Theodore Parker, worn by his great work in defence of liberal religion
and in every cause of suffering humanity, had succumbed to disease and
died in Florence in May, 1860, not quite fifty years of age. Born in
the neighbor town of Lexington when Emerson was seven years old, they
had been friends probably from the time when the latter, soon after
settling in Concord, preached for the society at East Lexington, from
1836 for two years. Parker was, during this period, studying divinity,
and was settled as pastor of the West Roxbury church in 1837. In that
year he is mentioned by Mr. Alcott as a member of the Transcendental Club
and attending its meetings in Boston. When, in June, 1838, Mr. Emerson
fluttered the conservative and the timid by his Divinity School Address,
the young Parker went home and wrote, “It was the most inspiring strain I
ever listened to.... My soul is roused, and this week I shall write the
long-meditated sermons on the state of the church and the duties of these
times.”
Mr. Parker was one of those who attended the gathering in Boston which
gave birth to the _Dial_, to which he was a strong contributor. Three
years after its death, he, with the help of Mr. James Elliot Cabot and
Mr. Emerson, founded the _Massachusetts Quarterly Review_, vigorous
though short-lived, of which he was the editor. Parker frequently visited
Emerson, and the two, unlike in their method, worked best apart in the
same great causes. Rev. William Gannett says, “What Emerson uttered
without plot or plan, Theodore Parker elaborated to a system. Parker was
the Paul of transcendentalism.”
Mr. Edwin D. Mead, in his chapter on Emerson and Theodore Parker,[J]
gives the following pleasant anecdote:—
“At one of Emerson’s lectures in Boston, when the storm against Parker
was fiercest, a lecture at which a score of the religious and literary
leaders of the city were present, Emerson, as he laid his manuscript
upon the desk and looked over the audience, after his wont, observed
Parker; and immediately he stepped from the platform to the seat near the
front where Parker sat, grasping his hand and standing for a moment’s
conversation with him. It was not ostentation, and it was not patronage:
it was admiring friendship,—and that fortification and stimulus Parker
in those times never failed to feel. It was Emerson who fed his lamp, he
said; and Emerson said that, be the lamp fed as it might, it was Parker
whom the time to come would have to thank for finding the light burning.”
Parker dedicated to Emerson his _Ten Sermons on Religion_. In
acknowledging this tribute, Mr. Emerson thus paid tribute to Parker’s
brave service:—
“We shall all thank the right soldier whom God gave strength to fight for
him the battle of the day.”
When Mr. Parker’s failing forces made it necessary for him to drop his
arduous work and go abroad for rest, Mr. Emerson was frequently called to
take his place in the Music Hall on Sundays. I think that this was the
only pulpit he went into to conduct Sunday services after 1838.
It is told that Parker, sitting, on Sunday morning, on the deck of the
vessel that was bearing him away, never to return, smiled and said:
“Emerson is preaching at Music Hall to-day.”
[158] _Page 286, note 1._ Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal:—
“The Duc de Brancas said, ‘Why need I read the Encyclopédie? Rivarol
visits me.’ I may well say it of Theodore Parker.”
[159] _Page 290, note 1._ Richard H. Dana wrote in his diary, November 3,
1853:—
“It is now ten days since Webster’s death.... Strange that the best
commendation that has appeared yet, the most touching, elevated, meaning
eulogy, with all its censure, should have come from Theodore Parker! Were
I Daniel Webster, I would not have that sermon destroyed for all that had
been said in my favor as yet.”
[160] _Page 293, note 1._ I copy from Mr. Emerson’s journal at the
time of Mr. Parker’s death these sentences which precede some of those
included in this address:—
“Theodore Parker has filled up all his years and days and hours. A son
of the energy of New England; restless, eager, manly, brave, early old,
contumacious, clever. I can well praise him at a spectator’s distance,
for our minds and methods were unlike,—few people more unlike. All the
virtues are solitaires. Each man is related to persons who are not
related to each other, and I saw with pleasure that men whom I could
not approach, were drawn through him to the admiration of that which I
admire.”