gave in his at -
counts May_i6, 1306 ; and was fo] r)
lowed by his son, Adam le Parke r
of Bumley, and his grandson Williaii l*
le Parker, living in 1390. Then i.
were numerous descendants of thi !
ancient Parkers of Ightenhill, bej ¦ *
sides the Parkers of Extwistle, living jj
in the neighbourhood of Burnle)
three centuries ago. From any oi '_
these our Thomas Parker, the emi
grant, may have sprung, if he wasl
not, as I have supposed, a younger
son of John Parker, of Extwistle!
Hall. Some of these Lancashire
Parkers were of the rank of yeo
men, copyholding tenant farmers,
and traders. In Ightenhill Park
itself I find from an old manuscript
a " Lawrence Parkere " living as a
tenant in the year 1569 (fifty years
before the date of the birth of
Thomas Parker). The children of
this Lawrence Parker were, a son,
Robert Parker, daughters, Margaret,
Ellen, Janet, Anne, and Jane. Other
local Parkers of that time were those
of Loveley Hall, in Blackburn Pa
rish ; of Bradkirk,in Kirkham Parish,
Co. Lancaster, &c.
Should my friend Mr. Dean pub
lish later editions of his biography of
Theodore Parker, I may hereafter be
enabled to cast a little more light
upon the still doubtful matter of the
English ancestry of this distinguished
thinker.

J, OGDEN AND CO., PRINTEKS, ZJH, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C

Already Published.
In crown 8vo cloth, price is. 6d.; or fine toned paper, bevelled boards,
with Photo of Parker's Bust, price 2s. 6d. post free.
A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion.
By THEODORE PARKER.
May be had of J. Ogden & Co., 172, St. John Street, London, E.C.

Contents ;
B°-°kw .Pf Religion in General ; or, a Discourse of the Religious Element and
its Manifestations.
Book II. The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to God ; or, a Discourse of
Inspiration.
Book III. The Relation of the Religious Element to Jesus of Nazareth : or, *
Discourse of Christianity.
Book IV. The Relation of the Religious Element to the Greatest of Books ; or, a
Discourse of the Bible.
Book V. The Relation of the Religious Element to the Greatest of Human
Institutions ; or, a Discourse of the Church.

"Parker writes like a Hebrew prophet,
enriched by the ripest culture of the modern
world  He understands by sympathy
more than by criticism ; and convinces by
force of exposition, not by closeness of argu
ment. _ His loftiest theories come thundering
down into life with a rapidity and directness
of aim which, while they alarm the timid
and amaze the insincere, afford proof that
he is less eager to be a reformer of men's
thinking than a thinker for their reforma
tion. Listening to the American reformer,
you stand before a man of high and devout
genius, who disposes of the wealth of erudi
tion in the service of religion. Whatever
judgment the reader may pronounce on the
philosophy of the volume, he will close it,
we venture to affirm, with the consciousness
thai he leaves the presence of a truly great
mind j of one who is not only unoppressed
by his large store of learning, but seems
absolutely to require a massive weight of
knowledge to resist and regulate the native
force of his thought, and occupy the grasp
of his imagination."— Westminster Review t
1847. There is a mastery shown over every
element of the Great Subject, and the slight
treatment of it in parts no reader can help
attributing to the plan of the work, rather
than to the incapacity of the author. From
the resources of a mind singularly exuberant
by nature aod laboriously enriched by cul
ture, a system of results is here thrown up,
and spread out in luminous exposition." —
Prospective Review.
"Mr. Parker is no ephemeral teacher.

¦ . . . His aspirations for the future are not
less glowing than his estimate of the past.
He revels in warm anticipations of the orient
splendours of which all past systems are
but the precursors  His language is
neither narrow or unattractive ; there is a
consistency and boldness about it which will
strike upon chords which, when they do
vibrate, will make the ears more than tingle.
We are living in an age which deals in broad
and exhaustive theories, which requires a
system that will account for everything, and
assigns to every fact a place, and that no
forced one, in the vast economy of things.
Whatever defects Mr. Parker's view may
have.it meets these requisites. It is large
enough, and promising enough ; it is not
afraid of history. It puts forth claims ; it
is an articulately speaking voice. It deals
neither in compromise nor abatement. It
demands a hearing ; it speaks with authority.
It has a complete and determined ^spect.
It is deficient neither in .candour noij-pro-
mises ; and whatever comes forward in t^iis
way will certainly find hearers." — Christian
Remembrancer (Ch. of England). |
" It is impossible for anyone to read the
writings of Theodore Parker without being
strongly impressed by them. They abound
in passages of fervid eloquence — eloquence
as remarkable for the truth of feeling which
directs it as for the genius by which it is
inspired. They are distinguished by philo
sophical thought and learned investigation,
no less than by the sensibility to beauty and
goodness which they manifest. —Christian
Reformer,

THEODORE PARKER'S DISCOURSE OF RELIGION.

[In 1875-6, a gentleman of the Midland Counties gave a goodly sum of
money to the Midland Christian Union for the purpose of presenting Parker's
Discourse, and other liberal religious books, to such "orthodox " ministers and
students as might, in response to advertisements conveying the offer, apply for
them. Considerably over 1000 copies of the before-mentioned edition of
Parker's Discourse were thus sought and sent, and it is from the letters of
application and acknowledgment received by the Rev. D. Maginnis, of Stour
bridge (who had the management of the distribution), that we cull the following
extracts.]

From Ministers of the Church of
England :
" I have received the great intellectual
production of Theodore Parker."
*' T find from converse with other ministers
of religion that these liberal views are
making an amazing stir."
" I do not agree with the views of Theo
dore Parker *, but the circulation of* his
works will lead men to think, and will do
good in more ways than one."
"Though not actually in the Midland
Counties, I hope you will be so good as to
look over this, as I am very desirous of
possessing Theodore Parker's book."
From Congregational Min isters :
*' I have read this book, with very con-
siHerable interest."
" Please accept my cordial thanks for a
volume so valuable to all' earnest truth-
seekers." "Many years ago I read Parker, and
was much captivated by the brilliancy and
-vivacity of his style, and by his great origi
nality. I anticipate great delight and profit
in reading him again. '
From Ministers of other Orthodox
) Churches :
" I have read and re-read Parker with
pleasure and profit."
" I found these'volumes a most valuable
acquisition  full of thought-breed
ing matter and soul- in spiring truths."
"Theodore Parker is a favourite author
with me."
" I have long had a strong desire to
possess the works of the Rev. Theodore
Parker." *' I'am especially pleased with the sub
lime simplicity of Theodore Parker's
Prayers."
, " It is really a treat to read a book which
is the production of a devout, vigorous, and
independent mind — able to think, and" not
afraid to express its thinkings."

" I prize Parker's ' Discourse of Religion '
very highly."
" I have read Parker's ' Discourse ' with
considerable interest and profit."
"The Midland Christian Union is con-1
ferring a great favour upon ministers by the
distribution of such really valuable works."
" I have a strong desire to peruse the
Works of Theodore Parker," &c.
From Lay Preachers, Lay Students,
&c. :
" Parker's ' Discourse ' appeals strongly
to those who, like myself, when once they
begin to look beneath the surface, are apt to
suffer from the disease of over criticism. . .
There are very many in the University
(Cambridge) who would gladly welcome
and support the establishment of a 'creed-
less church: ' the number is daily in
creasing." " Wishing you every success in your noble
effort, and hoping that it will be the means
of bringing many to think out the truth for
themselves, instead of resting in the super
stitions of bygone ages and leaving others
to do all their thinking for them, as is too
often the case, in that which concerns their
highest welfare," &c.
"Many thanks for the books. I re
mained in the Communion of the Roman
Catholic Church until eighteen months ago,
when providentially Dr. Channing's Works
were placed in my hands. I am now very
anxious to study such books as teach the
Unity of God and a rational Christianity."
" I will pass them {Parker, &c.) on, thus
helping to circulate ideas which may ulti
mately bring forth fruit in the shape of more
advanced and liberal ideas in the churches
of the present day."
"I have read Mr. Parker's * Discourse of
Religion,* which is a very interesting and
instructive work."
*' Such books are useful in correcting the
theories and dogmas of a dark past. They
are needed to prepare the way for the
Church of the Future. "

Persons desirous of aiding the circulation of this edition of Parker's " Life "
'tvill be supplied with a dozen copies, or more, on reduced terms by J Ogden
& Co., 172, St. John Street, London , E.C.

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