THE UNITED STATES CONTINUED: THEODORE PARKER AND HIS SCHOOL.
The early Unitarian Church of America was ardent in its attachment to
the doctrine of miracles. An article which appeared in the _Christian
Examiner_ less than forty years ago, provoked great opposition because
of its severe strictures on this branch of Christian evidence. The
writer held that miracles, even if proved to have occurred, can
establish nothing in favor of a religion which has not already stood the
test of experience; and that the doctrines of Christianity must first be
determined reasonable before we are compelled to believe that miracles
were wrought in attestation of them. The elder school of Unitarians
denounced his statements as open infidelity. A violent controversy
ensued, but no schism took place. Theodore Parker stood at the head of
the radical movement, and afterward labored unremittingly to disseminate
his theological opinions. In him American Rationalism finds its complete
personification. He represents the application of German infidelity to
the Unitarianism of New England.
This celebrated advocate of temperance and freedom was prompted by a
deep and unselfish love of his race. He was descended from a soldier of
the Revolutionary army, and inherited that indomitable will, strong
patriotic impulses, and native talents, which had characterized his
ancestry for several generations. His mental qualities were of a lofty
type. He was a linguist who, in correctness of speech and facility of
acquisition, had few equals on this side of the Atlantic. His eloquence
was stirring and popular, while his pen was facile and fruitful.
Commencing to preach in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, the unusual
character of his pulpit ministrations attracted public attention. On
being invited to Boston, he assumed the pastoral relation over a
newly-formed church, the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. In
addition to his sermons, he lectured in all parts of the Northern
States, and found time to write regularly for periodicals, compose
original works, and make translations of German authors with whom his
own theological opinions were in sympathy.
Though often in feeble health, he seldom allowed physical languor to
intermit his work. When threatened with consumption he was induced to
spend some time at Santa Cruz, whence he sailed for Italy. He died at
Florence in the spring of 1860, not having completed his fiftieth year,
and after a pastorate of only fourteen years at the Melodeon. He had
often expressed a desire in earlier life that, like Goethe and Channing,
he might not be deterred from labor by the prospect of immediate death.
Shortly before his decease he addressed to his congregation in Boston a
lengthy letter containing his experience as a minister. He now lies in
the little cemetery outside the walls of Florence; his tombstone, at his
own request, simply recording his name and the dates of his birth and
death. He bequeathed his library, containing over thirteen thousand
volumes, to the Free Library of Boston.
Our chief concern is with Mr. Parker as a theologian. He was a stranger
to moderation in every form. Having conceived certain skeptical views,
he knew no terms strong enough to condemn the whole evangelical scheme.
His chief defects of style are abruptness and occasional vulgarity,
which no man more regretted than their author in his calmer hours. But
there can be no apology for his dealing with serious subjects in that
vein of sarcasm which reminds us of the grossness of the coarser brood
of infidels. An English critic, noticing this defect, says: "His vigor
of style was deformed by a power of sarcasm, which often invested the
most sacred subjects with caricature and vulgarity; a boundless
malignity against supposed errors.... He equals Paine in vulgarity and
Voltaire in sarcasm."[271]
Parker felt that a bold course must be taken or orthodoxy could not be
made to yield its position. His biographer informs us that when he was
less than seven years of age "he fell out with the doctrines of eternal
damnation and a wrathful God."[272] In later life, when striving to find
the sources of what he considered the evils of the popular theology, he
fixed upon two common idols: "the Bible, which is only a record of men's
words and works; and Jesus of Nazareth, a man who only lived divinely
some centuries ago. The popular religion is wrong in that it tells man
he is an outcast, that he is but a spurious issue of the devil, must not
pray in his own name, is only sure of one thing--and that is damnation.
Man is declared to be immortal, but it is such immortality as proves a
curse instead of a blessing. In fact this whole orthodox theology rests
on a lie."[273]
His positive faith is comprehended in his own term, "the Absolute
Religion." God has created man with an intuitive religious element, the
strongest and deepest in human nature, indestructible, and existing
everywhere. Its legitimate action is to produce reverence, and ascends
into trust, hope, and love, or descends into doubt, fear, and hate.
Religion is not confined to one age, or people, or sect. It is the same
thing in each man, "not a similar thing--but the same thing." Three
forms of religion have existed, and each in turn has ruled the
mind,--Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism. The first can be
distinctly traced in the mythical stories of Genesis, the second in
pagan nations, and the third in these later times. Now, it is a very
small matter in which one of these forms man has worshiped or may still
worship. If he worship at all, he adores the true God, "the only God,
whether he call on Brahma, Jehovah, Pan, or Lord, or by no name at
all.... Many a swarthy Indian, who bowed to wood and stone; many a
grim-faced Calmuck, who worships the great God of storms; many a Grecian
peasant, who did homage to Phoebus-Apollo when the sun rose or went
down; yes, many a savage, his hand smeared all over with human
sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west, and sit down in the
kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and
Jesus,--while men who called daily on the only living God, who paid
their tribute and bowed at the name of Christ, shall be cast out because
they did no more."[274]
Christianity, with Parker, is not the absolute religion, because a
better may be developed. The great difference between it and other
religions is: _first_, in the point whence it sets out, other religions
starting from something external and limited, but Christianity from the
spirit of God in the soul of man speaking through reason, conscience,
and the religious sentiment; _second_, it is not a system but a method
of religion and life; and, _third_, its eminently practical nature. The
Deity adored by many people is a pure fabrication, for superstition
projects its own divinity, which of course will be after its own impure
mould. Men call the phantom God, Moloch, or Jehovah, and then attempt to
please the capricious being whom they have conjured up. The true idea of
God is his infinite presence in each point of space; this immanence in
matter is the basis of his influence; this imposition of a law is the
measure of God's relation to matter; and the action of the law is
therefore mechanical, not voluntary or self-conscious.
The Bible, according to the same method of argumentation, is as much a
human book as the _Principia_ of Newton. Some things in it are true, but
no reasonable man can accept others. It is full of contradictions;
"there are poems which men take as histories; prophecies which have not
been and never will be fulfilled; stories of miracles that never
happened; stories which make God a man of war, cruel, rapacious,
revengeful, hateful, and not to be trusted. We find amatory songs,
selfish proverbs, skeptical discourses, and the most awful imprecations
human fancy ever clothed in speech." The minds of the writers of the Old
Testament were not decided in favor of the exclusive existence of
Jehovah, and all the early books betray more of a polytheistic belief
than we find in the prophets. The legendary and mythical writings of the
Hebrews prove unmistakably that man was first created in the lowest
savage life; that his religion was the rudest worship of nature; and
that his morality was that of the cannibal. All the civilized races have
risen through various forms of developing faith before reaching
refinement and true religion. We do not know who are the writers of most
of the Scriptural books. Their records are at variance with science. The
account of Jehovah's determination that the carcasses of Israel should
fall in the wilderness because of disobedience, is a "savage story of
some oriental who attributed a blood-thirsty character to his God, and
made a deity in his own image, and it is a striking remnant of barbarism
that has passed away, not destitute of dramatic interest; not without
its melancholy moral."[275]
The prophets are claimed to have written nothing in general above the
reach of human faculties. The whole of the Old Testament is only a
phantom of superstition to scare us in our sleep.[276] The statements of
the evangelists have a very low degree of historical credibility.
Miracles are not impossible, because God is omnipotent; but our main
difficulty is, that we cannot believe the accounts descriptive of them.
The testimony and not the miracle is at fault. Inspiration is not at all
peculiar to the Scriptures. All nations have had their inspiration; this
is a natural result of the perfection of God, for he does not change;
and the laws of mind are like himself, unchangeable. Inspiration, being
similar to vision, must be everywhere the same thing in kind however
much it differs in degree. The quantity of our inspiration depends upon
the use we make of our faculties. He who has the most wisdom, goodness,
religion, and truth is the most inspired. This inspiration reveals
itself in various forms, modified by country, character, education,
peculiarity. Minos and Moses were inspired to make laws; David, Pindar,
Plato, John the Baptist, Gerson, Luther, Boehme, Fenelon, and Fox were
all inspired men. The sacraments of the Church were never designed to be
permanent. In illustration of them, Parker sacrilegiously quotes,
"Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite."
The Christian Church is held to be a purely human mechanism, and the
great defect of Protestantism is its limit of the power of private
inspiration. God still inspires men as much as ever, and is immanent in
spirit as in space. This doctrine, which is Spiritualism, "relies on no
church, tradition, or Scripture, as the last grand and infallible rule;
it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters; helps, if
they help us, not authorities. It relies on the Divine presence in the
soul of man; the eternal word of God, which is truth, as it speaks
through the faculties he has given. It believes God is near the soul as
matter to the sense; thinks the canon of revelation not yet closed, nor
God exhausted. It sees him in Nature's perfect work; hears him in all
true Scripture, Jewish or Phoenician; stoops at the same fountain with
Moses and Jesus, and is filled with living water. It calls God, Father,
not King; Christ, brother, not Redeemer; Religion, nature. It loves and
trusts, but does not fear. It sees in Jesus a man living manlike, highly
gifted, and living with blameless and beautiful fidelity to God,
stepping thousands of years before the race of man; the profoundest
religious genius God has raised up; whose words and works help us to
form and develop the native idea of a complete religious man. But he
lived for himself; died for himself; worked out his own salvation, and
we must do the same, for one man cannot live for another more than he
can eat or sleep for him. It is not the personal Christ but the spirit
of Wisdom, Holiness, Love that creates the well-being of man; a life at
one with God. The divine incarnation is in all mankind."[277]
Such is the faith avowed and enforced by Theodore Parker. It goes but
little beyond a belief in God's existence and general participation in
human life. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish his views of Deity
from Pantheism; but on more than one occasion he expressed his total
dissent from the peculiarity of the Hegelian system. He holds that all
we see about us and feel within us testifies of God. Neither speculative
nor practical atheism can produce good in the world; we must believe in
God's existence, else we have no power whatever to explain the harmony
in nature, providence in individual and national life, existence and
immortality of the soul, and the suffering to which we fall heir.[278]
But Theism clears up every difficulty, and sheds its light upon all
departments of human life. This alone can overthrow the popular orthodox
theology and enthrone the religion of the Absolute, or true Spiritualism
in its stead.
It is a question of grave importance how far the skepticism of
Unitarianism, Universalism, and Pantheism has been influential upon the
American Church, and how great is the number of those who have become
more or less tinctured with the Rationalism of the last five years'
importation. Parker claimed that the liberal or Rationalistic thinkers
were largely on the increase; but he also informs us that the
translation by himself of _De Wette's Introduction to the Old
Testament_, not only proved a financial failure, but that it has had "no
recognition nor welcome in America; that it has never had a friendly
word said for it in any American journal."[279] Skepticism has been
proclaimed principally by public lectures, and, in this form, has made
little pretension to logical, exegetical, or metaphysical power. Youths
have manifested a decided taste for the works of Carlyle, Emerson, and
Parker, while the _Phases of Faith_ is one of the most thumb-worn of all
the volumes of our circulating libraries. Yet American Rationalism still
lacks consistency and system.
The history of Rationalism proves that the evil is of slow and insidious
growth. The young are most susceptible of its influence. The Sunday
Schools of the various evangelical Churches are usually supplied with
large libraries of religious books. But many works of pernicious
tendency have been known to find a place upon shelves designed for
better service.
A recent juvenile publication of skeptical character has probably been
read by many children whose parents had taught them that all Scripture
is given by inspiration of God.[280] This neat and attractive little
volume is worthy of the disciples of Paulus and Semler. It is an
advocate, under the most fascinating garb, of the very Rationalism which
now threatens the American Church. The author claims that the
patriarchal history is made up of little scraps of poetry; the fall of
our first parents was their seeing a dark veil one day in their
wandering, and they, in consequence thereof, went out of the pleasant
place where they had been dwelling; the deluge was simply a metaphorical
description of the increase of evil among men; the ark was only a
mystical vessel typifying faith, truth, and other correctives of sorrow
and sin; "there never was a single man Noah, who put all those creatures
into a boat and saved himself;" no sacrifice appeared to Abraham when
about to offer Isaac, but "his lifted arm seems to be seized as by the
hand of an angel;" the crossing of the Red Sea by Israel, and the
destruction of Pharaoh and his host, were the natural results of tide
and storm; the bitter waters were sweetened by a friendly weed that grew
close at hand; the speaking of Balaam's ass was only the twirling of his
long ears and loud braying; and the walls of Jericho fell merely by the
natural force of loud, fearless, and honest speaking,--just as West
India Slavery tumbled down by the agency of the noble voices that
thundered, trumpet-like, in righteous indignation against it.
While speaking of Mr. Frothingham's juvenile work, we do not forget that
he has lately sounded the alarm of "Liberal Christianity" for those who
have passed the age of childhood. Many of his Unitarian brethren will
hardly agree with his radical Rationalism. Belonging to the extreme Left
Wing, he holds that it is the province of liberal Christians to slough
off the absurd doctrines now prevalent,--"not to remould the age,--to
recast it, to regenerate it, to cross it or struggle with it, but to
penetrate its meaning, enter into its temper, sympathize with its hopes,
blend with its endeavors. The life of the time appoints the creed of the
time, and modifies the establishment of the time. The great mark of our
generation is a deep faith in the soul's power to take care of itself,
and a desire that it may exercise that power to the utmost. Away with
fears! Away with despairs! Away with devils! Away with perdition! Away
with doom! Protestantism has the poison in its heart. From our own
liberal theology, the elements of unnaturalism, preternaturalism,
supernaturalism, have disappeared almost as completely as they have from
the systems of science. The grand achievement of Christianity was the
emancipation of human nature from its terrible Jewish thraldom. Its
revelation seems to have been, that men could judge for themselves what
is right,--could please God by being true to themselves,--could find the
blessed life by returning to the simplicity of little children,--and
could bring in the kingdom of heaven by yielding to the solicitations of
kindness. Man greater than the Sabbath; man greater than the temple; man
greater than the priesthood or the law. The religion was a consecration
of Nature; the abolishment of the old oppressive hierarchies, and a
cordial invitation to the heart to make a religion for itself. Just so
far as it was in the deepest and purest sense 'natural' religion,--just
so far as it emancipated the moral forces of humanity,--was it quick and
quickening.... Human nature, under liberty, will vindicate itself as a
divine creation. The freer it is, the more harmonious, orderly,
balanced, and beautiful it is.... Nature's seers, running their eye
along the line of the moral law, catch vistas in the future brighter
than those that now are fading from the Old Testament page; and Nature's
prophets, putting their ear to the ground, hear the murmur of nobler
revelations than were ever given to the old oracles now moving their
stiffened lips in death. Humanity's heresiarchs are lordlier than
inhumanity's priests. The soul's image-breaking is diviner than the
prelate's worship. Knowledge distances faith. Human solidity more than
makes good the Catholic's Communion. The revelation of universal law
makes the belief in miracle seem atheistical; and the irresistible
grace of the spirit that lives, and moves, and discloses its being in
humanity, sweeps past the dispensations of Catholic and Protestant
Christendom, as the eagle distances the dove."[281]
We would not utter a syllable of needless alarm; but is it not time that
the American Church take note of the efforts by which the Rationalists
of every grade are striving to take away the cardinal truths of the
Christian revelation? Their predecessors in Europe sought to make
children ashamed of the old truths by casting sarcasm on the strong
faith and evangelical piety of the forefathers. They then aimed to show
that the Church and theology are altogether behind the age, and that
science and art are advancing with a rapidity which must leave all
dogmatism and authority far behind. They afterward examined the
Scriptures by the light of Reason alone, and, by this idea, deluded
multitudes of the young and inexperienced into the darkness and doubt
which were never removed.
This last effort may be the next one to which American Rationalism will
address itself. The Church in this country has partaken of the pride
awakened by our unexampled national prosperity; and many of her noblest
sons had well-nigh come to the conclusion, before the outbreak of the
late civil war, that she must inevitably prosper, simply because of the
remarkable temporal blessings which God had lavishly given. But without
faith nothing can be accomplished, and three decades may be sufficient
to so change the whole aspect of our religious life that the Church may
become thoroughly Rationalistic; her sanctuaries frequented, and her
posts of honor occupied, by the worshipers of Reason. The fidelity of
the past will not be able to meet the emergency of the present. The
Church in the wilderness was not permitted to lay up manna in advance.
Our civilization is undergoing a complete revolution. The field is newly
ploughed by the events of the last few years, and it becomes the Church
to scatter the seeds of truth with an unsparing hand. If this land is to
be blessed with pure faith, as in past years, a faith strong enough to
repel every blow of Skepticism, to the Church, as an instrument, and not
to our natural growth, shall be attributed this popular prosperity. If
we would secure for future years an uncorrupted faith, the enaction of
pure laws, the introduction of the Gospel into every social class, an
increased enthusiasm in missionary labors, the intense union of all
parts of our country, and the united progress of piety and theological
science, the duty of the present hour must be discharged.
FOOTNOTES:
[271] Farrar, _Critical History of Free Thought_, p. 324.
[272] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, vol. i., p.
30.
[273] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, pp. 5, 6.
[274] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, p. 111.
[275] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, pp. 333, 4.
[276] Ibid. p. 350.
[277] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, pp. 477, 478.
[278] _Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology_, pp. 51-55.
[279] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, vol. i., p.
402.
[280] _Stories of the Patriarchs_, by Rev. O. B. Frothingham. Boston,
1864.
[281] Sermon on the _New Religion of Nature_, before the Alumni of the
Cambridge Divinity School. Published in the _Friend of Progress_,
November, 1864.