theologian, philosopher or scholar. Whatever else he was, contributed to
his greatness in this. He had a profuse gift of language; expression was
a necessity to him; his thoughts came swiftly, and clothed in attractive
garments; he had wit, and he had humor; laughter and tears were equally
at his command. His resources of illustration, drawn from history,
literature, biography, nature, were simply inexhaustible; the fruits of
enormous reading were at the immediate disposal of a memory that never
lost a trifle of the stores committed to it. The religious emotions were
as genuine with him as they were quick, and as deep as they were
glowing: the human sympathies were wide as the widest, and tender as
the tenderest. He had the power of persuasion and of rebuke, a withering
sarcasm, a winning compassion. His indignation at wrong was not so
qualified by sentimental regard for the wrong doer that invective was
wasted on lifeless abstractions, nor was his judgment of evil doers so
austere that wickedness escaped by being made incredible. It cannot be
said of anybody that he has been able to discriminate nicely, in hours
of moral feeling, between wrong doers and wrong deeds; that cannot be
done in the present state of psychological science. We simply do not
know what the limits of personal responsibility are; how much power is
entrusted to the will; how much allowance is to be made for temperament
and circumstance; at what point the individual is detached from the mass
of mankind, and constituted an accountable person. Parker was guilty, as
others are, of personal injustice in holding individuals answerable for
sins of their generation, and for vices transmitted with their blood;
conscience and charity were occasionally at issue with him; but if
righteousness was betrayed into intemperance of zeal, peace made haste
to offer its kiss of sorrow, and unaffected tears damped down the flames
of wrath when they threatened to consume the innocent. This two-fold
power of blasting and of blessing, was vastly effective both on large
audiences and on small. The personal integrity which no one ever
doubted, the courage which was evident to even hasty observers, the
mental independence which justified the boldness of its position by an
indefatigable purpose to discover truth, were prime qualifications for
the office he filled. The very disadvantages,--an unheroic presence, an
uninspired countenance, an unmelodious and unpliable voice, the
necessity of interposing glasses between his clear blue eyes and his
audience, and thus veiling the heavens that lay behind them,--helped him
by putting out of mind all thought of meretricious attempts at
influence, and compelling recognition of the intellectual and moral
force which could so easily dispense with what most orators consider
invaluable aids.
All that Parker had went into his preaching; the wealth of his library,
the treasures of his heart, the sweetness of his closet meditations, the
solemnity of his lonely musings. But it was not this that gave him his
great power as a preacher. That, we are persuaded, was due in chief part
to the earnestness of his faith in the transcendental philosophy. How
cordially he entertained that faith, what to him it signified in
politics, ethics, religion, may be learned by any who will take pains to
read a lecture by him on Transcendentalism, recently published by the
Free Religious Association. That he ascribed the popular interest in his
preaching to his philosophical ideas will not perhaps be accepted as
evidence on the point, for men are apt to be mistaken in regard to the
sources of their power; but it is interesting as a testimony to his own
belief, to know that he did so. In a sermon preached on November 14th,
1852, the occasion being his leaving the Melodeon for the Music Hall, he
presents first the current modes of accounting for his success, and
then his own.
"The first reason assigned for the audience coming together was
this: they came from vain curiosity, having itching ears to hear
'what this babbler sayeth.'
"Then it was said, men came here because I taught utter irreligion,
blank immorality; that I had no love of God, no fear of God, no
love of man; and that you thought, if you could get rid of your
conscience and soul, and trample immortality under foot, and were
satisfied there was no God, you should have a very nice time of it
here and hereafter.
"Then it was declared that I was a shrewd, practical man, perfectly
well 'posted up' in every thing that took place; knew how to make
investments and get very large returns,--unluckily it has not been
for myself that this has been true. And it was said that I
collected large headed, practical men to hear me, and that you were
a 'boisterous assembly.'
"Then, that I was a learned man and gave learned discourses on
ecclesiastical history or political history,--things which have not
been found very attractive in the churches hitherto.
"Again, that I was a philosopher, with a wise head, and taught men
theological metaphysics; and so a large company of men seemed all
at once smitten with a panic for metaphysics and abstract
preaching. It was never so before.
"Next it was reported that I was a witty man, and shot nicely
feathered arrows very deftly into the mark; and that men came to
attend the sharp shooting of a wit.
"Then there was a seventh thing,--that I was an eloquent man; and I
remember certain diatribes against the folly of filling churches
with eloquence.
"Then again, it was charged against me that I was a philanthropist,
and taught the love of men, but did not teach at all the love of
God; and that men really loved to love one another, and so came.
"Then it was thought that I was a sentimentalist, and tickled the
ears of 'weak women,' who came to delight themselves and be filled
full of poetry and love.
"The real thing they did not seem to hit; that I preached an idea
of God, of man and of religion, which commended itself to the
nature of mankind."
The great preacher is always an idealist, and according to the fervor of
his idealism is he great. This was the source of Channing's power; it
was the charm of Emerson's. In reply to a friend who questioned her as
to the nature of the benefits conferred on her by Mr. Emerson's
preaching, Margaret Fuller wrote:
"His influence has been more beneficial to me than that of any
American, and from him I first learned what is meant by an inward
life. Many other springs have since fed the stream of living
waters, but he first opened the fountain. That the 'mind is its own
place' was a dead phrase to me till he cast light upon my mind.
Several of his sermons stand apart in memory, like landmarks of my
spiritual history. It would take a volume to tell what this one
influence did for me."
Mr. Parker's ministry had three periods, in each of which the ideal
element was the attraction. The first was the period of quiet influence
in West Roxbury, where the stream of his spiritual life flowed
peacefully through green pastures, and enriched simple hearts with its
unintermitted current. Accounts agree that at this time there was a soul
of sweetness in his preaching, that was a good deal more than the body
of its thought. The second was the period at the Boston Melodeon, the
first of his experience before the crowd of a metropolis. This was the
controversial epoch, and, from the nature of the case, was largely
polemical and negative as towards the popular theology. But even then
the strain of spiritual faith was heard above the din of battle, and
souls that were averse to polemics were fed by the enthusiasm that came
from the inner heights of aspiration. The last period was that of the
Music Hall--the famous period. Then the faith was defined and
formulated; the corner-stones were hewn and set; the fundamental
positions were announced with the fidelity of iteration that was
customary with the "painful preachers of the Word" in churches where
people were duly stretched upon the Five Points of Calvin. The three
cardinal attestations of the universal human consciousness--
The Absolute God,
The Moral Law,
The Immortal Life,
were asseverated with all the earnestness of the man, and declared to be
the constituent elements of the Rock of Ages.
Standing on this tripod, Parker spoke as one having authority; he judged
other creeds--Orthodox, Unitarian, Scientific--with the confidence of
one who felt that he had inspiration on his side. It was difficult for
him to understand how, without his faith, others could be happy. The
believers in tradition seemed to him people who walked near precipices,
leaning on broken reeds; the unbelievers were people who walked near the
same precipices, with bandaged eyes.
"If to-morrow I am to perish utterly, then I shall only take
counsel for to-day, and ask for qualities which last no longer. My
fathers will be to me only as the ground out of which my bread-corn
is grown; dead, they are like the rotten mould of earth, their
memory of small concern to me. Posterity--I shall care nothing for
the future generations of mankind. I am one atom in the trunk of a
tree, and care nothing for the roots below or the branches above; I
shall sow such seed as will bear harvest to-day; I shall know no
higher law; passion enacts my statutes to-day; to-morrow ambition
revises the statutes, and these are my sole legislators; morality
will vanish, expediency take its place; heroism will be gone, and
instead of it there will be the brute valor of the he-wolf, the
brute-cunning of the she-fox, the rapacity of the vulture, and the
headlong daring of the wild bull; but the cool, calm courage which,
for truth's sake, and for love's sake, looks death firmly in the
face, and then wheels into line, ready to be slain--that will be a
thing no longer heard of."
"The atheist sits down beside the coffin of his only child--a
rose-bud daughter, whose heart death slowly ate away; the pale
lilies of the valley which droop with fragrance above that lifeless
heart, are flowers of mockery to him, their beauty is a cheat; they
give not back his child, for whom the sepulchral monster opens his
remorseless jaws. The hopeless father looks down on the face of his
girl, silent--not sleeping, cold--dead.... He looks beyond--the
poor sad man--it is only solid darkness he looks on; no rainbow
beautifies that cloud; there is thunder in it, not light; night is
behind--without a star."
This is the way the Protestant Christians spoke of him; the
"Evangelicals" spoke thus of the Unitarians; the believers in miraculous
revelations spoke thus of the rationalists. They that are sure always
speak so of those who, in their judgment, have no right to be sure at
all.
Yet Parker had a hospitable mind, and his hospitality was due also to
his faith. The spiritual philosophy which maintained the identity in all
men of consciousness, and the eternal validity of its promises, which no
error or petulance could discredit, was indulgent to the unfortunates
who had not the satisfaction of its assurance. It pitied, but did not
reproach them. They were children of God no less for being ignorant of
their dignity. It was impossible for Parker to believe that rational
beings could be utterly insensible to the essential facts of their own
nature. Their error, misconception, misconstruction, to whatever cause
due, could be no more than incidental. Skepticism might make wild work
of definitions, but ultimate facts it could never disturb; these would
thrust themselves up at last, as inevitably as the rocky substratum of
the globe presents itself in the green field. In a thanksgiving sermon
he thanked God that atheism could freely deliver its creed and prove
that it was folly. He was persuaded that the disbelievers believed
better than they knew; in their paroxysms of denial, he saw the blind
struggles of faith; he gave the enemies of religion credit for qualities
that made their hostility look like a heroic protest against the
outrages inflicted in the name of religion upon religion itself.
"It is a fact of history, that in old time, from Epicurus to
Seneca, some of the ablest heads and best hearts of Greece and Rome
sought to destroy the idea of immortality. This was the reason:
they saw it was a torment to mankind; that the popular notion of
immortality was too bad to be true; and so they took pains to break
down the Heathen Mythology, though with it they destroyed the
notion of immortal life. They did a great service to mankind in
ridding us from this yoke of fear.
"Many a philosopher has seemed without religion, even to a careful
observer--sometimes has passed for an atheist. Some of them have to
themselves seemed without any religion, and have denied that there
was any God; but all the while their nature was truer than their
will; their instinct kept their personal wholeness better than they
were aware. These men loved absolute truth, not for its uses, but
for itself; they laid down their lives for it, rather than violate
the integrity of their intellect. They had the intellectual love of
God, though they knew it not, though they denied it.
"I have known philanthropists who undervalued piety; they liked it
not--they said it was moonshine, not broad day; it gave flashes of
lightning, all of which would not make light.... Yet underneath
their philanthropy there lay the absolute and disinterested love of
other men. They knew only the special form, not the universal
substance thereof.
"Men of science, as a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness
and the piety that are taught as religion, only on the errors, the
evil, the impiety which bear its name. Science is the natural ally
of religion. Shall we try and separate what God has joined? We
injure both by the attempt. The philosophers of this age have a
profound love of truth, and show great industry and boldness in
search thereof. In the name of truth they pluck down the
strongholds of error--venerable and old.
"All the attacks made on religion itself by men of science, from
Celsus to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring religion into
contempt as a single persecution for witchcraft, or a Bartholomew
massacre made in the name of God."
Parker had human sympathies strong and deep, and could never have been
indifferent to the pains and misery of his fellow creatures; yet these
sympathies owed their persistency, their endurance, and their
indomitable sweetness, to the spiritual faith which he professed. He had
a passionate head-strong nature; he knew the charm of pleasant looks,
congenial companions, elegant and luxurious circumstances. His love of
leisure was keen; it was the desire of his life to enjoy the scholar's
privilege of uninterrupted hours, in the delicious seclusion of the
library. With a different philosophy he would have been a very different
man. The creed he held made self-indulgence impossible.
"I have always taught," he said--in a sermon before quoted, the last he
preached in the Melodeon--"that the religious faculty is the natural
ruler in all the commonwealth of man; the importance of religion, and
its commanding power in every relation of life. This is what I have
continually preached, and some of you will remember that the first
sermon I addressed to you was on this theme:--The absolute necessity of
religion for safely conducting the life of the individual, and the life
of the State. You knew very well I did not begin too soon; yet I did not
then foresee that it would soon be denied in America, in Boston, that
there was any law higher than an Act of Congress." The allusion is to
the Fugitive Slave Bill then recently enacted, which brought to a close
issue the controversy between the Abolitionists and the Government, and
imposed on Mr. Parker and the rest who felt as he did, duties of
watchfulness and self-denial, that for years put to flight all thoughts
of personal ease.
He continues:
"Woman I have always regarded as the equal of man--more nicely
speaking, the equivalent of man; superior in some things, inferior
in some others; inferior in the lower qualities, in bulk of body
and bulk of brain; superior in the higher and nicer qualities--in
the moral power of conscience, the loving power of affection, the
religious power of the soul; equal on the whole, and of course
entitled to just the same rights as man; the same rights of mind,
body and estate; the same domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and
political rights as man, and only kept from the enjoyment of these
by might, not right; yet herself destined one day to acquire them
all."
The belief in the spiritual eminence of woman was part of the creed of
the Transcendentalist; it was intimately connected with his reverence
for interior, poetic, emotional natures; with his preference for feeling
above thought, of spontaneity above will. In the order of rank, Parker
assigned the first place to the "religious faculty," as he termed it,
which gave immediate vision of spiritual truth; the second place was
given to the affections; conscience he ranked below these; and lowest of
all stood the intellect. The rational powers were held subordinate to
the instinctive, or rather the rational and the instinctive were held to
be coincident. The feminine characteristic being affection, which is
spontaneous, and the masculine being intellect, which is not, the
feminine was set above the masculine--love above light, pity above
justice, sympathy above rectitude, compassion above equity. Parker had
feminine attributes, and was slightly enamored of them; thought, or
tried to think them the glory of his manhood; but the masculine greatly
predominated in him. To people in general he seemed to reverse his own
order, in practice. Weak, dependent, dreamy men he had no patience with;
sentimentalism was his aversion; the moral element alone commanded his
absolute respect. Masculine women were equally distasteful; while he
admired the genius of Margaret Fuller, his personal attraction toward
her seldom brought him into her society. That a man constituted as he
was, self-reliant to aggressiveness, inclined to be arbitrary,
dogmatical, and imperious, of prodigious force of will and masterly
power of conscience, entered as he did into advocacy of the rights of
the African and the prerogatives of woman, is evidence of the
whole-heartedness with which he adopted the transcendental philosophy.
It was, indeed, a faith to him, that ruled his life and appointed his
career. It gave him his commission as prophet, reformer, philanthropist.
It was the consecrating oil that sanctified him, from the crown of his
head to the soles of his feet.
Parker believed in the gospel of Transcendentalism, and was fully
persuaded that it was to be the gospel of the future. "The religion I
preach," he was accustomed to say, "will be the religion of enlightened
men for the next thousand years." He anticipated an earthly immortality
for his thought, an extensive circulation of his books, a swift course
for his word, among the people. The expectation seemed not unreasonable
twenty years ago.
The prediction has not thus far been justified. Parker died in 1860, on
the eve of the civil war, which he prognosticated, sixteen years ago.
The war fairly ended, efforts were made to revive the prophet's memory
and carry out the cherished purpose of his heart. But their ill success
has gone far to prove--what needed no evidence--that prophecies may
fail, and tongues cease and knowledge pass away. The philosophy that
Parker combated and ridiculed and cast scorn at, declared to be
self-refuted and self-condemned, has revived under a new name, as the
"philosophy of experience," is professed by the ablest thinkers of the
day, taught in high places, in the name of science, set forth as the
hope of man; the creeds he pronounced irrational, and fancied to be
obsolete still hold nominal sway over the minds of men; the Christianity
of the letter and the form is the only Christianity that is officially
acknowledged; the gospel is an institution still, not a faith;
revivalism has the monopoly of religious enthusiasm; preaching is giving
place to lecturing; the pulpit has been taken down; science alone is
permitted to speak with authority;--literature, journalism, politics,
trade, attract the young men that once sought the ministry; the noble
preachers of a noble gospel are the few remaining idealists, who have
kept the faith of their youth; they are growing old; one by one they
leave their place, and there are none like them to fill it. Parker was
one of the last of the grand preachers who spoke with power, bearing
commission from the soul. The commissions which the soul issues are, for
the time being, discredited, and discredited they will be, so long as
the ideal philosophy is an outcast among men. Should that philosophy
revive, the days of great preaching will return with it. Bibles will be
read and hymns sung, and sermons delivered to crowds from pulpits. The
lyceum and the newspaper will occupy a subordinate position as means of
social and moral influence, and the prophets will recover their waning
reputation. Until then, the work they did when living must attest their
greatness with such as can estimate it at its worth.
XIII.
THE MAN OF LETTERS.
The man who was as influential as any in planting the seeds of the
transcendental philosophy in good soil, and in showing whither its
principles tended, is known now, and has from the first been known,
chiefly as a man of letters, a thoughtful observer, a careful student
and a serious inquirer after knowledge. George Ripley, one year older
than Emerson, was one of the forerunners and prophets of the new
dispensation. He was by temperament as well as by training, a scholar, a
reader of books, a discerner of opinions, a devotee of ideas. A mind of
such clearness and serenity, accurate judgment, fine taste, and rare
skill in the use of language, written and spoken, was of great value in
introducing, defining and interpreting the vast, vague thoughts that
were burning in the minds of speculative men. He was one of the first in
America to master the German language; and, his bent of mind being
philosophical and theological, he became a medium through which the
French and German thought found its way to New England. He was an
importer, reader and lender of the new books of the living Continental
thinkers. His library contained a rich collection of works in
philosophy, theology, hermeneutics, criticism of the Old and New
Testaments, and divinity in its different branches of dogmatics and
sentiment. He was intimate with N. L. Frothingham and Convers Francis,
the admirable scholar, the hospitable and independent thinker, the
enthusiastic and humane believer, the centre and generous distributor of
copious intellectual gifts to all who came within his reach. Theodore
Parker was the intellectual product of these two men, Convers Francis
and George Ripley. The former fed his passion for knowledge; the latter,
at the period of his life in the divinity school, gave direction to his
thought. The books that did most to determine the set of Parker's mind
were taken from Mr. Ripley's library. For a considerable time, in
Parker's early ministry, they were close and thoroughly congenial
friends. They walked and talked together; made long excursions; attended
conventions; were members of the same club or coterie; joined in the
discussions at which Emerson, Channing, Hedge, Clark, Alcott took part;
and, though parted, in after life, by circumstances which appointed them
to different spheres of labor,--one in Boston, the other in New
York,--they continued to the end, constant and hearty well wishers. At
the close of his life, Parker expressed a hope that Ripley might be his
biographer.
Mr. Ripley prepared for the ministry at the Cambridge divinity school;
in 1826 accepted a call to be pastor and preacher of the church,
organized but eighteen months before, and within two months worshipping
in their new meeting-house on Purchase street, Boston. The ordination
took place on Wednesday, Nov. 8th, of the same year. "Under his
charge," said his successor, Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, in 1848, "the
society grew from very small beginnings to strength and prosperity. As a
preacher, he awakened the deepest interest, and as a devoted pastor, the
warmest affection, which still survives, deep and strong, in the hearts
of those who were the objects of his counsel and pastoral care. After
the lapse of almost fifteen years, the connection was dissolved, for
reasons which affected not the least the relations of friendship and
mutual respect between the parties. It has been a great satisfaction to
me, as I have passed in and out among you, to hear again and again the
expressions of love and interest with which you remember the ministry of
your first servant in this church." That this was not merely the formal
tribute which the courtesies of the profession exacted, is proved, as
well as such a thing can be proved, by the published correspondence
between the pastor and his people, by the frank declarations of the
pastor in his farewell address, and by a remarkable letter, which
discussed in full the causes that led to the separation of the pastor
and his flock. In this long and candid letter to the church, Mr. Ripley
declared himself a Transcendentalist, and avowed his sympathy with
movements larger than the Christian Church represented.