fi%m 
 
 f 
 
 (ljurnell lJ«inersttv| ffiibrarg 
 
 3tl)aca. •Nem ^ork 
 
 WORDSWORTH COLLECTION 
 
 MADE BY 
 
 CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN 
 ITHACA. N. Y. 
 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL 
 
 CLASS OF 1919 
 1925 
 
Gi ."p.-p, 
 
I Cornell University 
 P Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924104091560 
 
THEODORE PAllKER'S 
 
 EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER, 
 
 SOME ACCOUNT OF HIS EARLY LIFE, 
 
 EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY 
 
 CONTAIXliD IX A LKTTKR FROM HIM TO THE MUMUKKS OF Till'; 
 TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREOATIONAr. SOCTETV OP HOSTON. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 Pt U F U S L E I (I II T O N, J R 
 
 18 5 9. 
 
BX 
 
 3 
 
 vV^^f^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1859, 
 
 r. Y R U F U S L E I G n T O X , Jr.., 
 
 In the Clerk's otiice of tlie District Court of tlie District of Massachusetts. 
 
 ELECTROTYPED BY COWLES AND COMPANY, 
 17 WASHINGTON ST , BOSTON. 
 
 Geo. C, IlANU & Aveky. TuixTKits, 3 Coknuill, I!osto.\. 
 
P 11 E F A C E . 
 
 T^E Letter from Mr. Parker to his Congregation, which 
 occupies the greater part of this volume, has been received 
 within a few days. It sufficiently explains itself, and needs no 
 introduction. For the information, however, of those who may 
 not be familiar with the circumstances which gave rise to the 
 other letters which are here printed, it may be well to make the 
 following statements : 
 
 Mr. Parker's health, which had been gradually failing for a 
 year or two previous, during the year 1858 became so much 
 impaired as to excite the serious apprehensions of his friends. 
 He continued, however, though suffering much from illness, to 
 preach regularly at the Music Hall, — with two intermissions, of 
 several weeks each, when positively unable to officiate, — up to 
 the 2d of January last, when he delivered a discourse entitled 
 " What Religion may do for a Man : a Sermon for the New 
 Year," which has since been given to the public. 
 
 On the following Sunday the Congregation assembled as usual, 
 expecting to listen to their Minister. He did not appear, but 
 sent the following note, which was read to the audience : — 
 
 Sunday Morning, January 9, 1859. 
 
 To THE CoNGKEGATION AT THE MuSIC HaLL : 
 
 Wet^i.-beloved and Long-tkied Fhiends : 
 
 I shall not speak to j'ou to-da}' ; for this morning, a little after 
 four o'clor'k. I had a ,sh'";bt attack of bleeding in the hmfrs or throat. 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 I intended to preach on " The Keligion of Jesus and the Christian- 
 ity 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. 
 
 FaithfuUy your friend, 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 The sensation of grief excited by the reading of this note 
 was general and profound. Very many eyes were dimmed with 
 tears, for although the withdrawal of Mr. Parker from his public 
 ministrations had not been altogether unanticipated by those who 
 had been aware of his feeble state of health for some time pre- 
 vious, yet it had been hoped that no trouble so serious as that 
 announced in the note would arise. 
 
 After the reading of the note, a meeting of the parish was 
 held, at which, after remarks by several gentlemen, it was voted 
 to continue the salary of Mr. Parker for one year, at least, with 
 the understanding that he would take a respite from all public 
 duties for that period, or longer. A vote expressive of the deep 
 and heart-felt sympathy of the Society with their Minister was 
 also unanimously passed. 
 
 ]Mr. Parker was advised by his physicians to leave as soon as 
 possible for the West Indies ; and accordingly, after arranging 
 his affairs as if he were not to return again, he left Boston for 
 Santa Cruz on the 3d of February. Previous to his departure 
 he wrote a brief Farewell Letter to his Congregation, on the 27th 
 of January, which was published at the end of the New Year's 
 Sermon, and is now reprinted here. 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 Meanwhile, the Letter from the Congregation to the'.r Minister, 
 bearing the date of January 11th, was prepared, and read at a 
 meeting of the Standing Committee of the Society and many 
 others of Mr. Parker's friends, held on that day, and at that 
 time and within a few days subsequent, was signed by about 
 three hundred members of the Society. This number of signa- 
 tures might easily have been increased tenfold had it been 
 generally known that such a letter had been written ; but owing 
 to the critical condition of Mr. Parker's health, it was deemed 
 advisable to use special precaution to keep it from his know- 
 ledge, and therefore no public notice of the letter was given, 
 and the signatures attached to it were privately obtained from 
 such persons as were most easily accessible. For the same 
 reason it was not considered prudent to apprise Mr. Parker of 
 the letter previous to his leaving Boston, and it was not until 
 the 6th of March that he received it, at Santa Cruz 
 
 The whole correspondence is now published for the Members 
 of the Society, and all others whom it may interest. 
 
 Boston, Juno 10th, 1859. 
 1* 
 
FAREWELL LETTER, 
 
 To THE Members op the Twenty-eighth Congrega- 
 tional Society in Boston. 
 
 Much valued Friends : — 
 
 When I first found myself unable to speak to you 
 again, and medical men bade me be silent, and flee 
 off for my life to a more genial clime, I determined, 
 before I went, to make ready and publish my New 
 Year's Sermon, the last I ever preached ; and the 
 one which was to follow it, the last I ever wrote, 
 lying there yet unspoken ; and also to prepare a 
 letter to you, reviewing our past intercourse of now 
 nearly fifteen years. 
 
 The phonographer's swift pen made the first work 
 easy, and the last sermon lies printed before you ; 
 the next I soon laid aside, reserving my forces for 
 the last. But alas ! the Thought, and still more the 
 Emotion, requisite for such a Letter, under such cir- 
 cumstances, are quite too much for me now. So, 
 
8 FAREWELL LETTER OF MR. PARKER. 
 
 with much regret, I find myself compelled by ne- 
 cessity to forego the attempt : nay, rather, I trust, 
 only to 2^ostpo7ie it for a few weeks. 
 
 Now, I can but write this note in parting, to thank 
 you for the patience Avith which you have heard me 
 so long- ; for the open-handed generosity w^hich has 
 provided for my unexpected needs ; for the con- 
 tinued affection which so many of you have always 
 shown me, and now more tenderly than ever ; and 
 yet, above all, for the joy it has given me to see 
 the great Ideas and Emotions of True Religion spring 
 up in your fields with such signs of promise. If my 
 labors were to end to-day, I should still say, " Lord, 
 now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," for 
 I think few men have seen larger results follow such 
 labors, and so brief. But I shall not think our con- 
 nection is ended, or likely soon to be : I hope yet 
 to look in your eyes again, and speak to your 
 hearts. So far as my recovery depends on me, be 
 assured, dear friends, I shall leave nothing undone 
 to effect it ; and, so far as it is beyond human con- 
 trol, certainly you and I can trust the Infinite Parent 
 of us all, without whose beneficent Providence not 
 even a sparrow falls to the ground ; living here or 
 in Heaven, we are all equally the children of that 
 unbounded Love. 
 
 It has given me great pain that I could not be 
 with such of you as have latelv suffered bereave- 
 
FAREWELL LETTER OF MR. PARKER. 9 
 
 mcnts and other affliction, and at least speak words 
 of endearment and sympathy when words of conso- 
 lation would not suffice. 
 
 I know not how long we shall be separated, but, 
 while thankful for our past relations, I shall still 
 fervently pray for your Welfare and Progress in True 
 Keligion, both as a Society, and as individual men 
 and women. I know you will still think only too 
 kindly of 
 
 Your Minister and Friend, 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 Exeter Place, 27th January, 1859. 
 
LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 
 
 The Members op the Twenty-eighth Congrega- 
 tional Society of Boston to their Beloved 
 Minister : 
 
 Dear Sir: — 
 
 It is now many years since you came, at the re- 
 quest of some of us, to preach in this city. A few 
 men and women, acting under the impulse of a deep 
 religious need, which the churches of Boston at that 
 time failed to satisfy, sought to establish a pulpit 
 which should teach a higher idea of religion than 
 yet prevailed, and wherein the largest freedom of 
 thought and speech should be allowed and respected. 
 They asked you to come and stand in such a pulpit, 
 thinking that you would meet their demand, and re- 
 solving that you should " have a chance to be heard 
 in Boston'" — a chance which other men were not 
 Avilling to allow. At their earnest solicitation yo\i 
 
12 LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 
 
 came, and the result has shown that they were not 
 mistaken in their choice. 
 
 On the formal organization of this Society, Avhen 
 you were installed as its Minister, on the 4th of 
 January, 1846, you preached a sermon of " The True 
 Idea of a Christian Church." How well and faith- 
 fully you have labored from that time till now to 
 make that idea a fact, and to build up such a church, 
 we all know. 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 our part, — avoiding no 
 responsibility, neglecting no trust, leaving no dut}^ 
 undone, but working with an ability, energy, per- 
 severance, 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 responsibilities and duties in 
 all the various relations of life. 
 
 Nor have your labors and your example been in 
 vain. You have taught us to discern between the tra- 
 ditions of men and the living realities of religion ; you 
 have brought home to our consciousness great truths, 
 of the intellect, the conscience, the heart and the 
 soul; you have shown us the Infinite Perfection of 
 
LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 13 
 
 Grod, and the greatness of Human Nature, inspired us 
 Avith a liigher 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 wickedness and oppression, 
 to welcome every virtue and humanity, to engage 
 in all good works and noble reforms. From the ex- 
 perience of mankind, of nations, and of individiials, 
 you have drawn great lessons of truth and wisdom 
 for our warning or guidance. Above all, your own 
 noble and manly and Christian 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 indi- 
 viduality 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 con- 
 science, 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 
 2 
 
14 LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 
 
 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 surrounded 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 emotions, 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 faith- 
 fulness with which you have labored 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 influence of your teachings — a hope 
 which we humbly trust has to some extent, at least, 
 been realized. 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. 
 
 The world has called us hard names, but it is on 
 you that have fallen the hatred, the intolerance, the 
 insults and the calumnies of men calling themselves 
 Christian. Alas ! that they should be so wanting 
 in the first principles of that religion which Christ 
 taught and lived, and which they pretend to honor 
 
LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 15 
 
 and uphold. Of those who have opposed us, many 
 have done so through ignorance, misled by the false 
 representations of others ; some from conscientious 
 motives ; others from selfishness in many forms. 
 Time has already done much to correct this evil 
 with many ; it will do more to correct it with others. 
 While the little we may have sacrificed on our part 
 has been as nothing in comparison with all we have 
 gained, from our connection with you, as members 
 of this society, on yours the sacrifice has been 
 great indeed — not, however, without its recompense 
 to you also, we hope and trust. 
 
 For all that you have been to us, for all that you 
 have done, and borne, and forborne, in our behalf, 
 we thank you kindly, cordially, and affectionately. 
 We feel that we owe you such gratitude as no 
 words of ours can express. If we have not shoAvn 
 it in the past by conforming our lives to that high 
 standard of morality and piety which you have ex- 
 emplified in your own, let us at least try to do so in 
 the future. 
 
 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 continually 
 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 
 
16 LKTTEK TO MR. PxVliKEll. 
 
 " city of refuge ; " their sympathies, their convictions, 
 and their hopes coincide with our OAvn ; they are of 
 us, though not with us. Most of them have never 
 hstened to your voice, nor looked upon your face, 
 but the noble Avords Avhich 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 labors 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 apprehension. We thank 
 God that he furnished you with a vigorous constitu- 
 tion, which has stood the test of so many years 
 of incessant and unwearied toil, in so many de- 
 partments 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 warnings 
 which you have received within the past year or 
 two Avould seem to indicate that Nature Avill not 
 suffer even the best of her children to trans- 
 gress the great laws which she has established for 
 their observance, Avithout inflicting the penalty of 
 disobedience, even though they are engaged in the 
 highest and holiest service Avhich man can render 
 unto man. We would not presume to instruct you 
 
LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 17 
 
 in this matter ; we only repeat what you have your- 
 self often taught us. 
 
 A warning now comes of so imperative a nature 
 that it cannot be disregarded. 
 
 We need not assure you that the note from you 
 which was read at the Music Hall on Sunday morning 
 last, was listened to by us with the most sincere and 
 heartfelt sorrow — sorroAv, however, not unmingled 
 with hope. While we feel the deepest and warmest 
 sympathy for you under the new and serious de- 
 velopment of the disease from which you are suf- 
 fering, Ave yet trust that it is not too late to arrest 
 its progress, and that, in some more genial clime 
 than ours, relieved from the cares and responsi- 
 bilities which have borne heavily upon you for so 
 many years, you may regain that soundness of 
 health which shall enable you to resume, at some 
 future day, the great work to which you have de- 
 voted your life. 
 
 We know Avith hoAV much reluctance it is that 
 you feel compelled to suspend your labors among 
 us at this time ; but there is the less cause for re- 
 gret on your part, inasmuch as you have, by the 
 services you have already rendered to mankind, far 
 more than earned the right to do so, even if the 
 necessity did not exist. 
 
 Whether it is for a longer or a shorter period that 
 you Avill be sepai'ated from us, of course none of us 
 
 9* 
 
18 LETTER TO MR. PARKER. 
 
 can tell. In any event, God's will be done ! and at 
 all times, wherever you may he, you will have our 
 deepest veneration and regard. 
 
 Waiting for that happier day when we shall again 
 take you by the hand, and again listen to your 
 welcome voice, we remain 
 
 Your faithful and loving friends, 
 
 (In behalf of the Twenty-eighth Congregational So- 
 ciety), 
 
 SAMUEL MAY, 
 MARY MAY, 
 THOMAS GODDARD, 
 FRANCIS JACKSON, 
 JOHN FLINT, 
 WILLIAM BALL, 
 JOHN R. MANLEY, 
 And three hundred others. 
 
 Boston, January 11, 1859. 
 
EEPLY OF ME. PARKEE. 
 
 Feedericksted, Santa Ceuz, 9th May, 1859. 
 
 To Samuel May, Mary May, Thomas G-oddard, Francis 
 Jackson, John Flint, William Dall, John R. Manley, 
 and the other signers of a Letter to me, dated Bos- 
 ton, January 11th, 1859: — 
 
 Dear Friends : — -Your genial and most Avelcome 
 Letter was handed to me at this place the 6th of 
 March ; I had not strength before to bear the excite- 
 ment it must occasion. It was Sunday Morning ; and 
 while you were at the Music Hall, I read it in this 
 little far-off Island, with emotions you may imagine 
 easier than I can relate. It brought back the times 
 of trial we have had together, and your many kind- 
 nesses to me. I can easily bear to be opposed, and 
 that with the greatest amount of abuse ; for habit 
 makes all things familiar. I fear it flatters my pride 
 a little, to be greatly underrated ; but to be appre- 
 ciated so tenderly by your affection, and rated so 
 
20 REPLY OF MR. PARKER. 
 
 raucli above my own deservings, it makes me ashamed 
 that I am no more worthy of your esteem and praise : 
 
 " I 'vc heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning ; 
 Alas ! the Gratitude of men 
 
 Hath oftener left me mourning !" 
 
 Herewith I send you, and all the Members of tlie 
 Society, a long Letter, reviewing my life, and especially 
 my connection with you. I began to compose it be- 
 fore I knew of your Letter to me, before I left Bos- 
 ton, indeed, in sleepless nights ; but wrote nothing 
 till I Avas fixed in this place, and then only little by 
 little, as I had strength for the Avork. I finished it 
 April 19th, and so date it that day. The fair copy 
 sent you is made by my wife and Miss Stevenson, and 
 of course was finished much later. I have had no safe 
 opportunity of sending it direct to you till now, Avhen 
 Miss Thacher, one of our townswomen, returning 
 hence to Boston, kindly offers to take charge of it. 
 If this copy do not reach you, I shall forAvard another 
 from Europe. 
 
 The Letter Avould have been quite different, no 
 doubt, in plan and execution, — better, I hope, in 
 thought and language, had I been sound and Avell ; for 
 all a sick man's Avork seems likely to be infected Avith 
 his illness. I beg you to forgive its imperfections, and 
 be as gentle in your judgment as fairness Avill alloAv. 
 
EEPLY OF MR. PARKEK. 21 
 
 Though I have been reasonably industrious all my 
 life, when I come to look over what I have actually 
 done, it seems very little in comparison with the op- 
 portunities I have had ; only the beginning of what I 
 intended to accomplish. But it is idle to make excuses 
 now, and not profitable to complain. 
 
 As that Letter is intended for all the Members of 
 the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, I beg you 
 to transmit it to the Standing Committee, — I know 
 not their names, — who will lay it before them in some 
 suitable manner. 
 
 With thanks for the past, and hearty good wishes for 
 your future welfare, believe me 
 
 Faithfully your Minister and Friend, 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
Feedeeicksted, Santa Ceuz, 9tli May, 1859. 
 
 To THE Standing Committee of the Twenty-eighth 
 Congregational Society in Boston. 
 
 Gentlemen and Ladies: — Here is a Letter addressed 
 to the Members of your Society. I beg you to lay it 
 before them in such a mamier as you may see most 
 fit. Believe me 
 
 Faithfully your Minister and Friend, 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER, 
 
LETTER. 
 
 To THE MeMBEES op THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGA- 
 TIONAL Society of Boston. 
 My DEAR AND VALUED Friends : — After it became 
 needful that I should be silent, and flee off from my 
 home, I determined, at least, before I went, to write 
 you a letter, touching our long connection, and my 
 efforts in your service, and so bid you farewell. But 
 the experienced doctors and other wise friends forbid 
 the undertaking, and directed me to wait for a more 
 favorable time, when the work might be more leisurely 
 and better done, with less risk also to'my life ; prom- 
 ising indeed a time when it would not diminish the 
 chances of recovery. In the twenty-four days which 
 came between the sudden, decisive attack, and 
 my departure from Boston, there was little time for 
 even a sound, well man to arrange and settle his 
 worldly affairs, to straighten out complicated matters, 
 and return thanks to the many that have befriended 
 him in the difficult emergencies of life, • — for surely 
 I left home as one not to set eyes on New England 
 again. Since then there has been no time till now 
 Avhen I have had strength to endure the intellectual 
 
26 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 labor, and still more the emotional agitation, which 
 must attend such a review of my past life. Consump- 
 tion, having long since slain almost all my near kins- 
 folk, horsed on the North-wind, rode at me also, seeking 
 my life. Swiftly I fled hither, hoping in this little 
 quiet and fair-skied Island of the Holy Cross to hide me 
 from his monstrous sight, to pull his arrows from my 
 flesh, and heal my wounded side. It is yet too soon 
 to conjecture how or when my exile shall end ; but at 
 home, wise, friendly and hopeful doctors told me I 
 had " but one chance in ten " for complete recovery, 
 though more for a partial restoration to some small 
 show of health, I suppose, and power of moderate 
 work. But if the danger be as they say, I do not 
 despair nor lose heart at such odds, having often in 
 my life contended against much greater, and come off 
 triumphant, though the chances against me were a 
 hundred or a thousand to one. Besides, this is now 
 the third time that I remember friends and doctors 
 despairing of my life. Still, I know that I am no 
 longer young, and that I stand up to my shoulders in 
 my grave, whose uncertain sides at any moment may 
 cave in and bury me with their resistless weight. Yet 
 I hope to climb out this side, and live and work again 
 amid laborious New England men ; for, though the 
 flesh be weak and the spirit resigned to either fate, 
 yet still the Will to live, though reverent and sub- 
 missive, is exceeding strong, more veliement than 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 27 
 
 ever before, as I have still much to do — some things 
 to begin upon, and many more lying now half done, 
 that I alone can finish — ■ and I should not like to suffer 
 the little I have done to perish now for lack of a few 
 years' work. 
 
 I know well both the despondency of sick men that 
 makes the night seem darker than it is, and also the 
 pleasing illusion which flits before consumptive patients, 
 and while this Will-o'-the-Avisp comes flickering from 
 their kindred's grave, they think it is the breaking of 
 a new and more auspicioiis day. So indeed it is, the 
 Day-spring from on high, revealing the white, tall 
 porches of Eternity. Let you and me be neither 
 cheated by delusive hopes, nor weakened by unmanly 
 fears, but, looking the facts fairly in the face, let us 
 meet the Inevitable with calmness and pious joy, sing- 
 ing the wealthy Psalm of Life : 
 
 " Give to the ■winds thy fears ; 
 
 Hope and be undismayed ! 
 God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears, 
 
 God shall lift up thy head ! 
 Tho' comprehended not, 
 
 Yet Earth and Heaven tell, 
 He sits a Father on the throne : 
 
 God guideth all things well ! " 
 
 But while my strength is but weakness, and my 
 time for this Letter so uncertain, I will waste neither 
 in a lengthened introduction, knowing '' it were a 
 foolish thing to make a long prologue and be short in 
 the story itself." 
 
28 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 In this Letter I must needs speak much of myself, 
 and tell some things which seem to belong only to my 
 private history ; for without a knowledge of them, my 
 public conduct might appear other than it really is. 
 Yet I would gladly defer them to a more fitting place, 
 in some brief autobiography to be published after my 
 death ; but I am not certain of time to prepare that, 
 so shall here, in small compass, briefly sketch out 
 some small personal particulars, which might elsewhere 
 be presented in their full proportions, and with appro- 
 priate light and shade. As this Letter is confidential 
 and addressed only to you, I could wish it might be 
 read only to the Members of the Twenty-eighth Con- 
 gregational Society, or printed solely for their affection, 
 not also published for the eye of the world ; but that 
 were impossible, for what is offered to the hearts of 
 so many, thereby becomes accessible to the eyes and 
 ears of all who wish to see and hear ; so what I write 
 private to you, becomes public also for mankind, 
 whether I will or not. 
 
 In my early boyhood I fdt I was to be a minister, 
 and looked forward with eager longings for the work 
 to which I still think my nature itself an '' eff"ectual 
 call," certainly a deep one, and a continuous. Few 
 men have ever been more fortunate than I in liaving 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 29 
 
 pains judiciously taken Avith their intellectual cul- 
 ture. 
 
 My early education was not costly, as men count 
 expense by dollars; it was exceeding precious, as they 
 might reckon outlay by the fitness of the process to 
 secure a development of natural powers. By father 
 and mother, yes, even by brothers and sisters, great and 
 unceasing care was taken to secure power of Obser- 
 vation, that the senses might grasp their natural 
 objects ; of voluntary Attention, fixed, continuous 
 and exact, which, despite of appearances, sees the 
 fact just as it is, no more, no less ; of Memory, that 
 holds all things firm as gravitation, and yet, like that, 
 keeps them unmixed, not confusing the most delicate 
 outline, and reproduces them at will, complete in the 
 whole, and perfect in each part ; much stress also was 
 laid on Judgment and inventive Imagination. It was 
 a great game they set me to play ; it was also an ad- 
 vantage that the counters cost little money, but were 
 common things, picked up daily on a farm, in a kitchen, 
 or a mechanic's thoughtful shop. But still more pains 
 were taken with my moral and religious culture. In 
 my earliest boyhood I was taught to respect the in- 
 stinctive promptings of Conscience, regarding it as the 
 "Voice of God in the Soul of Man," which must 
 always be obeyed; to speak the Truth without 
 evasion or concealment ; to love Justice and conform 
 to it ; to reverence Merit in all men, and that regard- 
 s' 
 
30 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 less of their rank or reputation ; and, above all things, 
 I was taught to love and trust the dear Grod. He was 
 not presented to me as a great King, with Force for 
 his chief quality, but rather as a Father, eminent for 
 perfect Justice, and complete and perfect Love, alike 
 the parent of Jew and Gentile, Christian and non-Chris- 
 tian, dealing with all, not according to the accident of 
 their name and situation, but to the real use each 
 should make of his talents and opportunities, however 
 little or great. I was taught Self-reliance, intellectual, 
 moral, and of many another form ; to investigate all 
 things with my own eyes ; carefully to form opinions 
 for myself, and while I believed 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 time ; but I think few New Englanders 
 born of religious families in the first ten years of this 
 century, were formally taught so little Superstition. 
 I have met none with whom more judicious attempts 
 were made to produce a natural unfolding of the re- 
 ligious and moral faculties ; I do not speak of results, 
 only of aim and process. I have often been j)raised 
 for virtues which really belonged to my father and 
 mother, and if they were also mine, they must have 
 come so easy under such training, that I should feel 
 entitled to but small merit for possessing them. They 
 made a careful distinction between a man's character 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 31 
 
 and his creed, and in my hearing never spoke a bigoted 
 or irreverent word. 
 
 As my relatives and neighbors were all hard-work- 
 ing 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, Avhile working skilfully with my 
 hands, I could yet think on what I would. 
 
 Good books by great masters fell into even my 
 boyish hands ; the best English authors of prose and 
 verse, the Bible, the G-reek and Roman classics — 
 which I at first read mainly in translations, but soon 
 became familiar with in their original beauty — these 
 were my literary helps. What was read at all, was 
 also studied, and not laid aside till well understood. 
 If my books in boyhood were not many, they were 
 much, and also great. 
 
 I had an original fondness for scientific and meta- 
 physical Thought, which found happy encouragement 
 in my early days ; my father's strong, discriminating 
 and comprehensive mind also inclining that way, 
 offered me an excellent help. Nature was all about 
 me ; my attention was wisely directed to both Use 
 
32 THEODORE PARKER^S 
 
 and Beauty, and I early became familiar with the 
 Flora of New England, and attentive also to the habits 
 of beast and bird, insect, reptile, fish. A few scientific 
 works on Natural History gave me their stimulus and 
 their help. 
 
 After my general preliminary education was j)retty 
 well advanced, the hour came when I must decide on 
 my profession for life. 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 dul- 
 ness of the Sunday services, their mechanical char- 
 acter, the poverty and insignificance of the sermons, the 
 unnaturalness anduncertainty of the doctrines preached 
 on the authority of a " divine and infallible revelation," 
 the lifelessness of the public prayers, and the conse- 
 quent heedlessness of the congregation, all tended 
 to turn a young man off" from becoming a minister. 
 Besides, it did not appear that the New England clergy 
 were leaders in the intellectual, 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 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 33 
 
 sliould like to have him begin, then !" The genius of 
 Emerson soon moved from the clerical constellation 
 and 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, afford- 
 ing no opportunity to do much ! " I thought it a 
 wide place. 
 
 The legal profession seemed to have many attrac- 
 tions. There were eminent men in its ranks, rising 
 to public honors, judicial or political; they seemed 
 to have more freedom and individuality than the 
 ministers. For some time I hesitated, inclined that 
 way, and made jareliminary studies in the Law. But 
 at length the perils of that profession seemed greater 
 than I cared to rush upon. Mistaking sound for sense, 
 I thought the lawyers' moral tone was lower than the" 
 ministers', and dared not put myself under that temp- 
 tation I prayed God not to lead me into. 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. A powerful and successful 
 practitioner told me " none could be a lawyer without 
 doing so," and quoted the well-known words of Lord 
 Brougham. I saw men of large talents yielding to 
 this temptation, and counting as great success what to 
 me even then seemed only great ruin. I could not 
 decide to set up a Law-mill beside the public road, to 
 
34 THEODORE PAEKER'S 
 
 put my hand on the winch, and, by turning one way, 
 rob innocent men of their i^roperty, liberty, life ; or, 
 by reversing the motion, withdraw the guilty from 
 just punishment, pecuniary or corporeal. 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 that Truth you 
 learn, even when it is unpopular and hated?" I an- 
 swered, " I CAN ! " Rash youth is ever confident. 
 
 2. " Can you seek the Eternal Eight, and not be 
 blinded by the statutes and customs of men, eccle- 
 siastical, 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 relations with men?" Again, I swiftly 
 answered, " I can !" 
 
 3. "Can you represent in your life that Truth of the 
 intellect and that Right of the conscience, 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 that to professional deceit — at least it was then 
 better known; but I answered, '' I can try, and will ! " 
 
 Alas ! I little kneAv all that Avas involved in these 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 35 
 
 three questions, and their prompt, youthful answers. 
 I understand it better now. 
 
 So I determined to become a minister, hoping to 
 help mankind in the most important of all human con- 
 cerns, the development of man's highest powers. 
 
 Zealously I entered on my Theological Education, 
 with many ill-defined doubts, and some distinct de- 
 nials, of the chief doctrines of the Ecclesiastical 
 Theology of Christendom. 
 
 1. In my early childhood, after a severe but 
 silent struggle, I made Avay with the ghastly doc- 
 trine of Eternal Damnation and a Wrathful God ; this 
 is the Goliath of that Theology. From my seventh 
 year I have had no Fear of God, only an ever- 
 greatening Love and Trust. 
 
 2. The Doctrine of the Trinity, the " great mys- 
 tery of Revelation," had long since gone the same 
 road. For a year, though born and bred among 
 Unitarians, I had attended the preachings of Dr. 
 Lyman Beecher, the most powerful Orthodox minis- 
 ter in New England, then in the full blaze of his 
 talents and reputation, and stirred also with polemic 
 zeal against " Unitarians, Universalists, Papists, and 
 Infidels." I Avent 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 
 
36 THEODORE PAEKEE'S 
 
 respected the talents, the zeal, and the enterprise 
 of that able man, who certainly taught me much, 
 but I came away with no confidence in his The- 
 ology; 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 Theology. 
 
 3. I had found no evidence which to me could 
 authorize a belief in the supernatural birth of Jesus 
 of Nazareth. The two-fold biblical testimony was 
 all ; that was contradictory and good for nothing ; we 
 had not the Affidavit of the Mother, the only com- 
 petent human witness, nor even the Declaration of 
 the Son ; there was no circumstantial evidence to 
 confirm the statement in the Gospels of a most im- 
 probable event. 
 
 4. Many miracles related in the Old and New 
 Testament 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 Ques- 
 tion of Miracles was one which gave me much un- 
 easiness, for I had not learned carefully to examine 
 evidence for alleged historical events, and had, be- 
 sides, no clear conception of what is involved in the 
 notion that Grod ever violates the else constant 
 mode of operation of the Universe. Of course I 
 had not then that philosophical idea of God which 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. ^ 37 
 
 makes a theological miracle as impossible as a round 
 triangle, or any other self-evident contradiction. 
 
 5. I had no belief in the plenary, infallible, verbal 
 inspiration of the whole Bible, and strong doubts as 
 to the miraculous inspiration of any part of it. 
 Some things were the opposite of divine ; I could 
 not put my finger on any great 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. 
 
 In due time I entered the Theological School at 
 Cambridge, then under the charge of the Unitarians, 
 or ^' Liberal Christians." I found excellent oppor- 
 tunities for study : there Avere able and earnest pro- 
 fessors, who laid no yoke on any neck, but left each 
 man free to think for himself, and come to such 
 conclusions as he must. Telling what they thought 
 they knew, they never pretended they had learned 
 all that may be known, or winnowed out all error 
 from their creed. They were honest guides, with 
 no more sophistry than is perhaps almost universal 
 in that calling, and did not pretend to be masters. 
 There, too, Avas a large library containing much 
 valuable ancient lore, though, alas ! almost none of 
 4 
 
38 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 the new theologic thought of the German masters. 
 Besides, there was leisure, and unbounded freedom 
 of research; and I could work as many hours in 
 the study as a mechanic in his shop, or a farmer in 
 his field. The pulpits of Boston were within an 
 easy walk, and Dr. Channing drew near the zenith 
 of his power. 
 
 Here, under these influences, I pursued the usual 
 routine of theological reading, but yet, of course, 
 had my oAvn private studies, suited to my special 
 wants. It is now easy to tell what I then attempted 
 without always being conscious of my aim, and 
 what results I gradually reached before I settled in 
 the ministry. 
 
 I. I studied the Bible with much care. First, I 
 wished to learn, What is Bible — what books and words 
 compose it ? this is the question of Criticisjn ; 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 attributed to its words, and so studied the 
 works of Jewish Rabbis on the Old Testament, and 
 of the early Christian Fathers on both New and 
 Old; besides, I studied carefully the latest critics 
 and interpreters, especially the German. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 39 
 
 I soon found that the Bible is a collection of quite het- 
 erogeneous books, most of them anonymous, or bearing- 
 names of doubtful authors, collected, none knows 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 Testament 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 ques.- 
 tion of Inspiration and of Miracles. I still inconsis- 
 tently believed, or half believed, in the direct miracu- 
 lous 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 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 evi- 
 dence, nor learned to identify and scrutinize the wit- 
 nesses. 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 
 
40 THEODOEE PARKER'S 
 
 meu are inspired in iDroportion to their actual powers 
 and their 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 N"ew could be called the " Word of God," 
 save in the sense that all Truth is Grod's Avord. 
 
 II. I studied the Historical Development of Reli- 
 gion and Theology amongst Jews and Christians, and 
 saw the gradual formation of the great ecclesiastical 
 doctrines which so domineered 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 Austi'ian's 
 Farm. The miraculous, infallible Bible, and the mirac- 
 ulous, infallible Church, disappeared when they were 
 closely looked at ; and I found the Fact of History 
 quite different from the pretension of Theology. 
 
 III. I studied the Historical Development of Reli- 
 gion 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 Brahmanic, 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 philosophers came in for 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 41 
 
 their place, there being no Sacred Books of the Classic 
 nations. I attended pretty carefully to the religion 
 of Savages and Barbarians, and was thereby helped 
 to the solution of many a difficult problem. I found 
 no tribe of men destitute of religion who had attained 
 power of articulate speech. 
 
 TV. I studied assiduously the Metaphysics 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 that question. I tried 
 to make an analysis of Humanity, and see if by psy- 
 chologic science I could detect the special element 
 which produced religious consciousness in me, and 
 religious phenomena in mankind, — seeking a cause 
 adequate to the facts of experience and observation. 
 The common books of philosophy seemed quite insuffi- 
 cient ; the Sensational System, so ably presented by 
 Locke in his masterly Essay, developed into various 
 forms by Hobbes, Berkely, 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 religious instincts, nor 
 explain the religious history of mankind, or even of 
 the British people, to whom that philosophy is still so 
 4^ 
 
42 THEODORE PAEKER'S 
 
 Joss To] .c^ifi.l-r 
 
 manifold a hindrance. Ecclesiastical writers, though 
 
 able as Clarke and Butler, and learned also as Cudworth 
 and Barrow, could not solve the difficulty ; for the 
 Principle 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 , i^ 
 inchnation. The brilliant Mosaic, which ^Cousin setV i.Ci'^ 
 before the world, was of great service, but not satis- 
 factory. 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 Intuitions of Human 
 Nature, which depend on no logical process of 
 demonstration, but are rather facts of consciousness 
 given by the instinctive action of human nature 
 itself. I will mention only the three most important 
 which pertain to Religion. 
 
 1. The Instinctive Intuition of the Divine, the con- 
 sciousness that there is a G-od. 
 
 2. The Instinctive Intuition of the Just and Right, 
 a consciousness that there is a Moral Law, indepen- 
 dent of our will, which we ought to keep. 
 
 3. The Instinctive Intuition of the Immortal, a 
 consciousness that the Essential Element of man, the 
 principle of Individuality, never dies. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 43 
 
 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 satisfaction, and devised a 
 scheme which to the scholar's mind, I thought, could 
 legitimate what was spontaneously given to all, by 
 the great primal Instincts of Mankind. 
 
 Then I proceeded to develop the contents of these 
 instinctive intuitions of the Divine, the Just and the 
 Immortal, and see what God actually is, what Morality 
 is, and what Eternal Life has to offer. In each case 
 I pursued two methods — the inductive and deductive. 
 
 First, from the History of Mankind — savage, bar- 
 barous, civilized, enlightened — 'I gathered the most 
 significant facts I could find relating to men's opinions 
 about God, Morality, Heaven and Hell, and thence 
 made such generalizations as the facts would warrant, 
 which, however, were seldom satisfactory ; 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 Theology was of great value to me. 
 
 Next, from the primitive Facts of Consciousness, 
 given by the power of instinctive intuition, I endeav- 
 
44 THEODORE PARKER^S 
 
 ored to deduce the true notion of G-od, of Justice 
 and Futurity. Hero I could draw from Human Nature, 
 and not be hindered by the limitations of Human 
 History ; but I know now better than it was possible 
 then, how difficult is this work, and how often the in- 
 quirer mistakes his own subjective imagination 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 only 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, ecstasies, witchcraft, magic, wonders, 
 the appearance of devils, ghosts, and the like. Be- 
 sides, I studied other works which lie out from the 
 regular highway of theology, the spurious books attri- 
 buted to famous Jews or Christians, the Pseudepigra- 
 phy of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha of the 
 New, with the strange fantasies of the Neoplatonists and 
 Gnostics. I did not neglect the writings of the Mys- 
 tics, though at that time I could only make a begin- 
 ning with the more famous or most tenderly religious ; 
 I was much attracted to this class of men, who devel- 
 oped the element of Piety, regardless of the theologic 
 ritualism of the Church, the philosophic discipline of 
 
EXPEEIENCB AS A MINISTER. 45 
 
 the Schools^ or the practical morality of common life. 
 By this process, I not only learned much of the abnor- 
 mal action of the human spirit, and saw how often a 
 mere fancy passes for fact, and a dreamer's subjective 
 whim bestrides some great harbor 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 
 authorized floras of the School or Church. 
 
 I left the Theological School with reluctance, con- 
 scious of knowing so little of what I must presently 
 teach, and wishing more years for research and 
 thought. Of course my first sermons were only imita- 
 tions ; 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 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. I took all pos- 
 sible pains with the matter of the discourse, and 
 always appealed to the religious instinct in mankind. 
 At the beginning I resolved to preach the Natural 
 Laws of man as they are writ in his constitution, no 
 less and no more. After preaching a few months in 
 various places, and feeling my way into the conscious- 
 
46 THEODOEE PAEKER'S 
 
 ness of men, I determined to preach nothing as Reh- 
 gion which I had not experienced inwardly, and made 
 my own, knowing it by heart. Thus, not only the in- 
 tellectual, but also the religious part of my sermons 
 would rest on facts that I was sure of, and not on the 
 words of another. I was indebted to another young 
 candidate for the hint. I hope I have not been faith- 
 less to the early vow. A study of the English State 
 Trials, and a careful analysis of the arguments of the 
 great s]3eeches therein, helped me to clearness of ar- 
 rangement, and distinctness in the use of terms. 
 Here and in the G-reek and Latin orations I got the 
 best part of my rhetorical culture. 
 
 On the longest day of 1837, I was ordained min- 
 ister 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 instruct- 
 ive. I had thought freely, and freely preached what 
 I thought ; none had ever questioned my right. At 
 the Theological School, the professors were then teach- 
 ers to instruct, not also inquisitors to torture and to 
 damn ; satisfied of the religious character of the 
 pupils, they left each to develop his own free spiritual 
 individuality, responsible only to his own Conscience 
 and his God. It was then the boast of the little Uni- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTEE. 47 
 
 tarian party, that it respected individuality, freedom 
 of thought and freedom of speech, and had neither 
 Inquisitors nor Pope. Great diversity of opinion pre- 
 vailed amongst Unitarians, ministers and laymen, but 
 the Unity of Religion was more thought of than the 
 Variety of Theology. At ordinations, for some years, 
 their Councils had ceased to inquire into the special 
 opinions of the candidate, leaving him and the Society 
 electing to settle the matter. The first principle of 
 Congregationalism certainly requires this course. As 
 a sect, the Unitarians had but one distinctive doctrine 
 — the Unity of God without the Trinity of Persons. 
 Christendom said, " Jesus of JSTazareth is Jehovah of 
 Hosts ! " The Unitarians answered, " He is not ! " At 
 my ordination, none of the Council offered to catechize 
 me, or wished to interfere with what belonged to me 
 and the Congregation, and that probably thought of 
 my Piety and Morality more than of the special The- 
 ology 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 humanity, and a 
 life of personal religiousness. One, in his ordaining 
 prayer, his hand on my head, put up the petition, "that 
 no fondness for literature or science, and no favorite 
 studies may ever lead this young man from learning 
 
48 THEODOEE PABKER'S 
 
 the true religion, and preaching it for the salvation of 
 mankind !" Most heartily did I say " Amen !" to this 
 supplication. 
 
 For the first year or two the congregation did not 
 exceed seventy persons, including the children. I 
 soon became well acquainted with all in the little 
 parish, where I found some men of rare enlighten- 
 ment, some truly generous and noble souls. I knew 
 the characters of all, and the thoughts of such as had 
 them. I took great pains with the composition of my 
 sermons ; they were never out of my mind. I had 
 an intense delight in writing and preaching ; but I 
 was a learner quite as much as a teacher, and was 
 feeling my way forward and upward with one hand, 
 while I tried to lead men with the other. I preached 
 Natural Laws, nothing on the authority of any church, 
 any tradition, any sect, though I sought illustration 
 and confirmation from all these sources. For histor- 
 ical things, I told the historical evidence ; for spiritual 
 things, I found ready proof in the primal instincts of 
 the Soul, and confirmation in the life of religious men. 
 The simple life of the farmers, mechanics and milk- 
 men about me, of its own accord, turned into a sort of 
 poetry, and re-appeared in the sermons, as the green 
 woods, not far off, looked in at the windows of the 
 Meeting House. I think I preached only what I 
 had experienced in my own inward consciousness, 
 which widened and grew richer as I came into prac- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 49 
 
 tical contact with living men, turned time into life, 
 and mere thought became character. 
 
 But I had much leisure for my private humanitarian 
 and philosophic studies. One of the Professors in the 
 Theological School had advised against my settling 
 ''in so small a place," and warned me against ''the 
 seductions of an easy chair," telling me I must become 
 a " minister at large for all mankind," and do with the 
 pen what I could not with the voice. I devoted my 
 spare time to hard study. To work ten or fifteen 
 hours a day in my literary labors, was not only a habit, 
 but a pleasure ; with zeal and delight I applied myself 
 anew to the great theological problems of the age. 
 
 Many circumstances favored both studious pursuits 
 and the formation of an independent character. The 
 years of my preliminary theological study, and of my 
 early ministry, fell in the most interesting period of 
 New England's spiritual history, Avhen a great revolu- 
 tion went on, — so silent that few men knew it was 
 taking place, and none then understood its whither 
 or its whence. 
 
 The Unitarians, after a long and bitter controversy, 
 in which they were often shamelessly ill-treated by 
 the " Orthodox," had conquered, and secured their 
 ecclesiastical right to deny the Trinity, '' the Achilles 
 of dogmas;" they had won the respect of the New 
 England public ; had absorbed most of the religious 
 5 
 
50 THEODORE PARKEE'S 
 
 talent of Massachusetts, founded many churches, and 
 possessed and liberally administered the oldest and 
 richest College in America. Not yet petrified into a 
 sect, they rejoiced in the large liberty of [' the chil- 
 dren of God," and, owning neither racks nor dungeons, 
 did not covet any of those things that were their 
 neighbors'. With less education and literary skill, 
 the Universalists had fought manfully against Eternal 
 Damnation — the foulest doctrine which defiles the 
 pages of man's theologic history, — secured their eccle- 
 siastical position, wiping malignant statutes from the 
 Law Books, and, though in a poor and vulgar way, 
 were popularizing the great truth that God's chief 
 attribute is Love, which is extended to all men. Alone 
 of all Christian sects, they professedly taught the Im- 
 mortality of man in such a form that it is no curse 
 to the race to find it true ! But, though departing 
 from those doctrines which are essential to the Chris- 
 tian ecclesiastic scheme, neither Universalist nor Uni- 
 tarian had broken with the authority of Revelation, 
 the word of the Bible, but still professed a willingness 
 to believe both Trinity and Damnation, could they be 
 found in the miraculous and infallible Scripture. 
 
 Mr. Garrison, with his friends, inheriting what was 
 best in the Puritan founders of New England, fired 
 with the zeal of the Hebrew Prophets and Christian 
 Martyrs, while they were animated with a Spirit of 
 Humanity rarely found in any of the three, was begin- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 51 
 
 ning his noble work, but in a style so humble that, 
 after much search, the police of Boston discovered 
 there was nothing dangerous in it, for '' his only 
 visible auxiliary was a negro boy." Dr. Channing 
 was in the full maturity of his powers, and, after long 
 preaching the Dignity of Man as an abstraction, and 
 Piety as a purely inward life, with rare and winsome 
 eloquence, and ever progressive humanity, began to 
 apply his sublime doctrines to actual life in the Indi- 
 vidual, the State, and the Church. In the name of 
 Christianity, the great American Unitarian called for 
 the reform of the drunkard, the elevation of the poor, 
 the instruction of the ignorant, and, above all, for the 
 liberation of the American slave. A remarkable man, 
 his instinct of progress grew stronger the more he 
 travelled, and the further he went, for he surrounded 
 himself with young life. Horace Mann, with his co- 
 adjutors, began a great movement, to improve the 
 public education of the people. Pierpont, single- 
 handed, was fighting a grand and twofold battle — 
 against drunkenness in the street, and for righteous- 
 ness in the pulpit — against fearful ecclesiastic odds, 
 maintaining a minister's right and duty to oppose 
 actual wickedness, however popular and destructive. 
 The brilliant genius of Emerson rose in the winter 
 nights, and hung over Boston, drawing the eyes of 
 ingenuous young people to look up to that great, new 
 star, a beauty and a mystery, which charmed for the 
 
52 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 moment, while it gave also perennial inspiration, as it 
 led them forward along new paths, and toward new 
 hopes. America had seen no such sight before ; it 
 is not less a blessed wonder now. 
 
 Besides, the Phrenologists, so ably represented by 
 Spurzheim and Combe, were weakening the power of 
 the old Supernaturalism, leading men to study the 
 Constitution of Man more wisely than before, and lay- 
 ing the foundation on which many a beneficent struc- 
 ture was soon to rise. The_writings of Wordsworth 
 were becoming familiar to the thoughtful lovers of 
 nature and of man, and drawing men to natural jDiety. 
 Carlyle's works got reprinted at Boston, diffusing a 
 strong, and then, also, a healthy influence on old 
 and young. The writings of Coleridge were reprinted 
 in America, all of them " Aids to Reflection," and 
 brilliant with the scattered sparks of genius ; they 
 incited many to think, more especially young Trini- 
 tarian ministers; and, spite of the lack of both his- 
 toric and philosophic accuracy, and the utter absence 
 of all proportion in his writings ; spite of his haste, 
 his vanity, prejudice, sophistry, confusion, and opium 
 . — he yet did great service in New England, helping * ; ■ i 
 / emancipate enthralled minds. The works of ^Cousin, V-*' 
 more systematic, and more profound as a whole, and 
 far more catholic and comprehensive, continental, not 
 insular, in his range, also became familiar to Americans 
 — reviews and translations going where the eloquent 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 53 
 
 original was not heard — and Iielped free the young 
 mind from the gross Sensationahsm of the academic 
 Philosophy on one side, and the grosser Supernatural- 
 ism of the ecclesiastic Theology on the other. 
 
 The German language, hitherto the priceless treas- 
 ure of a few, was becoming well known, and many 
 were thereby made acquainted with the most original, 
 deep, bold, comprehensive and wealthy literature in 
 the world, full of theologic and philosophic thought. 
 Thus, a great storehouse was opened to such as were 
 earnestly in quest of Truth. Young Mr. Strauss, in 
 whom genius for criticism was united with extraordi- 
 nary learning and rare facility of philosophic speech, 
 wrote his " Life of Jesus," where he rigidly scruti- 
 nized the Genuineness of the Gospels and the Authen- 
 ticity of their contents, and, with scientific calmness, 
 brought every statement to his steady scales, weigh- 
 ing it, not always justly, as I think, but impartially 
 always, with philosophic coolness and deliberation. 
 The most formidable assailant of the ecclesiastical 
 theology of Christendom, he roused a host of foes 
 whose writings — mainly ill-tempered, insolent and 
 sophistical — it was yet profitable for a young man to 
 read. 
 
 The value of Christian miracles, not the question of 
 
 fact, was discussed at Boston, as never before in 
 
 America. Prophecy had been thought the Jachin, 
 
 and Miracles the Boaz, whereon alone Christianity 
 
 5* 
 
54 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 could rest ; but, said some, if both be shaken down, 
 the Lord's house will not fall ! The claims of eccle- 
 siastical tradition came up to be settled anew ; and 
 young men, walking solitary through the moonlight, 
 asked, "Which is to be permanent master — a single 
 Accident in Human History, nay, perchance only the 
 Whim of some anonymous dreamer, or the Substance 
 of Human Nature, greatening with continual develop- 
 ment, and 
 
 ' Not without access of unexpected strength ? ' " 
 
 The question was also its answer. 
 
 The Rights of Labor were discussed with deep 
 philanthropic feeling, and sometimes with profound 
 thought, metaphysic and economic both. The works 
 of Charles Fourier — ^a strange, fantastic, visionary 
 man, no doubt, but gifted also with amazing insight 
 of the truths of social science — shed some light in 
 these dark places of speculation. Mr. Ripley, a born 
 Democrat, in the high sense of that abused word, and 
 one of the best cultured and most enlightened men 
 in America, made an attempt at Brook-farm, in West 
 Roxbury, so to organize society that the results of 
 labor should remain in the workman's hand, and not 
 slip thence to the trader's till ; that there should be 
 " no exploitation of man by man," but Toil and 
 Thought, hard work and high culture, should be 
 united in the same person. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 55 
 
 The natural Rights of Woman began to be inquired 
 into, and publicly discussed ; while in private, great 
 pains were taken in the chief towns of New England, 
 to furnish a thorough and comprehensive education 
 to such young maidens as were born with two talents, 
 mind and money. 
 
 Of course, a strong reaction followed. At the 
 Cambridge Divinity School, Prof. Henry Ware, Jr., 
 told the young men, if there appeared to them any 
 contradiction betAveen the Reason of Man and the 
 Letter of the Bible, they " must follow the written 
 word," " for you can never be so certain of the cor- 
 rectness of what takes place in your own mind, as of 
 what is written in the Bible." In an ordination ser- 
 mon, he told the young minister not to preach himself, 
 but Christ ; and not to appeal to Human Nature for 
 proof of doctrines, but to the Authority of Revelation. 
 Other Unitarian ministers declared, " There are limits 
 to free inquiry ; " and preached, '' Reason must be 
 put down, or she will soon ask terrible questions ; " 
 protested against the union of Philosophy and Re- 
 ligion, and assumed to " prohibit the banns " of mar- 
 riage between the two. Mr. Norton — then a great 
 name at Cambridge, a scholar of rare but contracted 
 merit, a careful and exact writer, born for contro- 
 versy, really learned and able in his special depart- 
 ment, the Interpretations of the New Testament — 
 opened his mouth and spoke : the mass of men must 
 
56 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 accept the doctrines of religion solely on the author- 
 ity of the learned, as they do the doctrines of mathe- 
 matical astronomy ; the miracles of Jesus, — • he made 
 merry at those of the Old Testament, — are the only 
 evidence of the truth of Christianity ; in the popu- 
 lar religion of the Greeks and Romans, there was no 
 conception of Grod ; the new philosophic attempts to 
 explain the facts of religious consciousness, were 
 '' the Latest Form^ of Infidelity ; " the great philo- 
 sophical and theological thinkers of Germany, were 
 '^ all Atheists ; " " Schleiermacher was an Atheist," as 
 was also Spinoza, his master, before him ; and Cousin, 
 who was only " that Frenchman," was no better ; the 
 study of philosophy, and the neglect of '' biblical crit- 
 icism," were leading mankind to ruin, — everywhere 
 was instability and insecurity. ! 
 
 Of course, this reaction was supported by the Min- 
 isters in the great Churches of Commerce, and by the 
 old literary periodicals, — ■ which never knew a star 
 was risen till men wondered at it in the zenith ; the 
 Unitarian Journals gradually went over to the oppo- 
 nents of freedom and progress, with lofty scorn 
 rejecting their former principles, and repeating the 
 conduct they had once complained of; Cambridge and 
 Princeton seemed to be interchanging cards. From 
 such hands, Cousin and Emerson could not receive 
 needed criticism, but only vulgar abuse. Dr. Chan- 
 ning could " not draw a long breath in Boston," where 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 57 
 
 he found the successors of Paul trembling before the 
 successors of Felix. Even Trinitarian Moses Stuart 
 seemed scarcely safe in his hard-bottomed Hopkinsian 
 chair, at Andover. The Trinitarian ministers and 
 city schoolmasters galled Horace Mann with contin- 
 ual assaults on his measures for educating the people. 
 Unitarian ministers struck hands with wealthy liquor- 
 dealers to drive Mr. Pierpont from his pulpit, where 
 he valiantly preached '' Temperance, Righteousness, 
 and Judgment to come," appealing to '' a day after 
 to-day." Prominent Anti-Slavery men were dropped 
 out of all wealthy society in Boston, their former 
 friends not knowing them in the street ; Mr. Garrison 
 was mobbed by men in handsome coats, and found 
 defence from their fury only in a jail ; an assembly of 
 women, consulting for the liberation of their darker 
 sisters, was driven with hootings into the street. The 
 Attorney G-eneral of Massachusetts brought an indict- 
 ment for blasphemy against a country minister, one 
 of the most learned biblical scholars in America, for 
 publicly proving that none of the " Messianic prophe- 
 cies " of the Old Testament was ever fulfilled by Jesus 
 of Nazareth, who accordingly was not the expected 
 Christ of the Jews. Abner Kneeland, editor of a news- 
 paper, in which he boasted of the name " Infidel," 
 was clapped in jail for writing against the ecclesias- 
 tical notion of God, — the last man ever punished for 
 blasphemy in the State. At the beck of a Yirginian 
 
58 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 slave-holder, the Governor of Massachusetts sug- 
 gested to the Legislature the expediency of abridging 
 the old New England liberty of speech ! 
 
 The movement party established a new Quarterly, 
 the Dial, wherein their wisdom and their folly rode 
 together on the same saddle, to the amazement of 
 lookers-on. The short-lived journal had a narrow 
 circulation, but its most significant papers were 
 scattered wide by newspapers which copied them. 
 A Quarterly Beview was also established by Mr. 
 Brownson, then a Unitarian Minister and '^ sceptical 
 democrat " of the most extravagant class, but now a 
 Catholic, a powerful advocate of material and spir- 
 itual despotism, and perhaps the ablest writer in 
 America against the Rights of Man and the Welfare 
 of his race. In this he diffused important philoso- 
 phic ideas, displayed and disciplined his own extraor- 
 dinary talents for philosophic thought and popular 
 writing, and directed them towards Democracy, 
 Transcendentalism, " New Views," and the ^^ Pro- 
 gress of the Species." 
 
 I count it a piece of good fortune that I was a 
 young man when these things were taking place, 
 when great questions were discussed, and the public 
 had not yet taken sides. 
 
 After I became a minister I laid out an extensive 
 plan of study, a continuation of previous work. I 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTEE. 59' 
 
 intended to write a " History of the Progressive 
 Development of Religion among the leading Races 
 of Mankind/' and attended at once to certain pre- 
 liminaries. I studied the Bible more carefully and 
 comprehensively than before, both the Criticism and 
 Interpretation ; and, in six or seven years, prepared 
 an '' Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the 
 Old Testament/' translated from the German of Dr. 
 De Wette, the ablest writer in the world on that 
 theme ; the book as published was partly his and 
 partly mine. This work led me to a careful study of 
 the Christian Fathers of the first five centuries, and 
 of most of the great works written about the Bible 
 and Christianity. I intended to prepare a similar 
 work on the New Testament, and the Apocrypha of 
 both Old and New. I studied the philosophers, 
 theologians and biblical critics of Germany, the only 
 land where theology was then studied as a science, 
 and developed with scientific freedom. I was much 
 helped by the large learning and nice analysis of these 
 great thinkers, who have done as much for the history 
 of the Christian movement as Niebuhr for that of the 
 Roman State. But as I studied the profound works of 
 Catholic and Protestant, the regressive and the pro- 
 gressive men, and got instruction from all, I did not 
 feel inclined to accept any one as my master, think- 
 ing it lawful to ride on their horses without being 
 myself either saddled or bridled. 
 
60 THEODOEE PARKER'S 
 
 The critical study of the Bible only enhanced my 
 reverence for the great and good things I found in 
 the Old Testament and New. They were not the 
 less valuable because they were not the work of 
 '' miraculous and infallible inspiration/' and because 
 I found them mixed with some of the worst doctrines 
 ever taught by men; it was no strange thing to find 
 pearls surrounded by sand, and roses beset with 
 thorns. I liked the Bible better when I could con- 
 sciously take its contradictory books each for what 
 it is, and felt nothing commanding me to accept 
 it for what it is not ; and could freely use it as a 
 help, not slavishly serve it as a master, or worship 
 it as an idol. I took no doctrine for true, simply 
 because it was in the Bible ; what therein seemed 
 false or wrong,- 1 rejected as freely as if I had found 
 it in the Sacred Books of the Buddhists or Mormons. 
 
 I had not preached long before I found, as never 
 before, that practically, the ecclesiastical worship of 
 the Bible hindered the religious welfare and progress 
 of the Christians more than any other cause. 
 
 With Doctors, the Traditionary Drug was once a 
 Fetish, which they reverenced and administered 
 without much inquiring whether it would kill or cure. 
 But now, fortunately, they are divided into so many 
 sects, each terribly criticising the other, the spirit of 
 philosophic scepticism and inquiry by experiment has 
 so entered the profession, that many have broken with 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 61 
 
 that authority, and ask freely, '' How can the sick 
 man recover?" The worship of the Traditionary 
 Drug is getting ended. 
 
 With Lawyers, the law of the land, custom, or pro- 
 mulgated statute, is also a Fetish. They do not ask, 
 " Is the statute right ? — • will its application promote 
 Justice ? " which is the common interest of all men, 
 but only, " Is it Law ? " To this the judge and advo- 
 cate must prostitute their conscience ; — hence the 
 personal ruin which so often is mistaken for personal 
 success. 
 
 With Protestant ministers, the Bible is a Fetish ; it 
 is so with Catholic priests, likewise, only to them the 
 Roman Church is the Master-Fetish, the " Big Thun- 
 der," while the Bible is but an inferior and subser- 
 vient idol. For ultimate authority, the minister does 
 not appeal to God, manifesting himself in the world 
 of matter and the world of man, but only to the Bible ; 
 to that he prostitutes his mind and conscience, heart 
 and soul ; on the authority of an anonymous Hebrew 
 book, he will justify the slaughter of innocent men, 
 women and children, by the thousand ; and, on that of 
 an anonymous Greek book, he will believe, or at least 
 command others to believe, that man is born totally 
 depraved, and God will perpetually slaughter men in 
 Hell by the million, though they had committed no 
 fault, except that of not believing an absurd doctrine 
 they had never heard of Ministers take the Bible in 
 6 
 
62 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 the lump as divine ; all between the lids of the book 
 is equally the " Word of G-od," infallible and miracu- 
 lous ; he that believeth it shall be saved, and he that 
 believeth not shall be damned ; no amount of Piety 
 and Morality can make up for not believing this. No 
 Doctor is ever so subordinate to his Drug, no Lawyer 
 lies so prone before Statute and Custom, as the mass 
 of Ministers before the Bible, the great Fetish of 
 Protestant Christendom. The Ephesians did not so 
 worship) their great goddess Diana and the meteoric 
 stone which fell down from Jupiter. '' We can believe 
 anything," say they, " which has a ' Thus saitli the 
 Lord ' before or after it." The Bible is not only 
 , Master of the Soul, it is also a talisman to keep men 
 /from harm; bodily contact with it, through hand or 
 ; eye, is a part of Religion ; — ^ so it lies in railroad 
 • stations, in the parlors and sleeping chambers of 
 ^ taverns, and the cabins of ships, only to be seen and 
 ■ touched, not read. The pious mother puts it in the 
 trunk of her prodigal son, about to travel, and while 
 she knows he is wasting her substance upon harlots 
 and in riotous living, she contents herself with the 
 thought that " he has got his Bible with him, and 
 promised to read a chapter every day ! " So the 
 Catholic mother uses an image of the " Virgin Mother 
 of Grod," and the Rocky Mountain savage a bundle of 
 grass : It is a Fetish. 
 
 But with this general worship of the Bible, there 
 
EXPERIENCE A3 A MINISTER. 63 
 
 is yet a cunning use of it ; as the lawyers twist a 
 statute to wring out a meaning they know it does 
 not contain, but themselves put in, or warp a decision 
 till it fits their purpose, so, with equal sophistry, and 
 perhaps self-deceit, do the ministers twist the Bible 
 to support their special doctrine : no book has been 
 explained with such sophistry. Thus, some make the 
 Apostle Paul a Unitarian, and find neither Divinity 
 nor the Preexistence ascribed to Jesus in the fourth 
 Grospel ; while others discover the full-blown Trinity 
 in the first verse of the first chapter of the first book 
 in the Bible ; nay, yet others can find no Devil, no 
 Wrathful God, and no Eternal Damnation, even in the 
 New Testament. But all these ministers agree that 
 the Bible is the " Word of God," " His only Word," 
 miraculous and infallible, and that belief in it is indis- 
 pensable to Christianity, and continually preach this 
 to the people. 
 
 I had not been long a minister, before I found this 
 worship of the Bible as a Fetish, hindering me 'at 
 each progressive step. If I wished to teach the 
 nobleness of man, the Old Testament and New were 
 there with dreadful condemnations of Human Nature ; 
 did I speak of God's Love for all men, the Bible was 
 full of ghastly things — Chosen People, Hell, Devil, 
 Damnation — to prove that he loved only a few, and 
 them not overmuch ; did I encourage free individu- 
 ality of soul, such as the great Bible-men themselves 
 
64 THEODORE PARKERS 
 
 ]iad, asking all to be Christians as Jesus was a Christ, 
 there were texts of bondage, commanding a belief 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 
 great argument for the Constancy of God, all the 
 miracles came and held their mythologic finger up. 
 Even Slavery was '^ of Grod," for the ^' divine stat- 
 utes '' in the Old Testament 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. The best thing in the Bible is the free Genius for 
 Religion, which is itself inspiration, and not only 
 learns particular Truths through its direct normal 
 intercourse with God, but creates new men in its 
 own likeness, to lead every Israel out of his Egypt, 
 and conduct all men to the Land of Promise : whoso 
 worships the Bible, loses this. 
 
 I set myself seriously to consider how I could best 
 oppose this monstrous evil : it required great caution. 
 I feared lest I should weaken men's natural trust in 
 God, and their respect for true Religion, by rudely 
 showing them that they worshipped an idol, and were 
 
■^ ' EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 65 
 
 misled into gross superstition. This fear did not 
 come from my nature, but from ecclesiastical tradi- 
 tion and the vice of a New England theologic culture. 
 It has been the maxim of almost every sect in Christen- 
 dom that the mass of men, in religious matters, must 
 be ruled with authority, that is, by outward force ; — 
 this principle belongs to the Idea of a Supernatural 
 E-evelation ; the people cannot determine for them- 
 selves what is true, moral, religious ; their opinions 
 must be made for them by supernatural authority, 
 not by them through the normal use of their higher 
 faculties ! Hence the Catholic priest appeals to the 
 supernatural Church to prove the infallibility of the 
 Pope, the actual presence of the body and blood of 
 Jesus in the sacramental bread and wine ; hence the 
 Protestant appeals to the supernatural Bible, to prove 
 that Jesus was born with no Imman father, the total 
 depravity of all men, the wrath of God, the existence 
 of a Devil, and the eternal torments of Hell. Besides, 
 the man of superior education is commonly separated 
 from sympathizing Avith 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 reflection. 
 
 I had some of these unnatural doubts and fears ; 
 but my chief anxiety came less from distrust of man- 
 kind, than from diffidence in my own power to tell the 
 truth so clear and well that I should do no liarm. 
 6-^^ 
 
G6 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 However, when I saw the evil whicli came from this 
 superstition, I could not be silent. In conversation 
 and preaching, I explained little datails — this was 
 poetry in the Bible, and not matter of fact ; that was 
 only the dress of the doctrine, 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 phi- 
 losophically, and set on its ti-ue foundation. So, 
 designing to save men's reverence for the grand 
 truths of the Bible, while I should wean them away 
 from worshipping it, I soon laboriously wrote two 
 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 witnesses ; of Scientific Con- 
 tradictions, passages at open variance with the facts 
 of the material universe ; and of Moral and Reli- 
 gious Contradictions, passages which were hostile 
 to the highest intuitions and reflections of Human 
 Nature. I made the discourses as perfect as I then 
 could at that early stage of my life : very imperfect 
 and incomplete I should, doubtless, find them now. 
 I then inquired about the expediency of preaching 
 them immediately. I had not yet enough practical 
 experience of men to authorize me to depart from 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 67 
 
 the ecclesiastical distrust of the people ; I consulted 
 older and enlightened ministers. They all said, '^ No ! 
 Preach no such thing! You will only do harm!"' 
 One of the most learned and liberal ministers of New- 
 England advised me never to oppose the popular 
 religion ! " But, if it be wrong to hinder the re- 
 ligious welfare of the people — ^what then?" Why, 
 let it alone ; all the old philosophers did so ; Socrates 
 sacrificed a cock to Jj]sculapius ! He that spits in 
 the wind spits in his own face ; you will ruin your- 
 self, 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 char- 
 acter. I told him my conviction and my doubts, 
 asking his advice. He also thought silence wiser 
 than speech, yet said there were many thoughtful 
 men who felt troubled by the offensive things in 
 the Bible, and would be grateful to any one who 
 could show that Religion was independent thereof 
 But, he added, "If you try it, you will be mis- 
 understood. Take the Society at , perhaps 
 
G8 THEODOEE PARKER'S 
 
 one of the most intelligent in the city; you Avill 
 preach your sermons, a few will understand and 
 thank you. But the great vulgar, Avho hear im- 
 perfectly 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 un- 
 derstand 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 into the newspapers, and all the ministers in 
 the land will be down upon you ! No good will be 
 done, but much harm. You had better let it all 
 alone!" 
 
 I kept my sermons more than a year, doubting 
 whether the little congregation would be able to 
 choose between Truth 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 contradictions in the HebrcAv 
 and Greek Scriptures ! But at length I could 
 wait no longer ; and to ease my own conscience, I 
 preached the two sermons, yet not venturing to 
 look the audience in the face and see the imme- 
 diate result. In the course of the week, men and 
 women of the commonest education, but of earnest 
 character and profound religious feeling, took pains 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 69 
 
 to tell me of the great comfort I had given them, 
 by showing, what they had long felt, that the Bible 
 is one thing and Religion another ; that the two had 
 no necessary connection ; that the faults of the Old 
 Testament or the New need not hinder any man 
 from ■ religious development ; and that he never 
 need try to believe a statement in the Bible which 
 was at variance with his reason and his conscience. 
 They thanked me for the attempt to apply Common 
 Sense to Religion and the Bible. The most thought- 
 ful and religious seemed the most instructed, I 
 could not learn that any one felt less reverence for 
 God, or less love for Piety and Morality. It was 
 plain I had removed a stone of stumbling from the 
 public path. The scales of ecclesiastical tradition 
 fell from my eyes ; by this crucial experiment, this 
 guide-board instance, I learned that the mass of 
 men need not be led blindfold by clerical authority, 
 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 he knew thereunto appertaining, as all 
 teachers of Mathematics or of Chemistry are ex- 
 pected to do in their profession. 
 
 I had once felt very happy, when I could legitimate 
 these three great primal instinctive intuitions, of the 
 Divine, the Just, and the Immortal ; I now felt 
 
70 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 equally joyous at finding- I might safely appeal to 
 the same instincts in the mass of New England men, 
 and build Religion on that imperishable foundation. 
 
 I continued my humble studies, philosophical and 
 theological; and fast as I found a new Truth, I 
 preached it to gladden other hearts in my own parish, 
 and elsewhere, when I spoke in the pulpits of my 
 friends. The neighboring ministers became familiar 
 with my opinions and my practice, but seldom uttered 
 a reproach. At length, on the 19th of May, 184:1, at 
 the ordination of Mr. Shackford, a ^ thoughtful and 
 |)romising young man, at South Boston, I preached a 
 " Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Chris- 
 tianity." The Trinitarian ministers who were pre- 
 sent joined in a jDublic protest ; a great outcry was 
 raised against the sermon and its author. Theologi- 
 cal and commercial newspapers rung with animad- 
 versions against its wickedness. '' Unbeliever," '' In- 
 fidel," " Atheist," Avere the titles bestoAved 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 Avidely circulated 
 journals of New England, calling on the Attorney 
 G-eneral to prosecute, the Grand Jury to indict, and 
 the Judge to sentence me to three years' confinement 
 
 [ in the State Prison, for blasphemy ! 
 
 I printed the Sermon ; but no bookseller in Boston 
 Avould put liis name to tlie title-page, — Unitarian 
 
EXPEKIENCE AS A MINISTER. 71 
 
 ministers had been busy with their advice. The 
 SAvedenborgian printers volunteered the protection 
 of their name ; the little pamphlet was thus published, 
 sold, and vehemently denounced. 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 
 I sat down, and withdrew from me as Jews from con- 
 tact with a leper. In a few months most of my for- 
 mer 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 denomination determined, 
 '^ This young man must be silenced !" The Unitarian 
 periodicals were shut against me and my 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 Rox- 
 bury. 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 
 
72 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land 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 have only this late oppor- 
 tunity to thank them for their anonymous kindness. 
 Of course, scurrilous and abusive letters did not fail 
 to appear. 
 
 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 per- 
 taining to Religion;" they were reported in some 
 of the newspapers, most ably and fully in the New 
 York Tribune, not then the famous and powerful 
 sheet it has since become. I delivered the lectures 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTEK. 73 
 
 several times that winter in the 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 next autumn I delivered in Boston six " Ser- 
 mons for the Times," treating of Theology, of Reli- 
 gion, and of its application to Life. These also were 
 repeated in several other places. 
 
 But, weary with anxiety and excess of work, both 
 public and private, my health began to be seriously 
 impaired, and in September, 1843, I fled off to 
 Europe, to spend a year in recovery, observation, 
 and thought. I had there an opportunity to study 
 nations I 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 
 7 
 
74 THEODORE PARKEE'S 
 
 generation to generation, had lived under them; 
 to study the effect of those forms of rehgion which 
 are enforced by the inquisitor or the constable; and, 
 in many forms, to see the difference between freedom 
 and bondage. In their architecture, painting, and 
 sculpture, the European cities afforded me a new 
 world of Art, while the heterogeneous crowds which 
 throng the streets of those vast ancient capitals, so 
 rich in their historic monuments, presented human 
 life in forms I had not known before. It is only 
 in the low parts of London, Paris, and Naples, that 
 an American learns what the Ancients meant by the 
 " People," the " Populace," and sees what Barbar- 
 ism may exist in the midst of wealth, culture, 
 refinement, and manly virtue. There I could learn 
 what warning and what guidance the Old World 
 had to offer to the New. Visiting some of the seats 
 of learning, which, in Europe, are also sometimes 
 the citadel of new thought and homes of genius, I 
 had an opportunity of conversing with eminent men, 
 and comparing their schemes for improving man- 
 kind with my own. Still more, I had an entire 
 year, free from all practical duties, for revising my 
 own philosophy and theology, and laying out plans 
 for future work. My involuntary year of rest and 
 inaction turned out, perhaps, the most profitable in 
 my life, up to that time, in the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge and in preparing for much that was to follow. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 75 
 
 Coming home the next September, with more physi- 
 cal strength than ever before, I found a hearty wel- 
 come from the many friends who crowded the little 
 Meeting House to welcome my return — as before to 
 bid me God-speed — and resumed my usual labors, 
 public and private. In my absence, my theological 
 foes had contented themselves with declaring that my 
 doctrines had taken no root in America, and my per- 
 sonal friends were turning off from the error of their 
 ways ; but the sound of my voice roused my oppo- 
 nents to new activity, and ere long the pulpits and 
 newspapers rang with the accustomed warfare. But 
 even in Boston, there were earnest ministers who 
 lifted up their voices in behalf of freedom of thought 
 in the study, and free speech in the pulpit. I shall 
 never cease to be grateful to Mr. Pierpont, Mr. Sar- 
 gent, and James Freeman Clarke, '' friends in need, 
 and friends in deed." They defended the Principle 
 of Religious Freedom, though they did not share the 
 opinions it led me to, nor always approve of the 
 manner in which I set them forth. It was zeal for the 
 True and the Right, not special personal friendship 
 for me, which moved them to this manly course. In 
 the most important Orthodox Quarterly in America, 
 a young Trinitarian minister. Rev. Mr. Porter, re- 
 viewed my Discourse of Religion, not doing injustice 
 to author or work, while he stoutly opposed both. A 
 few other friendly words were also spoken ; but what 
 were these among so many ! 
 
76 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 Under these circumstances you formed your So- 
 ciety : A few earnest men thought the great Princi- 
 ple of Religious Freedom was in danger ; for, indeed, 
 it was ecclesiastically repudiated, and that too with 
 scorn and hissing, by the Unitarians — the "Liberal 
 Christians ! " the '' Party of Progress " — ^not less than 
 by the Orthodox. Some of you came together, 
 privately at first, and then in public, to look matters 
 in the face, and consider what ought to be done. 
 A young man proposed this resolution : ^^Besolved, 
 That the Rev. Theodore Parker shall have a chance 
 to be heard in Boston." That motion prevailed, and 
 \ measures were soon taken to make the resolution an 
 event. But, so low was our reputation, that, though 
 payment was offered in advance, of all the unoccupied 
 halls in Boston, only one could be hired for our purpose ; 
 but that was the largest and most central. So, one 
 rainy Sunday, the streets full of snow, on the 16th 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 devel- 
 opment of Religion in the Christian world, 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 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 77 
 
 well what we had to expect at first ; for we were com- 
 mitting 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 In- 
 quisition was built to punish such ; to that end blazed 
 the fagots 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 ecclesiastical authority of Christendom ; its 
 God was not my God, nor its ScrijDtures 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 in pieces for ever and ever. I came 
 to preach " another Gospel," Sentiments, Ideas, Ac- 
 tions, quite unlike what belonged to the theology of 
 the Christian church. Though, severely in earnest, 
 I came to educate men into 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 knoAv what was 
 7"- 
 
78 THEODOEE PARKER'S 
 
 latent in myself, nor foresee all the doctrines which 
 then were hid in my own first principles, what 
 embryo fruits 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 recognize 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 pecu- 
 liar in my system. It is not known to the Old Testa- 
 ment 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." Thus it is 
 commonly taught, in all the great theologies, that, at 
 the Crucifixion of Jesus, '' the Creator of the Uni- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTEE. 79 
 
 verse was put to death, and his own creatures were 
 his executioners." Besides, in the ecclesiastic con- 
 ception of Deity, there is a fourth person to the God- 
 head, namely, the Devil, an outlying member, unac- 
 knowledged, indeed, the complex of all evil, but as 
 much a part of Deity as either Son or Holy Ghost, 
 and far more powerful than all the rest, who seem 
 but jackals to provide for this '' roaring lion," which 
 devours what the others but create, die for, inspire, 
 and fill. I know this statement is ghastly, — the theo- 
 logic notion it sets forth, to me seems far more so. 
 While the Christians accept the Bible as the " Word 
 of God," direct, miraculous, infallible, containing a 
 complete and perfect " revelation" of His Nature, His 
 Character and Conduct, it is quite impossible for 'them 
 to accept, or even tolerate, the Infinite Perfection of 
 God. The imperfect and cruel character attributed 
 to God, rejoicing in his Hell and its legions of devils, 
 is the fundamental vice of the ecclesiastical theology, 
 which so many accept as their " Religion," and name 
 the hideous thing "Christianity!" They cannot 
 escape the consequence of their first principle ; 
 their gate must turn on its own hinge. 
 
 I have taught that God contains all possible and 
 conceivable perfection: — the Perfection of Being, Self- 
 subsistence, conditioned only by itself; the Perfection 
 of Power, All-mightiness ; of Mind, All-knowingness ; 
 of Conscience, All-righteousness ; of Affection, All- 
 
80 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 lovingness; and the Perfection of that innermost 
 Element, which in finite man is Personality, All-holi- 
 ness, faithfulness to Himself. 
 
 This 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 is 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 doubtless appear to beings of larger 
 powers than man's. My definition distinguishes 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 consciousness. 
 
 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 conceivable 
 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 per- 
 fectly 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 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER, 81 
 
 between God and the two-fold Universe which he 
 creates. The Perfect Creator is thus also a Perfect 
 Providence ; indeed, Creation and Providence are 
 not objective accidents of Deity, nor subjective 
 caprices, 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 implying that the Divine Being has the 
 limitations of the female figure — as some ministers 
 deceitfully allege of late, who might have been sup- 
 ' posed to know better than thus to pervert plain 
 speech, — but to express more sensibly the quality of 
 tender and unselfish Love, which mankind associates 
 more with Mother than aught else beside. 
 
 11. The Adequacy of Man for all his Functions. 
 — From the Infinite Perfection of God there follows 
 unavoidably the relative perfection of all that He 
 creates. So, the nature of man, tending to a pro- 
 gressive development of all his manifold powers, 
 must be the best possible nature, most fit for the per- 
 fect accomplishment of the perfect Purpose, and 
 the attainment of the perfect End, which God designs 
 for the race and the individual. It is not difiicult in 
 this general way to show the relative perfection of 
 Human Nature, deducing this from the Infinite Per- 
 fection of God ; but I think it impossible to prove it 
 
82 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 by the inductive process of reasoning from concrete 
 facts of external observation, of wliicli 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 intellectual, 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 continually taught that 
 man has in himself all the faculties he needs to accom- 
 plish 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 
 gi'adual growth from merely sentient and passive 
 babyhood, up to thoughtful, self-directing 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 ignorance, poverty, and utter nakedness of soul 
 and sense, the necessary primitive conditions of the 
 race, up to the present Civilization of the leading 
 nations. The primitive is a wild man, who gradually 
 grows up to civilization. To me, the notorious facts 
 of human history, the condition of language, art, 
 industry, and the foot-prints of man left all over the 
 torrid and temperate lands, admit of no other inter- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER, 83 
 
 pretation. Of course it must have required many a 
 thousand years for Divine Providence to bring this 
 child from his mute, naked, ignorant poverty, up to 
 the many-voiced, many-colored civilization 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 slow-growing plant, do I find proof of time immense, 
 wherein Man, this Spiritual Cosmos, has been assum- 
 ing his present condition, individual, domestic, social, 
 and national, and accumulating that wealth of things 
 and thoughts which is the mark of civilization. I 
 have tried to show by history the progressive devel- 
 opment of Industry and "Wealth, of Mind and Knowl- 
 edge, of Conscience and Justice, of the Affections 
 and Philanthropy, of the Soul and True Religion ; the 
 many forms of the Family, the Community, State 
 and Church, I look on as so many " experiments in 
 
84 THEODORE PARKEIi'S 
 
 living/' all useful, each, perhaps, in its time and place 
 as indispensable as the various geological changes. 
 But this progressive development does not end with 
 us ; we have seen only the beginning ; the future 
 triumphs of the race must be vastly greater than all 
 accomplished yet. In the primal instincts and autom- 
 atic desires of Man, I have found a prophecy that 
 what he wants is possible, and shall one day be actual. 
 It is a glorious future on earth which I have set 
 before your eyes and hopes, thereby stimulating both 
 your patience to bear now what is inevitable, and 
 your thought and toil to secure a future triumph to 
 be had on no other terms. What good is not with us 
 is before, to be attained by Toil and Thought, and 
 Eeligious Life. 
 
 III. Absolute or Natural Eeligion. — In its com- 
 plete and perfect 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 pur- 
 poses. I have taught that there were three parts 
 which make up the sum of true religion : the Emo- 
 tional part, of right Feelings, where religion at first 
 begins in the automatic, primal instinct ; the Intellec- 
 tual part, of true Ideas, which either directly repre- 
 sent the primitive, instinctive feeling of whoso holds 
 them, or else produce a kindred, secondary and 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 85 
 
 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 Reli- 
 gion 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 harmony with the 
 entire constitution of man. 
 
 But this religion which begins in the instinctive 
 feelings, and thence advances to reflective ideas, as- 
 sumes its ultimate form in the character of men, and 
 so appears in their actions, individual, domestic, so- 
 cial, 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, Christian, 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 wel- 
 fare, 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 
 
86 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 the high achievements of art, science, literature and 
 politics, is only distinctly conceived of in an advanced 
 stage of man's growth : to make its idea a Fact, is the 
 highest triumph of the Human Race. This is the 
 Ideal 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 " King- 
 dom of Heaven." The religious history of the race is 
 the record of man's continual but unconscious efforts 
 to attain this " Desire of all nations ; " poetic stories 
 of the " golden age," or of man in the garden of Eden, 
 are but this natural wish looking back and fondly 
 dreaming that '' the former days were better than 
 these." But while all the other forms of religion 
 must ultimately fail before this, fading as it flowers, 
 each one of them has yet been a help towards it, 
 probably indispensable to the development of man- 
 kind. 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 situation amid the great 
 currents of water and of air ; as naturally as the de- 
 pendent Fauna of the place comes from its Flora. 
 Thus in the religions of mankind, as in the various 
 ■governments, nay, as in the different geologic periods, 
 there is diversity of form, but Unity of Aim : destruc- 
 tion is only to create ; Earthquakes, which submerged 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 87 
 
 the sunken continents whose former mountains are 
 but islands now, and Revolutions, in which the He- 
 brew and Classic religions went under, their poetic 
 summits only visible, have analogous functions to per- 
 form — Handmaids of Creation both. 
 
 For these three great doctrines — • of God, of Man, 
 of Religion — I have depended on no Chiirch and 
 no Scripture ; y-et 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 con- 
 sciousness within me, and facts of observation in the 
 human world without. To me the Material World 
 and the outward History of Man do not supply a suf- 
 ficient revelation of God, nor warrant me to speak of 
 Infinite Perfection. 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 
 reflected back from Deity itself. 
 
 I know well what may be said of the '' Feebleness 
 of all the Human Faculties," their '^ unfaithfulness 
 and unfitness for their work ; " — ■ that the mind is not 
 adequate for man's intellectual function, nor the con- 
 science for the moral, nor the afi'ections for the 
 philanthropic, nor the soul for the religious, nor even 
 the body for the corporeal, but that each requires 
 miraculous help from a God who is only outside of 
 
88 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 Humanity ! There is a denial which boldly rejects 
 the Immortality 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 declares he cannot 
 be certain of anything he learns by the normal exer- 
 cise of any faculty ! I have carefully studied this 
 School of Doubt, modern, not less than old, as it 
 appears in history. In it there are honest inquirers 
 after truth, but misled by some accident, and also 
 sophists, who live by their sleight of mind, 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 anxious to support their ecclesiastic 
 theology, that they think it is not safe on its throne 
 till they have annihilated the claim of Reason, Con- 
 science, 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 com- 
 pliment these ecclesiastic sceptics pay their Deity, 
 to say He so makes and manages the world that we 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 89 
 
 cannot trust the sights we see, the sounds we hear, 
 the thoughts we think, or the moral, affectional, 
 religious emotions we feel; that we are certain 
 neither of the intuitions of instinct, nor the demon- 
 strations of reason, but yet by some anonymous 
 testimony, can be made sure that Balaam's she-ass 
 spoke certain Hebrew words, and one undivided 
 third part of God was " born of the Virgin Mary, 
 suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, descend- 
 ed into Hell, and the third day rose again," to take 
 away the wrath which the other two undivided third 
 parts of God felt against all mankind ! 
 
 It is not for me to say there is no limit to the pos- 
 sible attainments of man's religious or other faculties. 
 I will not dogmatize where I do not know. But his- 
 tory shows that the Hercules' Pillars of one age are 
 sailed through in the next, and a wide ocean entered 
 on, which in due time is found rich with islands of 
 its own, and washing a vast continent not dreamed of 
 by such as slept within their temples old, while it 
 sent to their very coasts its curious joints of unwonted 
 cane, its seeds of many an unknown tree, and even 
 elaborate 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 
 8* 
 
90 THEODORE PARKER's 
 
 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 
 develop the material resources and educate the spir- 
 itual powers of Europe and America. Still less would 
 they conceive it possible for men to make all the 
 farms, the mills, the shops, the houses, and the ships 
 of civilized mankind. But the philosopher sees it is 
 possible for toil and thought soon to double, and then 
 multiply manifold the industrial attainments of Bri- 
 tain 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 
 window, 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 in- 
 vented letters, arithmetic symbols, gunpowder, the 
 compass, the printing press, the telescope, the steam- 
 engine, and the telegraph, only ploughed in corners 
 of the field of human possibility, 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 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 91 
 
 New England now enjoys ! Who shall tell industrious, 
 mathematic, progressive mankind, " Stop there ! you 
 have reached the utmost bound of human possibility ; 
 beyond it, economy 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 naught directly of thy 
 God, thy duty, or thyself! Pause, and accept my 
 unauthenticated 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 besides, yet agree in 
 their contempt for Human Nature, glory in the errors 
 of genius, or the grosser follies of mankind, 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 neither the atheistic philos- 
 opher nor the theologic despiser of his kind ; but, 
 faithful to the great Primeval Instincts of the Soul, 
 believing, creating and rejoicing, goes on its upward 
 way, nor doubts of Man or God, of Sense or Intellect. 
 
 These three great doctrines I have preached pos- 
 itively, as abstract Truth, representing Facts of the 
 Universe : that might be peaceful work. But they 
 
92 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 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 peace- 
 ful look ; for I must examine actual institutions, and 
 criticise their aim, their mode of operation, and 
 their result. The great obvious Social Forces in 
 America may be thus summed up : — 
 
 1. There is the organized Trading Power, — hav- 
 ing its home in the great towns, which seeks gain 
 with small regard to that large Justice which rep- 
 resents alike the mutual interests and duties of all 
 men, and to that Humanity which interposes the 
 affectional instinct when Conscience is asleep. This 
 power seems to control all things, amenable only 
 to the all-mighty dollar. 
 
 2. The organized 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 Peo- 
 ple, who, on great occasions, sometimes interfere 
 and change the traders' rule. 
 
 3. The organized Ecclesiastical Power, the various 
 sects which, though quite unlike, yet all mainly agree 
 in their fundamental Principle of Vicariousness — 
 an alleged Eevelation, instead of actual human facul- 
 ties, salvation from God's wrath and eternal ruin, by 
 the Atoning; Blood of crucified God. This is more 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 93 
 
 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 organized Literary Power, the endowed 
 colleges, the periodical press, with its triple multi- 
 tude of journals — commercial, political, theological — 
 and sectarian tracts. This has no original ideas, but 
 diffuses the opinion of the other powers Avhom it 
 represents, whose Will it serves, and whose Kaleido- 
 scope it is. 
 
 I must examine these four great Social Forces, 
 and show what was good in them, and what ill ; 
 ascertain what Natural Religion demanded of each, 
 and what was the true function of Trade, Govern- 
 ment, a Church, and a Literature. When I came 
 to a distinct consciousness of my own first prin- 
 ciple, and my consequent 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. 
 
94 THEODORE PARKER's 
 
 It is not now, my Friends, worth Avhile for me to 
 enter on the details of these plans which have come 
 to nothing, and which I shall probably never work 
 out ; but I ought at least to name some of the most 
 important things I hoped to do. When I first came 
 to Boston I intended to do something for the Perish- 
 ing 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 
 by public and private charity — two fountains that 
 never fail in Puritanic Boston — ■ was more than suf 
 ficient to 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 and j^erish. Our mercy pulls a few out 
 of the water ; it does not 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 laboring Protestant population 
 of the North, working most hideous and wide ex- 
 tended desolation. It is fatal as starvation to the 
 Irish Catholic. None of the four great social forces 
 is its foe. There, too, was Prostitution ; men and 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 95 
 
 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 educa- 
 tion here, except what the streets taught them in 
 childhood, or the Popish priest, and the American 
 demagogue, — their two worst foes, — noisily offered 
 in their adult years ; it seemed to me not difficult 
 for the vast charity of Boston to furnish instruction 
 and guidance to this class of the American people, 
 both in their childhood and their later youth. That 
 admirable institution, the Warren Street Chapel — 
 well nigh the most Christian public thing in Boston, 
 — ■ and the Children's Aid Society at New York, with 
 its kindred, abundantly show how much can be done, 
 and at how little cost. 
 
 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 vengeance 
 on the felon, not also to elevate mankind by refining 
 him. In my boyhood 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 illegal 
 thefts did not amount to twenty dollars ! and another, 
 not better born, who lawfully stole houses and farms. 
 
96 THEODORE PAEKER'S 
 
 lived a " Gentleman," and at death left a considerable 
 estate, and the name of Land-shark. While a theolo- 
 gical student, I taught a class in the Sunday School of 
 the State Prison, often sawmy fellow-townsman, became 
 well acquainted with several convicts, learned the 
 mode of treatment, and heard the sermons and ghastly 
 prayers which were let fly at the heads of the poor, 
 unprotected wretches ; I saw the " Orthodox preachers 
 and other helps," who gave them " spiritual instruc- 
 tion," and learned the utter insufficiency of our penal 
 law to mend the felon or prevent his growth in wick- 
 edness. When I became your minister I hoped to do 
 something for this class of men, whose crimes are 
 sometimes but a part of their congenital misfortune or 
 social infamy, and who are bereft of the sympathy of 
 mankind, and unconstitutionally beset with sectarian 
 ministers, whose function is to torment them before 
 their time. 
 
 For all these, the Poor, the Drunken, and the Ignor- 
 ant, 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 years younger 
 than now, and did not quite understand all the conse- 
 quences of my relation to these 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," 'anfidel," ''Atheist," "Enemy 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 97 
 
 of Mankind," 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 undertake what should be done ; and outside 
 of your ranks I could look for little help, even by 
 words and counsel. Besides, I soon found my very 
 name was enough to ruin any new good enterprise. 
 I knew there were three periods in each great move- 
 ment 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 fivefold reformation. 
 Hence I took pains to state the Facts of Poverty, 
 Drunkenness, 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 So- 
 ciety, I did my work by stealth. I sometimes saw 
 my scheme prosper, and read my words in the public 
 reports, while the whole enterprise had been ruined 
 at once if my face or name had appeared in connec- 
 tion with it. I have often found it wise to withhold 
 my name from petitions I have myself set agoing and 
 found successful ; I have got up conventions, or mass 
 9 
 
98 THEODOKE PAEKER'S 
 
 meetings, whose " managers " asked me not to show 
 my face thereat. 
 
 This chronic and progressive unpopularity led to 
 another change of my plans, not abating my activity, 
 but turning it in another direction. To accomplish 
 my work, I must spread my Ideas as widely as possible, 
 without resorting to that indecency of advertising so 
 common in America. There was but one considerable 
 Publishing House in the land that Avould 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 business, my books 
 did not have the usual opportunity of getting known 
 and circulated. They were seldom offered for sale, 
 except in one bookstore 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 Tri- 
 bune and Evening Post were almost the only excep- 
 tions. So my books had but a small circulation at 
 home in comparison with their diffusion in England 
 and Germany, where, also, they received not only 
 hostile, but most kindly notice, and sometimes from a 
 famous pen. But another opportunity for diffusing 
 my thought offered itself in the Lyceum or Public 
 Lecture. Opposed by these four great social forces 
 at home, I was surprised to find myself becoming 
 popular in the Lecture hall. After a few trials I 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 99 
 
 " got the hang of the new school-house/' and set my- 
 self to serious work therein. 
 
 For a dozen years or more, I have done my share 
 of lecturing in public, having many invitations more yf 
 than I could accept. The task was always disagree- 
 able, contrary to my natural disposition and my 
 scholarly habits. But I saw the nation had reached 
 an important crisis in its destination, and, though ig- 
 norant of the fact, yet stood hesitating between two 
 principles. The one was Slavery, which I knew 
 leads at once to Military Despotism' — ^ political, eccle- 
 siastical, social, — and ends at last in utter and 
 hopeless ruin ; for no People fallen on that road has 
 ever risen again ; it is the path so many other 
 Republics have taken and finished their course, as 
 Athens and the Ionian towns have done, as Rome 
 and the Commonwealths of the Middle Ages. The 
 other was Freedom, which leads at once to Industrial 
 Democracy — respect for labor, government over all, 
 by all, for the sake of all, rule after the Eternal Right 
 as it is writ in the Constitution of the Universe, — 
 securing welfare and progress. I saw that these 
 four social forces were advising, driving, coaxing, 
 wheedling the People to take the road to ruin ; that 
 our " great men," in which '' America is so rich 
 beyond all other nations of the earth," went strutting 
 along that path to show how safe it is, crying out 
 " Democracy," ^' Constitution," " Washington," " Gos- 
 
100 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 pel," " Christianity," " Dollars," and the like, while 
 the instincts of the people, the traditions of our 
 history, and the rising genius of men and women 
 well-born in these times of peril, with still, small 
 voice, whispered something of Self-evident Truths 
 and Unalienable Rights. 
 
 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 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 jjolitical shape ; 
 while I kept the form of literature or j^hilosophy, 
 I could discourse 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, profoundly and fairly it was treated, the 
 more would the people come, the more eagerly listen 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 101 
 
 and enthusiastically accept. So I spared no labor 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 ac- 
 quired, 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 the average, 
 I have spoken to sixty or a hundred thousand 
 persons in each year, besides addressing you on 
 Sundays, in the great Hall you threw open to all 
 comers. 
 
 Thus I have had a wide field of operation, where I 
 9->r- 
 
102 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 might rouse the Sentiment of Justice and Mercy, 
 diffuse such Ideas as I thought needful for the wel- 
 fare 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 represent any one 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 favor ; and as I felt responsible only to myself 
 and my God, I could speak freely : this was a 
 two-fold advantage. I hope I have not s]3oken in 
 vain. I thought that by each lecture I could make 
 a new, deep and lasting impression 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 generalizations 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 stop- 
 ped at, when the lecture was over, strangers came to 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 103 
 
 see me; they were generally marked men — ^intel- 
 lectual, moral, philanthropic, at any rate, inquiring 
 and attentive. We sometimes talked on great mat- 
 ters ; I made many acquaintances, gained much mis- 
 cellaneous information about men and things, the 
 state of public opinion, and, perhaps, imparted some- 
 thing in return. So I studied while I taught. 
 
 Nor was this all. I had been ecclesiastically re- 
 ported to the people as a " Disturber of the public 
 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 fol- 
 lowers " against listening to that bad man. Do n't 
 look him in the face ! " Others stoutly preached 
 against me. So, in the Bar-room " I Avas 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 a 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. Nay, 
 it has often happened that a man has told me, by let- 
 ter or word of mouth, '' I was warned against you. 
 
10-1 THEODORE PARKER'S - 
 
 but I ivould 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 riglit in his Eeligion. 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 I did 
 not overrate the number of thoughtful men who pos- 
 sibly might be deeply and originally influenced by 
 what I said in lectures. Three thousand may seem a 
 large number ; I 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 spoke 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 min- 
 isters were in the right, who, years ago, said : " Keep 
 that man out of the lecture-room ; do n't let him be 
 seen in public. Every word he speaks, on any sub- 
 ject, is a blow against our religion ! " They meant, 
 against their theology. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 105 
 
 Such are the causes which brought me into the 
 Lecture-room. I did not neglect serving you, while 
 I seemed only to instruct other men ; for every friend 
 I made in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin became an auxil- 
 iary in that great cause, so dear to you and 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 work out my difficult 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 ; while 
 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. So, I lost little time, while I fancied I 
 was doing a great and needful work. 
 
 "When I first came before you to preach, carefully 
 looking before and after, I was determined on my 
 Purpose, and had a pretty distinct conception of the 
 Mode of Operation. It was not my design to found 
 a sect, and merely build up a new ecclesiastical insti- 
 tution, but to j)roduce 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, 
 
106 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 the state, the community, were not Ends, a finality of 
 purpose, but Means to bring forth and bring up indi- 
 vidual men. To accomplish this purpose, I aimed 
 distinctly at two things : First, to produce the great- 
 est possible healthy development of the Religious 
 Faculty, acting in harmonious connection with the 
 intellectual, moral, and affectional ; 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 experience and observa- 
 tion, 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 G-od, 
 of Man, and of their mutual Relation. I was not 
 content with producing Morality alone, — ■ the normal 
 action of the Conscience and Will, the voluntative 
 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 G-od, which, 
 I think, is not dependent on conscience. I was led 
 to this aim partly by my own disposition, which, I 
 confess, naturally inclined me to spontaneous pious 
 feeling, my only youthful luxury, more than to volun- 
 tary moral action ; partly by my early culture, which 
 had given me much experience of religious emotions ; 
 and partly, also, by my wide and familiar acquaintance 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 107 
 
 Avith 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 
 common life. 
 
 I count it a great good fortune that I was bred 
 among religious Unitarians, and thereby escaped so 
 much superstition. But I felt early that the '' liberal" 
 ministers did not do justice to simple religious feel- 
 ing ; to me their preaching seemed to relate too much 
 to outward things, not enough to the inward pious 
 life ; their prayers felt cold ; but certainly they 
 preached the importance and the religious value of 
 Morality as no sect, I think, had done before. G-ood 
 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 and tradi- 
 tionary talk about " Atonement," " Redeemer," '' Sal- 
 vation by Christ," and their frequent resort to other 
 pieces of damaged phraseology. The effect of this 
 predominant Morality was soon apparent. In Massa- 
 chusetts, the head-quarters of the Unitarians, not only 
 did they gather most of the eminent intellect into 
 their ranks, the original talent and genius of the most 
 intellectual of the States, but also a very large pro- 
 portion of its moral talent and moral genius, most of 
 the eminent conscience and philanthroiDy. Leaving 
 out of sight pecuniary gifts for theological and denom- 
 
108 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 inational purposes, which come from peculiar and 
 well-known motives, where the Trinitarians are pro- 
 fessedly superior, I think it will be found that all the 
 great moral and philanthropic movements in the 
 State — social, ecclesiastical, and political — from 1800 
 to 1840, have been chiefly begun and conducted by 
 the Unitarians. Even in the Anti-Slavery enterprise, 
 the most profound, unrespectable, and unpopular of 
 them all, you are surprised to see how many Uni- 
 tarians — even ministers, a timid race — have perma- 
 nently taken an active and influential part. The Uni- 
 tarians certainly once had this moral superiority, 
 before the free, young, and growing party became a 
 Sect, hide-bound, bridled with its creed, harnessed to 
 an old, lumbering, and crazy chariot, urged Avith 
 sharp goads by near-sighted drivers, along the dusty 
 and broken pavement of tradition, noisy and shout- 
 ing, but going nowhere. 
 
 But yet, while they had this great practical excel- 
 lence, so obvious once, I thought they lacked the 
 deep, internal feeling of piety, which alone could 
 make it lasting : certainly they had not that most 
 joyous of all delights. This fact seemed clear in 
 their sermons, their prayers, and even in the hymns 
 they made, borrowed, or " adapted." . Most power- 
 fully preaching to the Understanding, the Conscience 
 and the Will, the cry was ever, " Duty, Duty ! Work, 
 Work ! " They failed to address with equal power. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 109 
 
 the Soul, and did not also shout, "Joy, Joy! Delight, 
 Delight ! " " Rejoice in God always, and again I say 
 unto you, rejoice ! " Their vessels were full of 
 water : it was all laboriously pumped up from deep 
 wells ; it did not gush out, leaping from the great 
 Spring, that is indeed on the surface of the sloping 
 ground, feeding the little streams that run among 
 the hills, and both quenching the wild asses' thirst 
 and watering also the meadows newly mown, but 
 which yet comes from the Rock of Ages, and is 
 pressed out by the cloud-compelling mountains that 
 rest thereon. — yes, by the gravitation of the earth 
 itself. 
 
 This defect of the Unitarians was a profound one. 
 Not actually, nor consciously, but by the logic of 
 their conduct, they had broke with the old ecclesias- 
 tic Supernaturalism, that with its whip of fear yet 
 compelled a certain direct, though perverted, action 
 of the simple religious element in the Trinitarians : 
 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 of the 
 Universe. But in general they had no theory which 
 justified a more emotional experience of religion. 
 Their philosophy, with many excellences, was sure 
 of no great Spiritual Truth. To their metaphysics 
 Eternal Life was only probable : the great argument 
 for it came not from the Substance of Human Nature, 
 10 
 
110 
 
 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 only from an Accident in the personal History of a 
 single man ; its proof was not intuitive, from the 
 primal instincts of mankind ; nor deductive, from the 
 nature of God ; nor yet inductive, from the general 
 phenomena of the two-fold Universe ; it was only 
 inferential, from the "Resurrection of Christ " — an 
 exceptional fact, without parallel in the story of the 
 race, and that resting on no evidence ! Nay, in their 
 chief periodical, when it represented only the opin- 
 ions of the leaders of the sect, one of their most 
 popular and powerful writers declared the existence 
 of a God Avas not a certainty of metaphysical demon- 
 stration, nor even a fact of consciousness. So this 
 great primal Truth, fundamental to all forms of 
 religion, has neither an objective, necessary and 
 ontological root in the metaphysics of the universe, 
 nor yet a mere subjective, contingent and psycholo- 
 gical root in the consciousness of John and Jane, but, 
 like the existence of " phlogiston " and " the celestial 
 aether " of the interstellar spaces, it is a matter of 
 conjecture, of inference from observed facts purely 
 external and contingent ; or, like the existence of the 
 ■'Devil," is wholly dependent on the " miraculous and ' 
 infallible revelation." Surely, a party with no better 
 philosophy, and yet rejecting instinct for guide, 
 breaking with the supernatural tradition at the 
 Trinity, its most important link, could not produce a 
 deep and continuous action of the religious element 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER, 111 
 
 in the mass of its members, when left individually 
 free ; nor when organized into a sect, with the dis- 
 cipline of a close corporation, could it continue to 
 advance, or even to hold its own, and live long on its 
 " Statement of Reasons for not believing the Trinity," 
 Exceptional men — like Henry Ware, Jr., who leaned 
 strongly towards the old supernaturalism, or like Dr. 
 Channing, whose deeper reflection or reading supplied 
 him with a more spiritual philosophy- — might escape 
 the misfortune of their party ; but the majority must 
 follow the logic of their principle. The leaders of 
 the sect, their distinctive creed only a denial, always 
 trembling before the Orthodox, rejected the ablest, 
 original talent born among them ; nay, sometimes 
 scornfully repudiated original genius, each offering a 
 more spiritual philosophy, which they mocked at as 
 "■ transcendental," and turned off to the noisy road of 
 other sects, not grateful to feet trained in paths more 
 natural. After denying the Trinity, and the Deity of 
 Christ, they did not dare affirm the Humanity of 
 Jesus, the Naturalness of Eeligion to man, the actual 
 or possible Universality of Inspiration, and declare 
 that Man is not amenable to ecclesiastic authority, 
 either the oral Eoman Tradition, or the written 
 Hebrew and Greek Scriptures ; biit naturally com- 
 muning with God, through many faculties, by many 
 elements, has in himself the Divine Well of Water, 
 springing up full of Everlasting Life, and sparkling 
 
112 THEODORE PARKEE'S 
 
 with Eternal Truth, and so enjoys continuous reve- 
 lation. 
 
 Alas ! after many a venturous and profitable cruise, 
 while in sight of port, the winds all fair, the little 
 Unitarian bark, o'ermastered by its doubts and fears, 
 reverses its course, and sails into dark, stormy seas, 
 where no such craft can live. Some of the fragments 
 of the wreck will be borne by oceanic currents where 
 they will be used by the party of progress to help 
 build more sea-worthy ships ; whilst others, when 
 water-logged, will be picked up by the great Orthodox 
 fleet, to be kiln-dried in a revival, and then serve as 
 moist, poor fuel for its culinary fires. It is a dismal 
 fault in a religious party, this lack of Piety, and dis- 
 mally have the Unitarians answered it ; yet let their 
 great merits and services be not forgot. 
 
 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 entitled to no more regard than other com- 
 mon 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 development of the religious feelings, 
 and so had neither the most powerful solace for their 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 113 
 
 many griefs, nor the profoundest joy which is needful 
 to hold them up mid all they see and suffer from. 
 They, too, commonly shared this sensational philoso- 
 phy, and broke with the ecclesiastic Supernaturalism 
 which once helped 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, unselfish 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 ministers asked 
 me to preach such matters in their pulpits, which I 
 did gladly. 
 
 You have broken with the traditions of the various 
 churches whence you have come out, and turned 
 your attention to many of the evils of the day ; when 
 I became your minister, I feared lest, in a general 
 disgust at ecclesiastical proceedings, you should aban- 
 don this very innermost of all true religion; so I 
 have taken special pains to show that well-propor- 
 tioned 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 
 10* 
 
114 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 sermons, which were very dear to me, though perhaps 
 none of them has yet been published. But coming 
 amongst you with some ministerial experience, and 
 much study of the effect of doctrines, and ecclesias- 
 tical modes of procedure, I endeavored to guard 
 against the vices which so often attend the culture 
 of this sentimental part of religion, and to prevent 
 the fatal degeneracy that often attends it. When the 
 religious element is actively excited under the con- 
 trol of the false theological ideas now so prevailing, 
 it often takes one or both of these two misdirections : 
 1. It tends to an unnatural Mysticism, which dries 
 up all the noble emotions that else would produce a 
 great useful character. The delicate and refined 
 Avoman develops the sentiment of religion in her 
 consciousness : 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 sentimental 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 suflicient altar, pours out 
 her prayers, falls into an ecstasy of devout feeling, 
 and, elegantly dishevelled like a Magdalen, weeps 
 most delicious tears. Then rising thence, she folds 
 her idle, unreligious hands, and, with voluptuous 
 scorn, turns off from the homely duties of common 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 115 
 
 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 unblessed. She lives 
 a life of intense religious emotion in private, but of 
 intense selfishness at home, and profligate 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 Gio- 
 vanni with her laugh at the opera, as St. John with 
 her tears at church. This woman's religion 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 perpetual sloth, a selfish wan- 
 ton of the soul. In his Pare aux cerfs^ Louis XY. 
 trained his maiden victims to this form of devotion I 
 
 2. It leads to ecclesiastical Ritualism. 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 Sunday severely 
 idle ; their ecclesiastical decorum is awful as a win- 
 ter's night at the North Pole of cold ; with terrible 
 punctuality they attend to the ordinance of bread 
 
116 THEODOEE PARKER'S 
 
 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 evening 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 
 secreting this abnormal shell of ritualism, which now 
 cumbers them worse than Saul's great armor on the 
 stripling shepherd lad. What can such Pachyderms 
 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, unscrupu- 
 lous debtors ; they devour widow's houses. Vain are 
 the cries of Humanity in such ears, stuffed with con- 
 densed 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 Devout- 
 ness is by no means the highest expression of love 
 for Grod, I have attempted not only to produce a nor- 
 mal development of religious feeling, but to give it 
 the normal direction to the homely duties of common 
 life, in the kitchen, the parlor, 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 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 117 
 
 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 in to their 
 desired haven ; and also, to the " charities that soothe, 
 and heal, and bless," and which are scattered at man- 
 kind'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 development of piety, and the best field for 
 its exercise when grown to manly size. 
 
 II. Partly for your education in true religion, and 
 partly to promote the welfare of your brother man, I 
 have preached much on the great Social Duties of 
 your time and place, recommending not only " pallia- 
 tive Charity," biit still more " remedial Justice." So 
 I have not only preached on the private Individual 
 Virtues, which are, and ought to be, the most constant 
 theme of all pulpits, but likewise, on the public Social 
 Virtues, that are also indispensable to the general 
 welfare. This work brought me into direct relation 
 with the chief social evils of our day. In treating 
 these matters I have proceeded with much caution, 
 beginning my attack a great ways off. First of all, I 
 endeavored to establish philosophically the Moral 
 Principle I should appeal to, and show its origin in 
 the Constitution of Man, to lay down the Natural 
 
118 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 Law so plain that all might acknowledge and accept 
 it; next I attempted to show what Welfare had 
 followed in human history from keeping this law, and 
 what Misery from violating it; then I applied this 
 moral principle of nature and the actual experience 
 of history to the special public vice I wished to 
 whelm over. Such a process may seem slow; I 
 think it is the only one sure of permanent good 
 effects. In this manner I have treated several prom- 
 inent evils. 
 
 1. I have preached against Intemperance, showing 
 the monstrous evil of Drunkenness, the material and 
 moral ruin it works so widely. My first offence in 
 preaching came when I first spoke on the misery 
 occasioned by this ghastly vice. The victims of it 
 sat before me, and were in great wrath ; they never 
 forgave me. Yet, I have not accepted the opinion of 
 the leading temperance men, that the use of intoxi- 
 cating drinks is in itself a moral or a physical evil. 
 I found they had not only a medical, but also a 
 dietetic use to serve, and in all stages of develop- 
 ment above the savage, man resorts to some sort of 
 stimulus as food for the nervous system : for a 
 practice so nearly universal, I suppose there must be 
 a cause in man's natural relation to the world of 
 matter. Accordingly, I do not like the present legal 
 mode of treating the vice, thinking it rests on a false 
 principle which will not long work well ; yet public 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 119 
 
 opinion, now setting strong against this beastly vice, 
 required tlie experiment, which could never be tried 
 under better auspices than now. But I have gladly 
 joined with all men to help put down this frightful 
 vice, w^hich more than any other concrete cause 
 hinders the welfare and progress of the working 
 people of the North. It was the first public social 
 evil I ever attacked. I have not ceased to warn old 
 and young against this monstrous and ugly sin, and 
 to call on the appointed magistrates to use all their 
 official power to end so fatal a mischief In a great 
 trading toAvn, of course such calls are vain; the 
 Interest of the Few is against the Virtue of the 
 People. 
 
 2. I have preached against Covetousness, — the 
 abnormal desire of accumulating property. In the 
 Northern States our civilization is based on respect 
 for industry in both forms. Toil and Thought. Prop- 
 erty is the product of the two : it is human powder 
 over Nature, to make the material forces of the world 
 supply the wants of man ; its amount is always the 
 test of civilization. Our political and social institu- 
 tions do not favor the accumulation of wealth in a 
 few men or a few families ; no permanent entails 
 are allowed ; it follows the natural laws of distribu- 
 tion amongst all the owner's children, or according to 
 his personal caprice ; in a few genei'ations a great 
 estate is widely scattered abroad. But as we have 
 
120 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 no hereditary honors, office, or even title, and as 
 wealth is all the parent can bequeath his child, it 
 becomes not only a material power, but also a social 
 distinction — the only one transmissible from sire to 
 son. So wealth, and not birth from famous ancestors, 
 is the thing most coveted; the stamp of the all-mighty 
 dollar is the mark of social distinction ; science may 
 be accounted folly, and genius madness, in the paved 
 or the furrowed town, but money is power in each. 
 American " Aristocracy " rests on this movable 
 basis ; it is Plutocracy : every poor white boy may 
 hope to trundle its golden wheels on to his little 
 patch of ground, for the Millionnaire is not born, but 
 self-made. Hence comes an intense desire of riches ; 
 a great amount of practical talent goes out in quest 
 thereof Beside its intrinsic character, respect for 
 money is in America what loyalty to the crown and 
 deference to feudal superiors is in England : " the 
 ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," 
 and the Americans the millionnaire, the highest pro- 
 duct of plutocracy. 
 
 Now on the whole, I do not find this desire of 
 property excessive in the people of the North. I 
 Avould greaten rather than lessen it, for it is the 
 motive of our general enterprise, the proximate cause 
 of much of our welfare and success. No nation was 
 ever too well fed, housed, clad, adorned and com- 
 forted in general : poverty, subordination to material 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 121 
 
 want, is still the great concrete barrier to civiliza- 
 tion ; '* the nations of the world must " think chiefly 
 of what they shall eat and drink, and wherewithal be 
 clothed. In this generation, the productive industry 
 of New England seems vulgar to careless eyes, and 
 excessive to severe ones ; but it is yet laying the 
 material and indispensable foundation for a spiritual 
 civilization in some future age, more grand, I think, 
 than mankind has hitherto rejoiced in. For not only 
 will the People's property be greater in proportion 
 to their number — their power to feed, clothe, house, 
 adorn and comfort themselves, — but it will be more 
 widely distributed, consequently directed with more 
 wisdom and humanity, and so bring forth and develop 
 both more and higher talents. I have advised all men 
 to shun poverty ; to seek a generous competence for 
 themselves and their dependents, and that too by 
 honest work, earning all they take. I see that a 
 great fortune, thus acquired, may now be a nobler 
 honor than all the red laurels of Nelson or Welling- 
 ton, as well as a power of use and beauty for time to 
 come. I honor the manly, self-denying enterprise 
 which starts with no heritage but itself, and honestly 
 earns a great estate. The man who makes a school- 
 book like Colburn's " First Lessons in Arithmetic," 
 or invents a labor-saving contrivance like the sewing 
 machine, or the reaping and thrashing machines, or 
 who by trade develops the resources of the country, 
 11 
 
122 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 deserves a pay proportionate to his service. A Bos- 
 ton merchant died in 1847, who had so helped turn 
 the rivers of New England into spinners and weavers, 
 that I think he earned millions of dollars more than 
 he received. If a man fully pay in efficient, produc- 
 tive toil and thought, he is entitled to all he gets, 
 one dollar or many million dollars ; he earns his 
 riches, gives equivalent for equivalent — for all 
 honest traffic is but actual barter, mutual exchange 
 of my work and j^our work, — and if his estate be but 
 what he has thus actually and honestly paid for with 
 a service given, equivalent to the service received, 
 Avhat he can virtuously keep or humanely apply and 
 expend, then it will never be too large. 
 
 But Covetousness — the lust after property already 
 created ; the dishonest desire to get wealth without 
 paying for it with proportionate service by toil and 
 thought ; the wish to hoard it as the chief object in 
 life, holding for no generoys use ; to expend it in 
 personal luxury, making man a delicate swine to eat 
 and drink beyond the needs of generous nature, a 
 butterfly to glitter in the public sun, or before the 
 private stars of fashion, a sloth, to lie idle and deform 
 the ground ; or to exhibit it for ostentation, foster- 
 ing an unwieldy self-esteem or more disgraceful 
 vanity, — this is a vice I have warned men against 
 continually: I began early. It is a popular and 
 most respectable oflfence, often counted a virtue. It 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 123 
 
 assumes many forms, now terrible and then ridicu- 
 lous. I have dealt with it accordingly, now exposing 
 its injustice or its folly, now satirizing its vulgar 
 indecency, now showing that the ill-bred children of 
 men grossly rich come to a fate no better than the 
 sons and daughters of the grossly poor ; that volun- 
 tary beggars in rufiles and voluntary beggars in rags, 
 are alike supported at the public cost, paying nothing 
 for what they take, and so should be objects of con- 
 tempt in a world where he is greatest, who does the 
 most and best. 
 
 I have often spoken of the tyranny of the rich over 
 the thriving and the poor, — our Country, State, and 
 Town, all furnishing grievous examples of the fact. 
 "As the lion eateth up the wild ass in the wilderness, 
 so the I'ich eateth up the poor," is as true now in New 
 England as two thousand years ago in Egypt. But 
 when I have seen a man with large talents for busi- 
 ness helping others while he helped himself, enrich- 
 ing his workmen, promoting their education, their 
 virtue and self-respect, I have taken special delight 
 in honoring such an act of practical humanity. Hap- 
 pily we need not go out of Boston to find examples 
 of this rare philanthropy. 
 
 3. As I was a schoolmaster at seventeen, though 
 more from necessity than early fitness, I fear, and 
 chairman of a town school committee at twenty-two, 
 I have naturally felt much interest in the Education 
 
124 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 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 
 entirely intellectual, not also moral, affectional, and 
 religious. The Sunday-Schools by no means remedy 
 this evil, or attempt to mend it ; they smartly exer- 
 cise the devotional feelings, accustom their pupils to 
 a certain 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 supernatural revelation, and confirmed 
 by miracles, which often confound the intellect, and 
 befool the conscience. They do not even attempt 
 any development of the higher faculties to an original 
 activity at all commensurate with the vigorous action 
 of the understanding. In the Public Schools there 
 are sometimes devotional exercises, good in them- 
 selves, 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 or j)oetry which appeal to what is deepest 
 in human nature, rouse indignation against successful 
 wrong, and fill the child with generous sentiments 
 and great ideas. Sunday-School books seem vet 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 125 
 
 worse, so loaded with the superstitions of the sects. 
 The heroism of this age finds no voice nor language 
 in our Schools. 
 
 But this lack of morality in our schemes of culture 
 appears most eminent in the Superior Education, in 
 colleges and other costly seminaries for maids and 
 men. The higher you go up in the scale of institu- 
 tions, the less proportionate pains is taken with the 
 development of conscience, the affections, and the 
 soul; in the dame school for infants, something is 
 done to make the child " a good boy," or " a good 
 girl," but almost nothing in the richest and most re- 
 spectable colleges. They are commonly seats of an 
 unprogressive and immoral Conservatism, where the 
 studious youth may learn many an important disci- 
 pline — mathematical, philological, scientific, literary, 
 metaphysical, and theologic, — but is pretty sure to 
 miss all effective instruction in the great art and 
 science of personal or public Humanity. Hence our 
 colleges are institutions not only to teach the mind, 
 but also for the general hunherization of young men ; 
 and a professor is there sometimes unscrupulously 
 appointed whose nature and character make it 
 notorious that his chief function must necessarily be 
 to poison the waters of life, which young men, from 
 generation to generation, will be compelled to bow 
 down at, and drink ! In the last forty years, I flunk 
 no New England college, collective Faculty or pupils, 
 11* 
 
126 THEODORE PARKEIl'S 
 
 has shown sympathy with any of tlie great forward 
 movements of mankind, which are indicated by some 
 national outbreak, like the French Revolutions of 
 1830 or 1848 ! 
 
 From this fatal defect of our scheme of culture, it 
 comes to pass that the class which has the superior 
 education — ministers, professors, lawyers, doctors, 
 and the like — is not only never a leader in any of 
 the great humane movements of the age, where Jus- 
 tice, Philanthropy or Piety is the motive, but it con- 
 tinually retards all efforts to reform evil institutions, 
 or otherwise directly increase the present welfare or 
 the future progress of mankind. The scholars' cul- 
 ture has palsied their natural instincts of humanity, 
 and gives them instead, neither the personal convic- 
 tions of free, moral reflection, nor the traditional 
 commands of church authority, but only the maxims 
 of vulgar thrift, " get the most, and give the least; 
 buy cheap, and sell dear!" Exceptional men, like 
 Channing, Pierpont, Emerson, Ripley, Mann, Rantoul, 
 Phillips, Sumner, and a few others, only confirm the 
 general rule, that the educated is also a selfish class, 
 morally not in advance of the mass of men. No 
 thoughtful, innocent man, arraigned for treason, 
 would like to put himself on the college, and be tried 
 by a jury of twelve scholars ; it were to trust in the 
 prejfidice and technic sophistry of a class, not to " put 
 himself on the country," and be judged by the Moral 
 Instincts of the people. 
 
EXPERIENX'E AS A MINISTER. 127 
 
 Knowing these facts — and I found them out pretty 
 early — I have told them often in public, and 
 shown the need of a thorough reform in our educa- 
 tional institutions. Still more have I preached on 
 the necessity that you should do in private for your 
 children what no school in this age is likely to at- 
 tempt — secure such a great development of the moral, 
 affectional, and religious powers, as shall preserve all 
 the high instincts of nature, while it enriches every 
 faculty by the information given. I need not noAv 
 speak of what I had long since intended to do amongst 
 you in this matter, when the opportunity should offer; 
 for, alas, when it came, my power to serve you quickly 
 went. 
 
 4. I have preached much on the Condition of 
 Woman. I know the great, ineffaceable difference 
 between the spiritual constitution of her and man, 
 and the consequent difference in their individual, 
 domestic and social functions. But, examining the 
 matter both philosophically and historically, it seems 
 clear that woman is man's equal, individually and 
 socially entitled to the same rights. There is no 
 conscious hostility or rivalry between the two, such 
 as is often pretended ; man naturally inclines to be a 
 little more than just to her, she a little more than fair 
 to him ; a man would find most favor with a Jury of 
 Women, as boys with nurses. But, certainly, her 
 condition is sadly unfortunate ; for, whether treated as 
 
128 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 a Doll or 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 indi- 
 viduality like him, but a dependent parasite or a com- 
 manded servant. This idea appears in all civilized 
 legislation ; and in the " revealed religion " of Jews 
 and Christians, as well as in that of Brahmins and 
 Mohammedans. Even in New England, no public 
 provision is made to secure superior education for 
 girls as for boys. Woman has no place in the superior 
 industry, — shut out from the legal, clerical and med- 
 ical j)rofessions, and the higher departments of trade, 
 limited to domestic duties, and other callings which 
 pay but little ; Avhen she does a man's service she has 
 but half of his reward ; no political rights are awarded 
 to her; she is always taxed, but never represented. If 
 married, her husband has legally an unnatural control 
 over her property and her person, and, in case of 
 separation, over her children. A young man with su- 
 perior talents, born to no other heritage, can acquire 
 wealth, or, unaided, obtain the best education this age 
 makes possible to any one : but with a woman it is 
 not so ; if poor, she can only be enriched by marriage ; 
 hence mercantile wedlock is far more pardonable 
 in her ; no talents, no genius can secure a poor man's 
 daughter her natural share in the high culture of the 
 age. The condition of woman follows unavoidably 
 from the popular idea, which she also shares often in 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 129 
 
 the heroic degree, that she is by nature inferior to 
 man : prostitution and its half-known evils come from 
 this as naturally as crime and drunkenness from 
 squalid want — as plants from seeds. 
 
 I have preached the equivalency of man and 
 woman, — that each in some particulars is inferior to 
 the other, but, on the Avhole, Mankind and Woman- 
 kind, though so diverse, are yet equal in their natural 
 faculties ; and have set forth the evils which come to 
 both from her present inferior position, her exclusion 
 from the high places of social or pohtical trust. But I 
 have thought she will generally prefer domestic to 
 public functions, and have found no philosophic or 
 historic argument for thinking she will ever incline 
 much to the rough works of man, or take any consid- 
 erable part in Repubhcan politics ; in a court like 
 that of Louis XV., or Napoleon III., it might be dif- 
 ferent ; but I have demanded 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, I have urged on you the duty of attend- 
 ing to the education of young women, not only in 
 accomplishments, — which are so often laborious in 
 the process, only to be ridiculous in the display, and 
 idle in their results, — but in the grave discipline of 
 study, and for the practical duties of life. A woman 
 voluntarily ignorant of household affairs and the man- 
 
130 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 agement of a family, should be an object of pity or of 
 contempt ; while the women of New England incline 
 to despise the indispensable labor of housekeeping, 
 and can neither make wearable garments, nor eatable 
 bread, I have sometimes doubted whether the men of 
 New England, irritated with their sour fare, would 
 think them quite fit to make laws for the State, or 
 even for the Union. I have also called your attention 
 to those most unfortunate outcasts, the Friendless 
 Young G-irls in the streets of your own City, the most 
 abandoned of the Perishing Class, who will soon be- 
 come the most harmful of the Dangerous Class — 
 for prostitution is always two-fold, male as well as 
 female damnation. 
 
 It is delightful to see the change now taking place 
 in the popular idea of Woman, and the legislation of 
 the Northern States. This reform at once will 
 directly affect half the population, and soon also the 
 other half. I am not alarmed at the evils Avhich 
 obviously attend this change, — the growing dislike 
 of maternal duties, the increase of divorces, the false 
 theories of marriage, and the unhajjpy conduct which 
 thence results ; all these are transient things, and 
 will soon be gone — the noise and dust of the wagon 
 that brings the harvest home. 
 
 5. The American people are making one of the 
 most important experiments ever attempted on earth, 
 endeavoring to establish an Industrial Democracy, 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 131 
 
 with the principle that all men are equal in their 
 natural rights, which can be alienated only by the 
 personal misconduct of their possessor: the great 
 body of the People is the source of all political 
 power, the maker of all laws, the ultimate arbiter of 
 all measures ; while the special magistrates, high and 
 low, are but appointed agents, acting under the 
 power of attorney the people intrusts them with. 
 This experiment was perhaps never tried before, 
 certainly not on so large a scale, and with so fair an 
 opportunity for success ; but Avise men have always 
 foretold its utter failure, and pointed to the past as 
 confirming this prophecy. Certainly, we have Hu- 
 man History against us, but I think Human Nature is 
 on our side, and find no reason to doubt the triumph 
 of the American idea. So I have taken a deep 
 interest in Politics, important not merely as represent- 
 ing the national House-keeping, but also the public 
 Morality, and so tending to help or hinder the 
 people's success. Never failing to vote, I have yet 
 kept myself out of the harness of every party ; 
 responsible to none and for none, I have been free to 
 blame or praise the Principles and the Purposes of 
 all, their Measures and their Men. Addressing such 
 multitudes, most of them younger than I, in times 
 like the last fourteen years, when such important 
 Interests came up for public adjudication, and when 
 the great Principles of all national morality have been 
 
132 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 solemnly denied by famous officials, men also of great 
 personal poAver, who declared that human govern- 
 ments were amenable to no natural Law of God, but 
 subject only to the Caprice of Magistrate or Elector, — 
 I have felt a profound sense of my responsibility to 
 YOU as a teacher of Eeligion. So I have preached 
 many Political Sermons, examining the special Meas- 
 ures proposed, exposing the Principle they rested 
 on, and the Consequences they must produce, and 
 applying the lessons of experience, the laws of human 
 nature, the great doctrines of Absolute Religion to 
 the special conduct of the American People. No 
 doubt, I have often wounded the feelings of many of 
 YOU. Pardon me, my friends ! if I live long I doubt 
 not I shall do so again and again. You never made 
 me your minister to flatter, or merely to please, but 
 to instruct and serve. 
 
 Treating of politics, I must speak of the conspic- 
 uous men engaged therein, when they come to die, 
 for such are the idols of their respective parties. In 
 America there are few objects of conventional respect 
 — no permanent classes who are born to be rever- 
 enced ; and as men love to look up and do homage to 
 what seems superior, a man of vulgar greatness, who 
 has more of the sort of talent all have much of, is 
 sure to become an idol if he will but serve the 
 passions of his worshippers : so with us, a great man 
 of that stamp has a more irresponsible power than 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 133 
 
 elsewhere among civilized men ; for he takes the place 
 of king, noble and priest, and controls the pubHc 
 virtue more. The natural function of a great man 
 is to help the little ones : by this test I have endeav- 
 ored to try such as I must needs speak of. Not 
 responsible for their vice or virtue, I have sought to 
 represent them exactly as I found them, and that, 
 too, without regard to the opinion of men, who only 
 looked up and worshipped, not asking what. If I 
 were an assayer of metals, I should feel bound to 
 declare the character of the specimens brought before 
 me, whether lead or silver ; shall I be less faithful in 
 my survey of a great man, " more precious than the 
 fine gold of Ophir?" I am no flatterer, nor public 
 liar-general ; when such a one is wanted he is easily 
 found, and may be had cheap ; and I cannot treat 
 great men like great babies. So, when I preached on 
 Mr. Adams, who had done the cause of Freedom such 
 great service, on G-eneral Taylor and Mr. Webster. 
 I aimed to paint them exactly as they were, that their 
 Virtues might teach us, and their Vices -warn. Still 
 further to promote the higher education of the people, 
 and correct an idolatry as fatal as it is stupid, as dan- 
 gerous to the public as it is immediately profitable to 
 wily rhetoricians, I have prepared lectures on four 
 great famous Americans — Franklin, Washington, 
 Adams, and Jefferson. The last, however, was not 
 delivered when my present illness laid me low. I 
 12 
 
134 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 wished to daguerreotype these great, noble men, and 
 place true pictures before the people. 
 
 Perhaps no part of my pubHc labors has been con- 
 demned with more noise and violence than this at- 
 tempt at historic truth. Certainly I did depart from 
 the panegyrical custom of political and clerical eulo- 
 gizers of the famous or the wealthy dead ; but I have 
 confidence enough in the People of the Northern 
 States to believe they will prefer plain truth to the 
 most rhetorical lies. 
 
 I have not quite disdained to turn your eyes to 
 little, mean men, when set in high office, that you 
 might get instruction from their folly or wickedness. 
 So, when the chief magistrate of the City was noto- 
 riously the comrade of drunkards, and of the most 
 infamous of humankind, and that of the State was 
 celebrated chiefly for pubhc and private lying, and 
 both abused their office, to promote their own little 
 purposes of mischief or of gain, debauching the pub- 
 lic virtue, as well as wasting the People's money, — I 
 did not fail to advertise the fact, that YOU at least 
 might learn by the lesson which cost the public so 
 dear. 
 
 6. I have preached against War, showing its enor- 
 mous cost in money and men, and the havoc it 
 makes of public and private virtue. A national 
 occasion was not wanting ; for, obedient to the whip 
 of the Slave-power, which hag-rides the nation still, 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 
 
 135 
 
 the American Government — not the People, nor even 
 Congress — plunged us into a wicked contest with 
 Mexico, she clearly in the right, we notoriously in the 
 wrong. I have often spoken against war, and tried 
 to discourage that '' excessive lust for land," that ag- 
 gressive and invasive Spirit, which is characteristic 
 of both the American and British People. It is clear 
 that the strongest races will ultimately supplant the 
 feebler, and take their place, as the strong grasses 
 outroot the weak from the farmer's meadow. I com- 
 plain not of this just Natural Law, which indeed 
 pervades the Universe ; but the work need not be 
 done by violence, nor any form of wrong. So I have 
 preached against the fillihustering of America, and the 
 not less wicked diplomatizing and soldiering by which 
 our parent across the sea accomplishes the same 
 thing, though with even more harshness and cruelty. 
 Yet I have not preached the doctrine of the Non- 
 Resistants, who never allow an individual to repel 
 wrong by material violence ; nor that of the Ultra- 
 Peace men, who deny a nation's right to stave off an 
 invader's wickedness with the People's bloody hand. 
 The Wrathful Emotions are also an integral part of 
 Humanity, and with both nations and individuals 
 have an indispensable function to perform, that of 
 self defence, which, in the present state of civiliza- 
 tion, must sometimes be with violence, even with 
 shedding aggressive blood. It is against needless 
 
136 THEODOEE PARKER'S 
 
 and wicked wars — ^the vast majority are such — 
 
 that I have preached; against the abuse ambitious 
 
 rulers make of the soldier's trained art to kill, and of 
 
 the wrathful, defensive instincts of the multitude. 
 
 In this age, I think the People do not make war 
 
 against the peaceful People of another land ; nay, in 
 
 New England, the most democratic country, we have 
 
 too much neglected the military art, I fear, — a mistake 
 
 we may bitterly regret in that strife between the 
 
 Southern Habit of Despotism, and the Northern Prin- 
 
 \ ciple of Democracy, which any day may take the form 
 
 I of civil war, and one day must. For America will 
 
 ; not always attempt to carry a pitcher of poison on 
 
 ' her left shoulder, and one of pure water on her right ; 
 
 ', one or the other must soon go to the ground. 
 
 7. I have spoken against Slavery more than any 
 concrete wrong, because it is the greatest of all, " the 
 sum of all villanies," and the most popular, the wan- 
 ton darling of the Government. I became acquainted 
 with it in my early childhood, and learned to hate it 
 even then, when, though I might not comprehend 
 the injustice of the principle, I could yet feel the 
 cruelty of the fact. I began to preach against it 
 early, but used the greatest circumspection, for I 
 knew the vulgar prejudice in favor of all successful 
 tyranny, and wished my foAv hearers thoroughly to 
 accept the principle of Justice, and apply it to this 
 as to all wrongs. But even in the little Meeting-House 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTEE. 137 
 
 at West Roxbury, though some of the audience re- 
 quired no teaching in this matter, the very mention of 
 American Slavery as wicked at first offended all my 
 hearers who had any connection with the " Demo- 
 cratic " 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 in- 
 cluding the right to own men ; they thought Slavery 
 could ride behind them on the same pillion with " De- 
 mocracy," according to the custom of their masters. 
 But, as little by little I developed the principle of 
 true Democracy, showing its root in that Love of your 
 Neighbor as yourself, which Jesus both taught and 
 lived, and of that Eternal Justice which comes even 
 to savage bosoms, and showed how repugnant slavery 
 is 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 I announced Slavery as the theme for 
 that day's sermon, ere many years turned on me eyes 
 flashing with indignation against wrong, when I told 
 the tale of our national wickedness ; they have 
 since given me the heartiest sympathy in my humble 
 efforts to moralize the opinions and practice of the 
 People. 
 
 My Feiends, — Since I have been your minister, I 
 have preached much on this dreadful sin of the na- 
 tion, which now threatens to be also its ruin ; for, 
 12-^- 
 
138' THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 while in my youth Slavery was admitted to be an 
 Evil, commercially profitable, but morally wrong, an 
 exceptional measure, which only the necessity of 
 habit might excuse, but which nothing could justify, — 
 of late years it is declared a " Moral good," " the least 
 objectionable form of labor," fit for Northern Whites 
 not less than African Negroes, one of those guide- 
 board instances which indicate the highway of na- 
 tional welfare. For some years Slavery has been the 
 actual First Principle of each Federal Administration ; 
 to this all interests must bend, all customs and statutes 
 conform, and the nation's two great documents, con- 
 taining our programme of political Principles and of 
 political Purposes, must be repudiated and practically 
 annulled: the Supreme Court has become only the 
 Jesuitical Propaganda of Slavery. 
 
 For some years, while busied with theological mat- 
 ters, and with laying the metaphysic foundation of 
 my own scheme, I took no public part in the anti- 
 slavery movements outside of my own little village. 
 But when I became your minister and had a wider 
 field to till, when the ambition of the Slave Power be- 
 came 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, a different duty 
 seemed quite clear to me. I have seldom entered 
 your pulpit without remembering that you and I lived 
 in a land whose Church-members are not more numer- 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 139 
 
 ous than its 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 takes a '^ South- 
 side view of Slavery," as indeed she does of each 
 other wickedness presently popular, and " of good 
 report ! " Since 1845, I have preached against all 
 the great invasive measures of the Slave Power, ex- 
 posing their Motive, the First Principle they refer to, 
 and showing that they are utterly hostile to that 
 Democracy which is Justice ; and all tend to establish 
 a Despotism, which at first may be industrial and 
 many-headed, as now in Louisiana, but next must be 
 single-headed and military, as already in France, and 
 finally must lead to national ruin, as in so many coun- 
 tries of the old world. 
 
 In due time the Fugitive Slave Bill came up from \ 
 seed which wicked men had sown and harrowed into 
 the Northern soil ; Boston fired her hundred cannons 
 with delight, and they awoke the ministers, sitting 
 droAvsy in their Churches of Commerce, mid all the 
 pavements of the North, who thought an angel had | 
 spoke to them. Then I preached against Slavery as 
 never before, and defied the impiident statute, whereto 
 you happily said Amen by the first clajjping of hands 
 which for years had welcomed a sermon in Boston ; 
 how could you help the natural indecorum ? When, 
 roused by these jubilant guns, one minister, so gener- 
 
140 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 ous and self-devoted, too, in many a noble work, 
 called on his parishioners to enforce that wicked act, 
 which meant to kidnap mine, and declared that if a 
 fugitive sought shelter with him he would drive him 
 away from his own door ; when another uttered words 
 more notorious, and yet more flagrant with avaricious 
 inhumanity, which I care not now to repeat again; 
 and when the cry, '^ No Higher Law ! " went down 
 from the Market, and, intoned by the doctorial leaders 
 of the sects, rang through so many Commercial 
 Churches throughout the Northern land, — I did not 
 dare refuse to proclaim the monstrous fact as one of 
 the unavoidable effects of Slavery, whose evil seed 
 must bear fruit after its kind, and to gibbet the wrong 
 before the eyes of the People, to whom I appealed 
 for common Justice and common Humanity. When 
 two men, holding mean offices under the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, one of them not fit by nature to do a cruel 
 deed, actually stole and kidnapped two innocent in- 
 habitants out from your city of Franklin, and Hancock, 
 and Adams, and attempted, with their unclean, raven- 
 ous jaws, to seize yet others, and rend the manhood 
 out of them, — ■ I preached against these Jackals of 
 Slavery and their unhuman work ; and have now only 
 to lament that my powers of thoiight and speech 
 were no more adequate fitly to expose the dark 
 infamy of that foul deed, against which I asked 
 alike the People's Justice and their Wrath ; I knew 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 141 
 
 I should not ask in vain. And when a drunken Bully 
 from South Carolina, in Congress, fitly representing 
 the First Principle, if not the first persons of his 
 State, — where none can serve in even the Lower 
 House of Assembly, " unless he be seized in his own 
 right of ten Negro Slaves," — made his assault, not 
 less cowardly than brutal, on our noble Senator, 
 wounding him with worse than death, and while the 
 United States Attorney sought '' to make murder safe 
 and easy in the Capital," not dreaming it would one 
 day, unpunished, reach his own heart, — I spoke of that 
 matter, and showed it was the cowards of Massa- 
 chusetts who drew the blow on her faithful champion, 
 and that no "■ anodyne " could make them less than 
 glad that it was struck ! 
 
 But why speak more of those sad days ? Others 
 may come with sterner face, not black, but red ! 
 However, a blessed change in public opinion now 
 goes calmly on in Massachusetts, in New England, 
 and all the North, spite of the sophistry and cunning 
 of ambitious men smit with the presidential fever. 
 The death of a dozen leading anti-slavery men to-day 
 would not much retard it, for the ground is full of 
 such ! 
 
 8. 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 Grod, Man, and 
 

 142 THEODOEE PAEKEE's 
 
 the Relation between them, seems to me the greatest 
 
 speculative error Mankind 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 darkness 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 honor 
 
 I dead men with sainthood, or to rack and burn with 
 
 ! all the engines mechanic fancy can invent, or priestly 
 
 I cruelty apply; and hereafter to bless eternally, or 
 
 ( else forever damn. Hence, both Protestant and 
 
 ; Catholic logically derive their imperfect, wrathful 
 
 * Deity, who creates men to torment them in an 
 
 I endless hell, " paved with the skulls 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 of 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, 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 143 
 
 clerical skeptics learn to deny the validity of their 
 own superior faculties, and spin out the cobwebs of 
 sophistry, wherewith they surround the field of 
 religion, 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 for 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 religious spirit, which, communing 
 at 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 occupying regions 
 very friendly to the development of the highest facul- 
 ties of man. Theirs too is the superior machinery of 
 civilization, political, ecclesiastical, domestic, social. 
 Nowhere on earth does the clerical class so connect 
 itself with the innermost of man. Christendom is the 
 bold leader in all intellectual affairs — arts of peace 
 
144 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 and war, science, literature, skill to organize and 
 administer mankind. But yet the Christian has no 
 moral superiority over the Jews, the Mohammedans, 
 the Brahmins, the Buddhists, at all commensurate 
 with this intellectual power. In the sum of private 
 and public virtues, the Turk is before the Christian 
 Greek. For fifteen hundred years the Jews, a nation 
 scattered and peeled, and exposed to most degrading 
 influences, in true religion have been above the 
 Christians ! In temperance, chastity, honesty, jus- 
 tice, mercy, are the leading nations of Christendom 
 before the South-Asiatics, the Chinese, the islanders 
 at 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 the Christians worship a 
 man whose religion was Love to God and Love to 
 men, and who would admit to Heaven only for right- 
 eousness, and send to Hell only for lack of it ? Be- 
 cause they WORSHIP him, reject the natural goodness 
 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, salvation 
 without morality or piety, only by belief in absurd 
 doctrines, which has bewitched the leading nations of 
 the earth into such practical mischief A false Idea 
 has controlled the strongest spiritual faculty, leading 
 men to trust in " imputed righteousness," and under- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 145 
 
 value personal virtue. Self-denying missionaries 
 visit many a far-off land "■ to bring the heathens to 
 Christ." Small 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 devoted, but, 
 their eyes hood-winked, 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-compacted theologic scheme, showing 
 the consequences which follow thence, and seldom 
 entered your pulpit without 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 Conscience, 
 the Heart and Soul. I have tried to preserve them 
 all, 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 
 
146 THEODORE PARKER's 
 
 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 their times, and jjulled down what they could not 
 replace with better. I have not sat in the seat of 
 the scornful ; 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, putting it before all 
 other sacred literature 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 magnifi- 
 cent poetry of Psalmist and Prophet, and the humane 
 lessons of the Hebrew peasant, who summed up the 
 Prophets and the LaAv 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 has a 
 sick man speech for that, nor need I now, for my 
 public and private teachings sufficiently abound in 
 such attempts. But yet, to me the great men of the 
 Bible are worth more than all their words ; he that 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTEK. 147 
 
 was greater than the Teraple, whose soul burst out 
 its walls, is also greater than the Testament, but yet 
 no Master over you or me, however humble men ! 
 
 In theological matters, my preaching 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' Feelings, and pro- 
 moting 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 birth-place, though France and Eng- 
 land seem equally its home. It has its representa- 
 tives in America. Besides, the Pantheists tell us of 
 their God, who is but the sum total of the existing 
 universe of matter and of mind, immanent in each, 
 but transcending neither, imprisoned in the two ; 
 blind, planless, purposeless, without Consciousness, 
 or Will, or Love ; dependent upon the shifting phe- 
 nomena of finite matter and of finite mind, finite it- 
 self; a continual Becoming this or that, not absolute 
 Being, self-subsistent and eternally the same perfec- 
 tion : their God is only Law, the constant mode of 
 operation of objective and unconscious force; yet is it 
 better than the churchman's God, who is Caprice 
 
148 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 alone, subjective, arbitrary, inconstant, 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 dishonorable 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 Christian's heart. I have simply referred them to 
 the primal Instincts of Human Nature, and their 
 Spontaneous Intuition 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 individual 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, Avhile the chief 
 Doctors of Commercial Divinity in the great Ameri- 
 can trading towns, and their subservient colleges, 
 denied the Higher Law, and with their Bibles laid 
 Humanity flat before the kidnappers in Cincinnati, 
 Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, the so-called 
 Atheists and Pantheists o'er all the Northern laud 
 revered the instinctive Justice of the soul, and said, 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTEK. 149 
 
 " Thou shalt not steal, nor lie, Thou shalt do no 
 wrong ; 't is Nature self forbids ! " 
 
 Preaching such doctrines in a place so public, and 
 applying them to life, I am not surprised at the hos- 
 tility 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 
 Catholics and the Protestants, denied the fact of a 
 miraculous Revelation, given exclusively to Jews 
 and Christians, denied the claim to supernatural 
 authority, and utterly broke with that Vicariousness 
 which puts an alleged revelation in place of common 
 sense, and the blood of a crucified Jew instead of ex- 
 cellence of character. In the least historic of the New 
 Testament Gospels it is related that Jesus miraculously 
 removed the congenital blindness of an adult man, 
 and because 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 Measure of the 
 Pharisees, seems to have founded a Universal Prin- 
 ciple of 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 teUing 
 why. 
 
 13* 
 
150 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 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 learning 
 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 mis- 
 takes, 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 feelings ; 
 theological warfare is not gentler than political or 
 military ; even small revolutions are not mixed with 
 rose-water. The amount of honest misunderstand- 
 ing, of wilful misrepresenting, of lyii^g, and of malig- 
 nant abuse, has not astonished me ; after the first few 
 months it did not grieve me ; human nature has a 
 wide margin of oscillation, and accommodates 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 mankind, a knowledge of 
 Greek and HebreAv, familiarity with the metaphysic 
 thought of the human race, is certainly no moral 
 merit ; but in theologic discussions it is a convenience 
 which some of my opponents have not always paid 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 151 
 
 quite sufficient respect to, though they were not 
 thereby hindered from passing swift judgment. Crit- 
 icism is the easiest of all arts, or the most difficult 
 of all. 
 
 It did not surjjrise me that other ministers, Uni- 
 tarian and Trinitarian, should refuse to serve Avith 
 me on the committee of a college or a school, to 
 attend the same funeral or wedding, to sit on the same 
 bench at a public meeting, to remain in the same 
 public ajDartment, and trade at the same bookstore, 
 to return my salutation 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 
 sometimes been astonished that such men " could not 
 see any sign of honesty, of love of truth, of philan- 
 thropy, or 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 doctrines 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 ex- 
 posed to. 
 
 I have found most friendly recognition 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 
 practical works of humanity, leaving me to settle the 
 
152 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 abstract questions of Divinity with the Divine him- 
 self. Indeed, I never found it necessary to agree 
 witli a man's theology before I could ride in his omni- 
 bus or buy his quills. No two Unitarian ministers, I 
 think, differ more in their theology than Rev. James 
 Freeman Clarke and I, but for twenty years there has 
 been the warmest friendship between us ; that noble 
 man and I have gone hand in hand to many of the 
 most important philanthropies of the age ; and I 
 think he will not be offended by this public recog- 
 nition of our affectional intimacy. I could say similar 
 things of other men, whom I have not named, but 
 might thereby scare their timid reputation from its 
 nest, and addle their hopes of future usefulness. 
 
 Besides, I have found kindly and generous critics 
 in America, and still more in England and Germany, 
 who did me perhaps more than Justice, Avhile they 
 honestly pointed out what they must regard as my 
 faults. Though I have been written and spoken 
 against more than any American, not connected with 
 political parties, yet, on the whole, I do not comj)lain 
 of the treatment I have received ; all I asked was a 
 hearing ; that has been abundantly granted. You 
 opened wide doors, my opponents rung the bell all 
 Saturday night, and Sunday morning the audience 
 was there. I think no other country would allow me 
 such liberty of speech ; I fear not even England, 
 Avhicli has yet so generously welcomed every free 
 thought. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 153 
 
 Of late years the hatred against me seems to have 
 abated somewhat ; old enemies relaxed their brows a 
 little, and took back, or else denied, their former 
 calumnies ; nay, had kind words and kind deeds for 
 me and mine. " Let bygones be bygones," is a good 
 old rule. 
 
 " The fondest, the fairest, the truest that met, 
 Plave still found the need to forgive and forget." 
 
 I think few men in America have found sympathy in 
 trouble from a greater variety of persons than I, 
 in my present disappointment and illness, from men 
 and women of all manner of ecclesiastical connec- 
 tions. I could not always thank them by private 
 letters, but I need not say how grateful their kindly 
 words have been, for — I may as well confess it — ■ 
 after all, I am not much of a fighter ; my affections 
 are developed far better than my intellect. It may 
 be news to the public ; to you it is but too well 
 known. 
 
 Yet, let it not surprise you that in some quarters 
 this theologic odium continues still, and shows itself 
 in " revival meetings " by public prayers that God 
 would go to my study, and confound me there so that 
 I could not write my sermon ; or meet me in your 
 pulpit, and put a hook in my jaws so that I could 
 not speak; or else remove me out of the world. 
 Such petitions, finding abundant biblical example, 
 
154 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 are not surprising when they come from such places, 
 on such occasions, and from men whose mind and 
 conscience are darkened by the dreadful theology that 
 still haunts many such places. But other instances 
 must find a different explanation. Less than two 
 years ago, the Senior class in the Cambridge Divinity 
 School, consisting, I think, of but four pupils, invited 
 me to deliver the customary address before them 
 and the public, the Sunday before their graduation. 
 The Theological Faculty, consisting of three Unita- 
 rian Doctors of Divinity, interposed their veto and 
 forbid me from speaking ; such a prohibition, I think, 
 had never been made before. These Doctors Avere 
 not ignorant men, or bigoted, they attend no " revival 
 meetings," but, speaking intellectually, they belong 
 among the most enlightened Scholars in America ; 
 none of them " Avas ever accused of believing too 
 much ; " yet they saw fit to offer me the greatest 
 ecclesiastical, academical and personal insult in their 
 professional power, in the most public manner, and 
 that, too, at a time when I was just recovering from 
 severe illness, and fluttering 'twixt life and death, — ■ 
 the scrutinizing physician telling me the chances 
 were equally divided between the two ; I could 
 only stand in the pulpit to preach by holding on to 
 the desk with one hand while I lifted the other up. 
 Others might have expected such treatment from 
 these men ; I confess, my friends, that I did not. 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 155 
 
 Since my present illness began, some of my theo- 
 logical foes have, publicly to the world, and privately 
 to me, expressed their delight that I am not likely 
 to trouble them much longer ; in my present feeble- 
 ness they read the answer to their prayers for my 
 removal. It was the Psalmist's petition, " Let not 
 mine enemies triumph over me ! " But I shall utter 
 none such. If I fall and die, let '' mine enemies " 
 rejoice as much as they will at the consequent 
 thought that there is one feeble voice the less, 
 rebuking the vice of the Press, the State, the 
 Market, and the Church, to speak a word for Truth, 
 Freedom, Justice, and Natural Religion ; let them be 
 glad there is one weak arm the less reaching out 
 help to the poor, the drunken, the ignorant, the 
 harlot, the felon, and the slave ; let them thank God 
 for the premature decrepitude of my voice, the 
 silence of my study, where worms perchance devour 
 my books, more dear even than costly ; let them find 
 " answer to our prayers " in the sorrow of my 
 personal friends — ■ there are now many such, — in the 
 keen distress of my intimates, and the agony of my 
 wife : I complain nothing thereat. Every tree must 
 bear after its own kind, not another, and their 
 " rehgion " must yield such fruits. Let them tri- 
 umph in these results, and thank their God that he 
 has " interposed," and thus granted their petition ; it 
 is small satisfaction compared with what they hope 
 
156 THEODOEE PARKER's 
 
 for in the next life, where, so their theology teaches, 
 the joy of the Elect in Heaven will be enhanced by 
 looking down into Hell, and beholding the agony of 
 their former neighbors and friends, husband or wife, 
 nay, their own children also, and remembering that 
 such suffering is endless, '' and the smoke of their 
 torment ascendeth up forever and ever." Let them 
 triumph in this ; but let them expect no other or 
 greater result to follow from my death. For 
 to the success of the great truths I have taught, it 
 is now but of the smallest consequence whether I 
 preach in Boston and all the Lyceums of the North, 
 or my body crumbles in some quiet, nameless grave. 
 They are not my Truths ! I am no great man whom 
 the world hinges on ; nor can I settle the fate of a 
 single doctrine by my authority. Humanity is rich 
 in personalities, and a man no larger than I will not 
 long be missed in the wide field of theology and 
 religion. For immediately carrying a special meas- 
 ure, and for helping this or that, a single man is 
 sometimes of great value ; the death of the general 
 is the loss of the battle, perhaps the undoing of a 
 State ; but after a great Truth of Humanity is once 
 set agoing, it is in the charge of Mankind, through 
 whom it first came from God ; it cannot perish by 
 any man's death. Neither State, nor Press, nor 
 Market, nor Church, can ever put it down ; it will 
 drown the water men pour on it, and quench their 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 157 
 
 hostile lire. Cannot the Bible teach its worshippers 
 that a Grave is no dungeon to shut up Truth in ; and 
 that Death, who slays alike the Priest and the 
 Prophet, bows his head before her, and passes 
 harmless by? To stone Stephen did not save the 
 Church of the Pharisees. A live man may harm 
 his own cause ; a dead one cannot defile his clean 
 immortal doctrines with unworthy hands. 
 
 In these tropic waters not far off, in time of strife, 
 on a dark night, but towards morning, an English 
 ship-of-war once drew near what seemed a hostile ves- 
 sel under sail ; she hailed the stranger, who answered 
 not ; then hailed again ; no answer ; then fired a shot 
 across the saucy bows, but still there was no reply ; 
 next fired at her, amidships, but got not a word in 
 return. Finally the man-of-war cleared for action, 
 began battle in earnest, serving the guns with British 
 vigor, but found no return, save the rattle of shot 
 rebounding and falling back into the heedless sea. 
 Daylight presently came with tropic suddenness, and 
 the captain found he spent his powder in battering a 
 great rock in the ocean ! So, many a man has fought 
 long against a Truth which he fancied was but a float- 
 ing whim, bound to yield to his caprice ; but, at last 
 the dawning light has shown him it was no passing- 
 ship, of timber and cordage and canvas, driven by 
 the wind and tossed by the undulations of the sea, 
 but a SAIL-ROCK, resting on the foundations of the 
 14 
 
158 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 world, and amenable neither to the men-of-war that 
 sailed in the Avind, nor yet to the undulation of the 
 sea whereon they came and went. It is one thing to 
 rejoice at the sickness and death of a short-lived here- 
 tic, but it is another and a little different, to alter the 
 Constitution of the Universe, and put down a Fact of 
 spontaneous Human Consciousness, which also is a 
 Truth of Cod. 
 
 When I first came amongst you, and lived in a trad- 
 ing town where a great variety of occupations lay 
 spread out before me all the time, and preached to such 
 crowds of men as offered a wide diversity of nature, 
 character and conduct, I found not only an opportu- 
 nity to work, but also to learn and grow. You say I 
 have taught you much ; I hope it is so ; but you have 
 been a large part of your own schooling, for I have 
 also learned much from you ; the audience has always 
 furnished a large part of the sermon and the prayer. 
 I have received much direct instruction, and that in 
 matters of deep concern, from some of you, by hear- 
 ing your words and looking at your lives ; the indi- 
 rect help to my power of thought and speech, I fear 
 you would hardly credit should I attempt to tell. It 
 is enough to say now, that amongst you I have found 
 men and women, often in quite humble stations, who 
 have added new elements of both strength and beauty 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 159 
 
 to my notion of Avliat constitutes a " glorious human 
 creature/' in particular excellences their Actual 
 surpassing my Ideal. I have been a learner quite as 
 much as a teacher ; indeed, out of nearly a thousand 
 sermons I have written, I think there are not five and 
 twenty which are not also steps in my own develop- 
 ment, studies I have learned by, quite as much as 
 lessons you have been taught with. 
 
 To me. Human Life in all its forms, individual and 
 aggregate, is a perpetual wonder : the Flora of the 
 earth and sea is full of beauty and of mystery which 
 Science seeks to understand ; the Fauna of land and 
 ocean is not less wonderful ; the World which holds 
 them both, and the great Universe that folds it in on 
 every side, are still more wonderful, complex and 
 attractive, to the contemplating mind. But the Uni- 
 verse of Human Life, with its peculiar worlds of 
 outer sense and inner soul, the particular faunas and 
 floras which therein find a home, are still more com- 
 plex, wonderful and attractive ; and the laws which 
 control it seem to me more amazing than the Mathe- 
 matic Principles that explain the Celestial Mechanics 
 of the outward world. The Cosmos of Matter seems 
 little compared to this Cosmos of immortal and pro- 
 gressive Man ; it is my continual study, discipline and 
 delight. Oh, that some young genius would devise 
 the Novum Organum of Humanity, determine the 
 Principia thereof, and with deeper than mathematic 
 
160 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 science, write out the formulas of the Human Uni- 
 verse, the Celestial Mechanics of Mankind. 
 
 In your busy, bustling town, with its queerly 
 mingled, heterogeneous population, and its great 
 diversity of work, I soon learned to see the Unity of 
 Human Life under all this variety of Circumstances 
 and outward condition. It is easy for a simple- 
 hearted man, standing on a central Truth, to reduce 
 them all to one common denomination of Humanity, 
 and ascertain the relative value of individuals in this 
 Comparative Morality. The Huckster, with a basket, 
 where apples, peanuts, candy, and other miscellaneous 
 small stores are huddled together, is a small mer- 
 chant ; the Merchant, with his warehouse, his factory 
 or bank, his ships on many a sea, is a great huckster ; 
 both buy to sell, and sell to gain ; the odds is quanti- 
 tative, not in kind, but bulk. The cunning Lawyer, 
 selling his legal knowledge and forensic skill to pro- 
 mote a client's gainful wickedness ; the tricksy 
 Harlot, letting out her person to a stranger's unholy 
 lust ; the deceitful Minister, prostituting his voice and 
 ecclesiastical position to make some popular sin 
 appear decent and Christian, "accordant with the 
 revealed Word of God," — all stand in the same col- 
 umn of my religious notation. In the street I see 
 them all pass by, each walking in a vain show, in dif- 
 ferent directions, but all consilient to the same end ! 
 
 So, the ambitious vanities of life all seem of nearly 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 161 
 
 the same value when laid side by side on this table 
 of exchange. The Poetess, proud of her superiority 
 over other " silly women " in the " vision and the 
 faculty divine," or in but the small " accomphshment 
 of verse ; " the Orator, glorying in his wondrous art, 
 longer than other men to hold the uplooking mul- 
 titude with his thread of speech, and thereby pour 
 his thought or will into the narrow vials of so many 
 minds ; and the Scavenger, who boasts that he " can 
 sweep round a lamp-post better than any man in the 
 gang," — all seem alike to an eye that looks beneath 
 and above the rippling tide of phenomenal actions, 
 learning its whither and its whence, and knowing the 
 unseen causes which control this many-billowed sea 
 of life. The diamonds of many-skirted Empress 
 Eugenia at Versailles, and the Attleborough jewelry 
 of barefooted Char-woman Bridget at Cove Place, are 
 symbols of the same significance, and probably of the 
 same value to their respective occupants. The man 
 not winged with talent, whom a political party cranes 
 up to some official eminence he could not reach by the 
 most assiduous crawling, and the dawdling young 
 woman, who can make neither bread to eat nor 
 clothes to %vear, nor yet order any household even of 
 only two, whom an idle hand, and a pinkish cheek, 
 and a lolling tongue, have fastened to another, but 
 bearded fool, — these seem wonderfully alike to me; 
 and I say to both, '' May God Almighty have mercy 
 
162 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 on your souls!" So, the effort after nobleness of char- 
 acter is ever the same, clad in whatever dress ; the 
 black ^\^asherwoman, on Negro Hill, as, with a frowzy 
 broom, a mop, and a tub or two, she keeps the wolf 
 away from her unfathered babies, all fugitives from 
 slavery, and thence looks up to that dear God whom 
 she so feels within her heart a very present help in 
 her hour of need, which is her every hour, — to me 
 seems grand as Paul preaching on Mars-hill to the 
 Athenian senators ; nay, not less glorious than Jesus 
 of Nazareth on his mountain, uttering blessed beat- 
 itudes to those thousands who paused in their pilgrim- 
 age towards Jerusalem, to look and listen to one 
 greater than the Temple, and destined to control 
 men's hearts when that city, compactly built, has not 
 stone left on stone. The thoughtful eye, like the 
 artistic hand, invests with the same magnificence the 
 Hebrew preachers and the Negro washerwoman, bor- 
 rowing the outward purple from the glory Avithin. 
 It is the same great problem of duty which is to be 
 wrought out by all — huckster, merchant, lawyer, 
 harlot, minister, poetess, orator, Eugenia, and Bridget, 
 unworthy officer, and idle, helpless wife, Dinah on 
 Negro Hill, Paul at the Areopagus, and Jesus on 
 Mount Tabor; and it is not of such future conse- 
 quence to us as men fancy, whether the tools of our 
 work be a Basket or a Warehouse, a Mop"«r a Cross ; 
 for the Divine Justice asks the same question of each, 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTE?.. 163 
 
 " What hast thou done with thy gifts and opportuni- 
 ties?" FeeKng the democracy of Mankind, and 
 preaching it in many a form, I have learned to esti- 
 mate the worth of men by the Quahty of their Char- 
 acter, and the Amount of their Service rendered to 
 mankind. So, of each I ask but two questions, 
 '' What are you ? Wliat do you do ? " The vokintary 
 beggar in rags, and the voluntary beggar in ruffles, 
 alike answer, " Nought." 
 
 In my preaching I have used plain, simple words, 
 sometimes making what I could not find ready, and 
 counted nothing unclean, because merely common. 
 In philosophic terms, and in all which describes 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 every-day words in Avhich men think 
 and talk, scold, make love, and pray, so that gener- 
 ous-hearted Philosophy, clad in a common dress, might 
 more easily become familiar to plain-clad men. It is 
 with customary tools that we work easiest and best, 
 especially Avhen 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 
 
164 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 streets, the shop, the kitchen, parlor, 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 nur- 
 sery 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 dignified 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 lap-stone mentioned in my sermon, — to me pictur- 
 esque and poetic objects, as well as familiar, — but 
 wanted "kings and knights," which 1 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 my window, the gambols and 
 prattle of children, and the common work of black- 
 smiths, carpenters, Avheelwrights, painters, hucksters 
 and traders of all sorts ; but 1 have also on my side 
 the example 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, Shake- 
 
EXPERIEXCE AS A MINISTER. 165 
 
 speare, G-oethe, of Hebrew David, and of Roman Hor- 
 ace ; of philosophers Hke Socrates and Locke ; of 
 preachers like Luther, Latimer, Barrow, Butler and 
 South ; nay, elegant Jeremy Taylor, "the Shakespeare 
 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 learn great 
 lessons in the art of speech ; for in him you not 
 only reverence the Genius for Religion, which intui- 
 tively sees divine Truth and human Duty, but wonder 
 also at the power of speech that tells its tale as deliv- 
 erly 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 will 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 therefore a necessity 
 of my nature that the sermon should publicly reflect 
 to you what j)rivately 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 
 
166 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 costly gems where ancient or modern 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 rigor 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, or metaphysi- 
 cal demonstration. Ministers told me I was ''preach- 
 ing over the heads of the peojale ; " 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. I trust you 
 will pardon the offence, Avhich I perhaps shall not 
 repeat. 
 
 My Friends,- — -I said that in my early life I feared 
 the temptations that beset the Lawyer's path, and, 
 trembling at the moral ruin, which seemed so immi- 
 nent, turned to the high ecclesiastic road. Alas ! the 
 peril is only different, not less. The lawyer is drawn 
 to one kind of wickedness, the minister to another; 
 their sophistry and cunning are about equal, only in 
 the one case it is practised in the name of " Law," 
 and for an obvious " worldly end," and in the other 
 in the name of " Gospel," and professedly to secure 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 167 
 
 '' Salvation." Learning to distinguish sound from 
 significance, I have not found the moral tone of min- 
 isters higher than that of lawyers, their motives 
 purer, their behavior more honest, or their humanity 
 more prompt and wide, only their alms are greater 
 in proportion to their purse. In choosing the cleri- 
 cal, not the legal profession, I think I encountered 
 quite as much peculiar peril as I shunned. The Gos- 
 pel-mill of the minister is managed with as much in- 
 justice as the Law-mill of the other profession. 
 
 It is not for me to say I have succeeded in keep- 
 ing any portion of my youthful vow. Yet one thing I 
 am sure of: I never appealed to a mean motive, nor 
 used an argument I did not think both just and true ; 
 I have employed no conscious sophistry, nor ever dis- 
 guised my ignorance. 
 
 Together we have tried some things, which did not 
 prosper, and so came to an end. 
 
 We attempted Sunday afternoon meetings, for free 
 discussion of what pertains to Religion. I hoped 
 much good from that experiment ; yet it was made 
 not only a vanity, but also a vexation of spirit, by a 
 few outsiders, who talked much, while they had little 
 or nothing to say ; there could be no wisdom where 
 their voices were heard. 
 
 Next, we tried Lectures on the Bible, Sunday after- 
 noons, which continued during the Avintry half of 
 
1G8 THEODORE PAKKER'S 
 
 several years. I gave six general lectures un the 
 Origin and History of the Old and New Testaments, 
 and then turned to the Criticism and Interj^retation 
 of the several books of the latter. With Tischen- 
 dorf 's edition of the original text in my hand, I trans- 
 lated the three Synoptic Gospels, the four undoubted 
 Epistles of Paul, the Acts, and the " Johannic " Writ- 
 ings — Revelation, Gospel, Epistles, ^ — -explaining each 
 book, verse, and word, as well as I could. I intended 
 to 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 too 
 dull, for it did not succeed well, bringing a class of 
 but a few scores of persons. This experiment was 
 abandoned when we removed to the Music Hall, and 
 had no place for an afternoon meeting. 
 
 I have long meditated other things, which might, 
 perhaps, be helpful to select classes of young men 
 and women ; but as they are now not likely to be 
 more than thoughts, I will not name them here. 
 
 Last year you organized your Fraternity ; the 
 movement was spontaneous on your part, not origi- 
 nating in any hint of mine. Though I had long wanted 
 such an association, so various in its purposes, and so 
 liberal in its plan, I did not venture to propose it, 
 preferring it should come without my prompting in 
 1858, rather than merely by it ten years before. A 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 169 
 
 minister as sure of the confidence of his hearers as I 
 am of yours, is often a little inclined to be invasive, 
 and thrust his personality on that of his congrega- 
 tion, making his will take the place of their common 
 sense ; hence many trees of clerical planting fail, 
 because they originate only with the minister, and 
 root but into him. I hope great good from this 
 Fraternity, and have laid out much work for myself 
 to do with its help. To mention but one thing : I 
 intended this season to deliver before it ten easy Lec- 
 tures on the First Three Centuries of the Christian 
 Era, and show how the Christianity of the Christians, 
 alas ! not the more humane and natural religion of 
 Jesus, developed itself in Ideas — the doctrines of 
 the Biblical and Patristic books ,• in Institutions — • the 
 special churches, each a Republic at first, with 
 individual Variety of Action, but gradually degenerat- 
 ing into a Despotic Monarchy, with only ecclesiasti- 
 cal Unity of Action ; and finally, after compromising 
 with the Hebrew and Classic schemes, how it became 
 the Organized Religion of the civilized world, a new 
 force in it both for good and evil, the most powerful 
 organization on earth. In my sleepless nights last 
 Autumn, I sketched out the plan and arranged the 
 chief details ; but it must now pass away, like other 
 less systematic visions of a sick man in his sleep. 
 
 15 
 
170 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 When a young man, it was a part of my original 
 plan to leave the practical work of continual preach- 
 ing, a little before I should be fifty years old, and 
 devote the residue of my life to publishing works 
 which I hoped might be of permanent value, separat- 
 ing the two periods by a year or two of travel in 
 the American Tropics and the Mediterranean coun- 
 tries of the Old World ; so I thought I might be most 
 useful to mankind, for I did not anticipate or desire 
 long life, and did not originally rate very high my 
 ability to affect the mass of men by direct word of 
 mouth, and made no pretensions to that most popular 
 of intellectual attainments, that Eloquence, which, 
 like other beauty, is at once a pleasure and a power, 
 delighting whom it compels. But, when I found the 
 scholarly class more unfriendly than the multitude, 
 I began to think I had chosen the wrong audience to 
 address ; that it was the People, not the Scholars, 
 who were to lead in philosophic thought ; and when 
 you gave me a chance to be heard in Boston, and I 
 preached on from year to year, great crowds of men, 
 who were not readers but workers in the week, 
 coming and continuing to listen to the longest of 
 sermons, wherein great subjects were treated with- 
 out respect to popular prejudice, ecclesiastical, 
 political, or social, and that, too, without sparing 
 the severest attention of the hearers ; when I found 
 these multitudes seemed to comprehend the abstract- 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. I'll 
 
 est reasoning, and truths most universal, and 
 appeared to be instructed, set free, and even ele- 
 vated to higher hopes both here and hereafter, and 
 to noble character ; when, with all my directness of 
 homely speech, I found myself welcome in most of 
 the Lecture halls between the Mississippi and the 
 Penobscot, and even beyond them, having thence 
 two or three hundred invitations a year ; when the 
 national crisis became nearer and more threatening, 
 and I saw my Sentiments and Ideas visibly passing 
 into the opinion and the literature of the People, 
 and thence coming out in the legislation of New 
 England and the other Northern States, — I thought 
 it not quite time to withdraw, and my early purposes 
 were a little shaken. I intended to continue some 
 ten years more in severe practical work, till about 
 sixty, then retire, not to lie down in the grave like 
 a camel under his load at night, but hoping to enjoy 
 a long quiet autumn of twenty j^ears or so, when I 
 might accomplish my philosophic and literary works, 
 and mow up as provender for future time what I had 
 first raised as green grass, and then mowed down to 
 make into sound hay, but have now left, alas ! either 
 strown where it grew, or but loosely raked together, 
 not yet carted into safe barns for the long winter, or 
 even stacked up and sheltered against immediate 
 spoiling by a sudden rain in harvest. 
 
 Besides, I felt quickened for practical work by 
 
172 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 the great exigences of the Nation, the importance 
 of the fight already going on between Despotism on 
 one side, with its fugitive slave bills, New England 
 kidnappers and sophists, in bar or pulpit, and 
 Democracy on the other, with its Self-evident Truths, 
 Unalienable Eights, and vast industrial and educa- 
 tional developments — a battle not yet understood, 
 but destined to grow hot and red ere long, — and by 
 the confidence I have always felt in the ultimate 
 triumph of the Right and True, the Beautiful and 
 Good. Moreover, I was encouraged in my course by 
 the soundness and vigor of my bodily frame, not 
 stout, perhaps, and strong, but capable of much and 
 long-continued work of the most various kinds, not 
 tiring soon, nor easily made ill, but quick recovering 
 from both fatigue and sickness ; and by the long 
 average life of six generations of American fathers 
 and mothers. But I have now learned by experience 
 that it is not wise to cherish wide personal hopes in 
 a narrow life, or seek to make an apple-tree larger 
 than the orchard. 
 
 For some years, I have been warned that I was 
 not only spending the full income of life, but 
 encroaching a little on the capital stock. But what 
 wise man even is always wise ? The duties were so 
 urgent, the call for help so imploring, the labor at 
 once so delightful in its process and so prophetic of 
 good results, and I felt such confidence in my bodily 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. ITS 
 
 power and ancestral longevity, that I did not 
 sufficiently heed the gentle admonition; till, last year, 
 in March, Nature at once gave way, and I was com- 
 pelled to yield to a necessity above my will. I need 
 not tell the fluctuations in my health since then; 
 rather, my Friends, let me again thank you for the 
 prompt and generous sympathy you gave then and 
 ever since. 
 
 Immediately after my present illness, I left your 
 Pulpit empty for a day. You wrote me a letter 
 signed by many a dear familiar name, and but for the 
 haste, I know it had been enriched with the signatures 
 of all ; it was dated at Boston, January 11. Your 
 affection wrote the lines, and a kindred wisdom kept 
 them from me till I was able to bear this unexpected 
 testimonial of your sympathy and love. On Sunday, 
 the sixth of March, while you were listening to — alas! 
 I know not whom you looked to then, — my eyes 
 filled with tears as I first read your words of delicate 
 appreciation and esteem. My Friends, I wish I were 
 worthy of such reverence and love ; that my service 
 were equal to your gratitude. I have had more than 
 sufficient reward for my labors with you ; not only 
 have I seen a good work and a great prosper in my 
 hands as you held them up, but in public, and still 
 more in private, you have given me the sweetest, best 
 of outward consolations — the grateful sympathy of 
 earnest, thoughtful and religious men. If my public 
 15* 
 
174 THEODOKE PARKEll'S 
 
 life has been a battle, wherein my head grows bald, 
 my beard turns grey, and my arm becomes feeble, 
 1 before their time, it has been also a Triumph, whose 
 crown is not woven of the red-floAvered laurels of war, 
 ' but of the olive, the lily, the violet, and the white 
 rose of peace. I have no delight in controversy; 
 when assailed, I have never returned the assault ; and 
 though continually fired upon for many years from the 
 bar-room and the pulpit, and many another "coigne 
 of vantage " betwixt the two, I never in return shot 
 f back an arrow, in private or public, until in the 
 ^ United States Court I was arraigned for the ''misde- 
 i meaner" of making a speech in Faneuil Hall against 
 that kidnapping in Boston, perpetrated by the public 
 guardian of widows and orphans ; then I prepared 
 ,my Defence, which had been abler were I more a law- 
 yer, though less a minister. 
 
 To compose sermons, and preach them to multitudes 
 of men of one sort but many conditions, thereto set- 
 ting forth the great Truths of Absolute Religion, and 
 applying them to the various events of this wondrous 
 human life, trying to make the Constitution 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 labors, sorrows, joys and ever- 
 lasting hopes, — ^this has been my great delight. 
 Your pulpit has been my joy and my throne. Though 
 
 ? 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 175 
 
 Press and State, Market and Meeting-House, have 
 been hostile to us, you have yet given me the largest 
 Protestant 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 sweet-briar and the rose 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 labor 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 ex- 
 cited in sermon and in prayer tell all he is, the 
 reflection of what he has done. Sermons are never 
 out of my mind ; and when sickness brings on me the 
 consciousness that I have nought to do, its most pain- 
 ful part, still, by long habit all things will take this 
 form ; and the gorgeous vegetation of the Tropics, 
 their fiery skies so brilliant all the day, and star-lit too 
 with such exceeding beauty all the night ; the glitter- 
 ing fishes in the market, as many-colored as a gar- 
 dener's show, these Josephs of the sea ; the silent 
 pelicans, flying forth at morning and back again at 
 night ; the strange, fantastic trees, the dry pods rat- 
 tling their historic bones all day, while the new bloom 
 comes fragrant out beside, a noiseless prophecy ; the 
 
176 THEODORE PAEKER'S 
 
 ducks rejoicing in the long-expected rain ; a negro on 
 an ambling pad ; the slender-legged, half-naked negro 
 children in the street, playing their languid games, 
 or oftener screaming 'neath their mother's blows, amid 
 black swine, hens and uncounted dogs ; the never- 
 ceasing clack of women's tongues, more shrewd than 
 female in their shrill violence ; the unceasing, mul- 
 tifarious kindness of our hostess ; and, overtower- 
 ing all, the self sujBficient, West Indian Creole pride, 
 alike contemptuous of toil, and ignorant and impotent 
 of thought, — all these common things turn into poetry 
 as I look on or am compelled to hear, and then trans- 
 figure into sermons, which come also spontaneously 
 by night and give themselves to me, and even in my 
 sleep say they are meant for you. Shall they ever be 
 more than the walking of 
 
 " a sick man in his sleep, 
 Three paces, and then faltering"? 
 
 The doctors cannot tell ; I also know not, but hope 
 and strive to live a little longer, that I may work 
 much more. Oh, that the truths of Absolute Eeligion, 
 which Human Nature demands, and offers, too, from 
 the Infinitely Perfect God who dwells therein, while 
 He transcends the Universe, Oh, that these were an 
 Idea enlightening all men's minds, a Feeling in their 
 hearts, and Action in their outward life ! Oh, that 
 America's two and thirty thousand ministers, Hebrew, 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 177 
 
 Christian, Mormon, knew these truths, and to mankind 
 preached Piety and Morality, and that Theology which 
 is the Science of G-od and his two-fold Universe, and 
 forgot their mythologic and misguiding dreams ! Then 
 what a New World were ours ! Sure I would gladly 
 live to work for this. 
 
 I may recover entirely, and stand before you full 
 of brown health, equal to the manifold labors of that 
 position, live to the long period of some of my fathers, 
 and at last die naturally of old age. This to me 
 seems most desirable, though certainly not most 
 probable. 
 
 Or, I may so far recover, that I shall falter on a 
 score of years or so, one eye on my work, the other 
 on my body, which refuses to do it, and so urge 
 my weak and balky horse along a miry, broken 
 road. If this be so, then, in some still, little rural 
 nook, in sight of town, but not too nigh, I may finish 
 some of the many things I have begun, and left for 
 the afternoon or evening of my days ; and yet, also, 
 from time to time, meet you again, and, with words of 
 lofty cheer, look on the inspiring face of a great con- 
 gregation. With this I should be well content ; once 
 it was the ideal of my hope. 
 
 In either of these cases, I see how the time of this 
 illness, and the discipline alike of disappointment and 
 recovery, would furnish me new power. Several 
 times in my life has it happened that I have met with 
 
178 THEODORE PARKER'S 
 
 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 bo at rest ! " Yet my 
 griefs all turned into blessings ; the joyous seed I 
 planted came up Discipline, 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 disap- 
 pointment 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 Avon- 
 drous is this Human Life, not ruled by Fate, but 
 Providence, which is Wisdom married unto Love, 
 each infinite ! What has been, may be. If I recover 
 wholly, or but in part, I see new sources of power 
 beside these waters of affliction I have stooped at ; 
 I shall not think I have gone through '' the Yalley of 
 Baca " in vain, nor begrudge the time that I have 
 lingered there, seeming idle ; rainy days also help 
 seed the ground. One thing I am sure of: I have 
 learned the wealth and power of the grateful, gener- 
 ous feelings of men, as I knew them not before, 
 nor hoped on earth to find so rich. High as I have 
 thought of Human Nature, I had not quite done jus- 
 tice to the present growth of these beautiful faculties. 
 Here and now, as so oft before, I have found more 
 treasure than I dreamed lay hidden where I looked. 
 But if neither of these hopes becomes a fact, if the 
 
EXPEEIENCE AS A MINISTER. 179 
 
 silver cord part soon above the fountain, and the 
 golden bowl be broke, let not us complain ; a new 
 bowl, and a stronger cord, shall serve the Well of 
 Life for you. Though quite aware how probable this 
 seems, believe me, I have not yet had a single hour of 
 sadness ; trust me, I shall not. True, it is not pleas- 
 ant to leave the plough broken in the furrow just 
 begun, while the seed-corn smiles in the open sack, 
 impatient to be sown, and the whole field promises 
 such liberal return. To say Farewell to the thousands 
 I have been wont to preach to, and pray with, now 
 joyous, and tearful now, — it has its bitterness to one 
 not eighty-four, but forty-eight. To undo the natural 
 ties more intimately knit of long-continued friendship 
 and of love, — this is the bitter part. But if it be my 
 lot, let not you nor me complain. Death comes to none 
 except to bring a blessing ; it is no misfortune to lay 
 aside these w^ell-loved weeds of earth, and be immor- 
 tal. To you, as a Congregation, my loss may be 
 easily supplied ; and to me it is an added consolation 
 to know that, however long and tenderly remembered, 
 I should not long be missed ; some other will come in 
 my place, j)erhaps without my defects, possessed of 
 nobler gifts, and certainly not hindered by the eccle- 
 siastical and social hostility which needs must oppose 
 a man who has lived and wrought as I. It will not 
 always be unpopular justly to seek the welfare 
 of all men. Let us rejoice that others may easily 
 
180 THEODOKE PARKER'S 
 
 reap golden corn where we have but scared the wild 
 beasts away, or hewn down the savage woods, burn- 
 ing them with dangerous fire, and made the rich, 
 rough ground smooth for culture. It was with grim- 
 mer fight, with sourer sweat, and blacker smoke, and 
 redder fire, that the fields were cleared where you 
 and I now win a sweet and easy bread. 
 
 What more shall I say to sweeten words of fare- 
 well, which must have a bitter taste ? If I have 
 ^ght you any great Rehgious Truths, or roused 
 therewith Emotions that are good, apply them to 
 your life, however humble or however high and 
 wide ; convert them into Deeds, that your superior 
 Religion may appear in your superior Industry, your 
 Justice and your Charity, coming out in your house- 
 keeping and all manner of Avork. So when your 
 
 " course 
 Is run, some faithful eulogist may say, 
 He sought not praise, and praise did overlook 
 His unobtrusive merit; but his life, 
 Sweet to himself, was exercised in Good, 
 That shall survive his name and memory." 
 
 Let no fondness for me, now heightened by my 
 illness, and my absence too, 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 
 
EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 181 
 
 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 hotter way. On earth, I shall not cease to be 
 thankful for your Patience, which has borne with me 
 so much and long ; for your Sympathy, nearest when 
 needed most, and the examples of noble Christian 
 Life, which I have found in some of you, 
 
 " to whom is given 
 The joy that mixes man with Heaven : 
 Who, rowing hard against the stream, 
 See distant gates of Eden gleam, 
 And never dream it is a dream ; 
 But hear, by secret transport led. 
 Even in the charnels of the dead. 
 The murmur of the Fountain-head : 
 Who will accomplish High Desire, 
 Bear and forbear, and never tire, — 
 Like Stephen, an unquenched fire. 
 As looking upward, full of grace, 
 He prayed, and from a happy place 
 God's glory smote him on the face ! " 
 
 Here they add to my joy ; perhaps their remem- 
 brance will add to my delight in Heaven. 
 
 May you be faithful to your own Souls ; train up 
 16 
 
182 THEODORE PARKER'S EXPERIENCE, ETC. 
 
 your Sons and Daughters to lofty character, most fit 
 for humble duty ; and to far cathedral heights of 
 excellence, build up the Being that you are, with 
 Feelings, Thoughts and Actions, that become " a 
 glorious Human Creature," by greatly doing the 
 common work of life, heedful of all the Charities, 
 which are twice blest, both by their gifts and their 
 forgiveness too. And the Infinite Perfection, the 
 Cause and Providence of all that is, the Absolute 
 Love, transcending the time and space it fills, our 
 Father, and our Mother too, will bless you each 
 beyond your prayer, forever and forever. Bodily 
 absent, though present still with you by the Immor- 
 tal Part, so hopes and prays 
 
 Your Minister and Friend, 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 Feedericksted, West-End, Santa Cruz, 
 April 19th, 1859. 
 
REV. THEODORE PARKER'S WORKS, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 RUFUS LEIGHTON, JR., 
 ]Vo. 112 VTastiing'toBi Street, Boston. 
 
 < — -» > 
 
 ATSnr OP THE FOLLOWING WORKS WILL BE SEWT BT 
 MAIL, POSTAGE PAID, ON RECEIPT OF THE PRICE. 
 
 A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Re- 
 ligion. Fourth Edition. 1 vol. 12mo. Cioth. $1.25. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. Of Eeligion in General ; or the 
 Religious Element and its Manifesta- 
 tions. 
 
 II. Relation of the Religious Ele- 
 ment to God ; or a Discourse of Inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 III. Relation of the Religious Ele- 
 
 ment to Jesus of Nazareth; or a Dis- 
 course of Christianity. 
 
 IV Relation of the Religious Ele- 
 ment to the Greatest of Books; or a 
 Discourse of the Bible. 
 
 V. Relation of the Religious Ele- 
 ment to the Greatest of Human Insti- 
 tutions ; or a Discourse of the Church. 
 
 Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and the Popu- 
 lar Theology, l vol. 12mo. Cloth. $1.25. 
 
 Introduction. i 
 
 I. Speculative Atheism, Regarded as 
 a Theory of the Universe. \ 
 
 II. Practical Atheism, Regarded as 
 a Principle of Ethics. 
 
 III. The Popular Theology of Chris- 
 tendom, Regarded as a Theory of the 
 Universe. 
 
 IV. The Popular Theology of Chris- 
 tendom, Regarded as a Principle of 
 Ethics. ! 
 
 V. Speculative Theism, Regarded as 
 a Theory of the Universe. 
 
 VI. Practical Theism, Regarded as a 
 Principle of Ethics. 
 
 VII. The Function and Influence of 
 the Idea of Immortal Life. 
 
 VHI. The Universal Providence of 
 God. 
 
 IX., X. The Economy of Pain and 
 Misery under the Universal Providence 
 of God. 
 
 Ten Sermons of Religion, ivol. i2mo. Cloth. $1.00-. 
 
 I. Piety, and its Relation to 3Ianly I VII. Conscious Religion as a Source 
 Life. I of Strength. 
 
 II. Truth and the Intellect. I VIII Conscious Religion as a Source 
 
 III. Justice and the Conscience. I of Joy. 
 
 IV. Love and the Affections. I IX. Conventional and Katural Sac- 
 
 V. Conscious Religion and the Soul. [ raments. 
 
 VI. The Culture of the Religious j X. Communion with God. 
 Powers. I 
 
Occasional Sermons and Speeches. 2 vols. 
 
 12mo. Cloth. [Out of print — a new edition in prepara- 
 tion.] $2.50. 
 
 Additional Speeches, Addresses, and Occa- 
 sional Sermons. 2 vols. 12mo. Cloth. $2.50. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 I. Speech at the Ministerial Confer- ' 
 ence in Boston, May 29, 1851. | 
 
 n. The Bo.'^ton Kidnapping — The I 
 Eeiidition of Thomas Sims 1 
 
 III. The Aspect of Freedom in [ 
 America, i 
 
 IV Discourse occasioned by the j 
 Death of Daniel Webster. i 
 
 V. The Nebraslia Question. 
 
 VI. The Condition of America in 
 Relation to Slavery. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 I. The Progress of America. 
 
 II. The New Crime ag'ainst Hu- 
 manity — The Kendition of Anthony 
 Burns. 
 
 III. The Laws of God and the Stat- 
 utes of Men. 
 
 IV. The Dangers which Threaten 
 the nights of Man in America. 
 
 V Some Account of my Ministry. 
 
 VI. The Public Function of Wo- 
 man. 
 
 VII. Sermon of Old Age. 
 
 Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. 1 
 
 12mo. Cloth. $1.25. 
 
 I. A Lesson for the Day. 
 II German Literature. 
 
 III. The Life of St. Bernard of Clair 
 vaux. 
 
 IV. Truth Against the World. 
 
 V. Thoughts' on Labor. 
 
 VI. The Transient and Permanent I 
 in Christianity. 
 
 vol. 
 
 VII. The Pharisees. 
 
 VIII. Education of the Laboring 
 Classes. 
 
 IX. How to Move the World. 
 
 X. Primitive Christianity. 
 
 XI. Strauss's Lile of Jesus. 
 
 XII. Thoughts on Theology. 
 
 A Critical and Historical Introduction to 
 the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
 ment. From the German of De Wette. Translated and 
 enlarged by Theodore Parker. Third Edition. 2 vols. 
 8vo. Cloth. $3.75. 
 
 The Trial of Theodore Parker, for the Misdemeanor 
 
 of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping ; with the 
 Defence. 1 vol. 8vo. Cloth. $1.00. 
 
PAMPHLET 
 
 SERMONS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 ■<« ♦ «»■ 
 
 PKICE. 
 
 1. — Some Thoughts on the most Christian use of Sunday (1848) . . 20 
 
 2. — A Discourse on John Quincy Adams (1848) 20 
 
 3. — A Sermon of the Mexican War (1848) 15 
 
 4. — The Moral and Spiritual Condition of Boston (1849) ... 15 
 
 5. — The Public Education of the People (1850) 20 
 
 6 —The Chief Sins of the People (1851) 15 
 
 7 — Two Sermons giving some Account of his Ministry and of the 
 
 Postion and Duty of a Minister (1852) .... 20 
 8. — A Friendly Letter to the Executive Committee of the American 
 
 Unitarian Association (1853) 13 
 
 9. —The Laws of God and the Statutes of Men (1854) . - . . 15 
 
 10. — The New Crime against Humanity (1854) 20 
 
 11 — The Dangers which Threaten the Rights of Man in America (1854) 20 
 
 12 —The Moral Dangers Incident to Prosperity (1855) .... 15 
 
 13. — Consequences of an Immoral Principle (18.55) 15 
 
 14. — Of Immortal Life. Fifth Edition. (1858) 10 
 
 15. — The Functions of a Teacher of Religion (18.55) .... 20 
 
 16. — A New Lesson for the Day (1856) 15 
 
 17. —The Great Battle between Freedom and Slavery (18.56) ... 25 
 
 18. — The Present Aspect of Slavery in America (1858) .... 20 
 
 19. — A Sermon of False and True Theology (1858) 8 
 
 20. —A False and True Revival of Religion (1858) g 
 
 21. —The Revival of Religion' which we need (1858) 8 
 
 22. —The Relation of Slavery to a Republican Form of Government 
 
 (1858) 8 
 
 23. — The Effect of Slavery on the American People (July 4, 1858) . . 8 
 
 24. — Four Sermons of the Biblical, the Ecclesiastical, and the Philo- 
 
 sophical Notion of God, and the Soul's Normal Delight in Him 17 
 
 25. _ "What Religion May Do for a Man : A Sermon for the New Year 
 
 (Jan. 2, 1859) 6 
 
 26. — Beauty in the World of Matter, Considered as a Revelation of 
 
 God : A Sermon for Midsummer Day 6 
 
-^^^ 
 
 ifefes^s^ggstissssaseec.