I was in Salem when this came. It happened in the following way: A woman
in my choir, a melancholy, tearful, forlorn woman, asked me one day if I
knew Theodore Parker. I said I did not, but then, seeing her
disappointment, I asked her why she put that question. She replied that
her husband had abandoned her some months before and with another woman
had gone to Maine. There he had left the woman and was living in Boston,
and was a member of Mr. Parker's Society; and she thought that if I knew
Mr. Parker I might find out something about him, and perhaps induce him
to come back to Salem. I told her I was going to Boston in a day or two,
and would see Mr. Parker.
My visit, again and again repeated, resulted in an intimacy with that
extraordinary man which had a lasting effect on my career. His personal
sympathy, his profound humanity, his quickness of feeling, his
sincerity, his courage, his absolute fidelity of service, even more than
his astonishing vigor of intellect and his earnestness in pursuit of
truth, made a deep impression on my mind. To be in his society was to be
impelled in the direction of all nobleness. He talked with me, lent me
books, stimulated the thirst for knowledge, opened new visions of
usefulness. As I recall it now, his influence was mainly personal, the
power that comes from a great character. He communicated a moral
impetus. Faith in man, love of liberty in thought, institution, law,
breathed in all his words and works. His theological ideas were somewhat
mixed, as was inevitable then. His gift of spiritual vision, especially
as shown in his interpretation of the Old-Testament narratives, may have
been imperfect; his moral perspective may have been incomplete; his
learning was copious, rather than discerning. But his single-mindedness
was perfect, and his devotion to his fellow-men was almost superhuman.
It was a privilege to know such a man, so simple-hearted and brave. The
slight disposition to put himself on his omniscience, to strike an
attitude, was not strange considering his enormous force, his
consciousness of power, his singular influence over men, and his
conviction (in large measure forced on him by his advocates) that he was
a religious reformer, a second Luther, the inaugurator of a new
Protestantism. His three doctrines, to which he constantly appealed, and
in proof of which he adduced the testimony of the human soul,--the
existence of a personal God, the immortality of the individual, and the
absoluteness of the "moral law" might have been untenable in the
presence of modern knowledge under the form in which he stated them. His
vast collection of materials in attestation of Theism may have been
valuable chiefly as a curiosity; but the man himself was all of one
piece, genuine through and through. The mingling of fire and moderation
in him was very remarkable, the blending of consuming radicalism with
saving conservatism puzzled his more vehement disciples; but his
character interested everybody; his firmness was visible from afar, and
his warmth of heart was felt through stone walls. There were no two
ministers in Boston who did as much for the inmates of hospitals and
prisons as he did. His ministry ceased a quarter of a century ago, but
the effect is vital yet, and will last for years to come. At this
distance the heart leaps up to meet him. His chief work was done, for it
consisted mainly in the adoption of a type of character, and length of
days is not needed for this, while it is apt to be impaired by the
infirmities of age. His long, wearisome illness, full of weakness and
pain, tested the strength of his fortitude, patience, hopefulness, and
trust, and was interesting as showing the passive, acquiescent side of
heroism, all the more impressive in view of his love of life, his desire
to finish his course, his sense of accountability (stronger in him than
in anybody I ever met), and his wish to serve his kind. It was my
happiness, more than ten years after he went away from men, to dwell for
months in his atmosphere, while writing his biography, and all my old
impressions of him were confirmed. And five years later, reviewing his
life in the _Index_, I was again struck by his greatness. I may be
excused for quoting the closing passage from the _Index_, of July 5,
1877, in which I stated the claims of Theodore Parker to the honor of
posterity. The paragraph sums up the qualities that have been ascribed
to him--integrity, catholicity, outspokenness; to these might have been
added warmth of heart, but this last attribute lay on the surface, and
could be easily appreciated by ordinary observers--in fact, was seen and
acknowledged by his enemies, and by those who knew him least.
On the whole, then, I should say that _manliness_ was Theodore
Parker's crowning quality and supreme claim to distinction. That he
had other most remarkable gifts is conceded as a matter of course.
Everybody knows that he had. But this was his prime characteristic.
The other gifts he had in spite of himself--his thirst for
knowledge, his love of books, his all-devouring industry, his
unfailing memory, his natural eloquence or power of affluent
expression; but character men regard as less a gift than an
acquisition,--the fruit of aspiration, resolve, fidelity,--the
product of daily, nay, of hourly, endeavor. Hence it is that
intellectual greatness does not impress the multitude; even genius
has but a limited sway over the masses of mankind. But character
goes to the roots of life. In fact, Theodore Parker's eminence as a
man of thought and expression in words has concealed from the world
at large the intrinsic quality of the person. His reputation as
theologian, preacher, controversialist, has concealed the real
greatness which comes to light as the dust of controversy subsides.
The very causes in which the heroism of his manliness was
displayed--as, for example, the anti-slavery cause, to which he
devoted so much of his time and vitality--rendered inconspicuous
the contribution he made to the treasury of humane feeling. Now
that that great conflict is over, now that its agitations have
ceased and its heats have cooled, the character of which this
conflict revealed but a portion, the career in which this long
agony was but an episode, loom up into distinctness. The greatest
of all human achievements is a manly character--guileless, sincere,
and brave; that he by all admission possessed. He earned it; he
prayed for it; meditated for it; worked for it;--how hard, his
private journals show. And for this he will not be forgotten. For
this he will be remembered as one of the benefactors, one of the
emancipators, of his kind.
From a shelf in his library, I took Schwegler's "Nachapostolische
Zeitalter," a work which threw a flood of light on the problems of
New-Testament criticism. This led to a study of the writings of F. C.
Baur, the founder of the so-called "Tuebingen School." A complete set of
the _Theologische Jahrbuecher_, the organ of his ideas, was imported from
Germany, and carefully perused. These volumes contained full and minute
studies on all the books of the New Testament--Gospels, Epistles, the
writing termed "The Acts of the Apostles," with incidental glances at
the "Apocalypse." The calm, consistent strength of these expositions
commended them to my mind. The author was a university professor, a man
of practical piety, a Lutheran preacher of high repute, simple,
affectionate, faithful to his duties, quite unconscious that he was
undermining anybody's faith, so deeply rooted was the old Lutheran
freedom of criticism in regard to the Bible. In the German mind,
religion and literature, Christianity and the Scriptures, were entirely
distinct things. The scholar could sit in his library in one mood and
could enter his pulpit in another, preserving in both the
single-mindedness that became a Christian and a student.
Other theories have arisen since, but none that have taken hold of such
eminent minds have appeared. Theodore Parker accepted it; James
Martineau adopted its main proposition in several remarkable papers
written at various times, last in the Unitarian magazine _Old and New_.
In the brilliant lectures delivered in London, during the spring of
1880, on the Hibbert Foundation, Ernest Renan's striking account of
early Christianity owed its force to the assumption of the fundamental
postulate of the Tuebingen School. In the latter years of his life, Baur
summed up the results of his criticism in a pamphlet that was designed
to meet objections; and in 1875-1877 his son-in-law, the learned Edward
Zeller, one of his ablest disciples, an eminent professor of history at
Berlin, published an earnest, carefully considered, masterly report of
the writings of the now famous teacher, in the course of which he paid a
merited tribute to his character, vindicated his views from the charge
of haste and partisanship, and predicted for them a triumphant
future.[*]
[*] "Vortraege und Abhandlungen," von E. Zeller, 2 vols., Leipzig.
The adoption of these opinions, so opposed to the views current in the
community, compelled the adoption of a new basis for religious
conviction. Christianity, in so far as it depended on the New Testament
or the doctrines of the early Church, was discarded. The cardinal tenets
of the Creed--the Deity of the Christ, the atonement, everlasting
perdition--had been dismissed already, and I was virtually beyond the
limits of the Confession. But Theism remained, and the spiritual nature
of man with its craving for religious truth. Without going so far as
Theodore Parker did, who maintained that the three primary beliefs of
religion--the existence of God, the assurance of individual immortality,
the reality of a moral law--were permanent, universal, and definite
facts of human nature, found wherever man was found; without going so
far as this, I contended that man had a spiritual nature; that this
nature, on coming to consciousness of its powers and needs, gave
expression to exalted beliefs, clothing them with authority, building
them into temples, ordaining them in the form of ceremonies and
priesthoods. In support of this opinion, appeal was made to the great
religions of the world, to the substantial agreement of all sacred
books, to the spontaneous homage paid, in all ages, to saints and
prophets; to the essential accord of moral precepts all over the globe,
to the example of Jesus, to the Beatitudes and Parables, to the respect
given by rude people to the noblest persons, to the credences that
inspire multitudes, to the teachings of Schleiermacher, Fichte,
Constant, Cousin, Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson, in fact, to every leading
writer of the last generation. All this was so beautiful, so consistent
and convincing, so full of promise, so broad, plain, and inspiring that,
with a fresh but miscalculated enthusiasm, over-sanguine, thoughtless,
the young minister undertook to carry his congregation with him, but
without success; so he went elsewhere. This action proceeded from the
faith that Parker instilled. Parker was pre-eminently, to those who
comprehended him, a believer.
In the words of D. A. Wasson, his successor in Music Hall:
Theodore Parker was one of the most energetic and religious
believers these later centuries have known. This was the prime
characteristic of the man. He did not agree in the details of his
unbelieving with the majority of those around him, because it was
part of his religion to think freely, part of their religion to
forbear thinking freely on the highest matters. But he was not only
a powerful believer in his own soul, but was the believing Hercules
who went forth in the name of divine law to cleanse the Augean
stables of the world.... This, I repeat, and can not repeat with
too much emphasis, was the characteristic of the man--sinewy,
stalwart, prophetic, fervid, aggressive, believing.... The Hercules
rather than the Apollo of belief, it was not his to charm rocks and
trees with immortal music, but to smite the hydra of publicity,
iniquity, and consecrated falsehood with the club or mace of
belief; if this might not suffice, then to burn out its foul life
with the fire of his sarcasms.
To quote my own words, written in 1873 (see "Life." p. 566):
With him the religious sentiment was supreme. It had no roots in his
being wholly distinct from its mental or sensible forms of
expression. Never evaporating in mystical dreams nor entangled in
the meshes of cunning speculation, it preserved its freshness and
bloom and fragance in every passage of his life. His sense of the
reality of divine things was as strong as was ever felt by a man of
such clear intelligence. His feeling never lost its glow, never was
damped by misgiving, dimmed by doubt, or clouded by sorrow. Far from
dreading to submit his faith to test, he courted tests; was as eager
to hear the arguments against his belief as for it; was as fair in
weighing evidence on the opponent's side as on his own. "Oh, that
mine enemy had written a book!" he was ready to cry, not that he
might demolish it, but that he might read it. He knew the writings
of Moleschott, and talked with him personally; the books of Carl
Vogt were not strange to him. The philosophy of Ludwig Buechner, if
philosophy it can be called, was as familiar to him as to any of
Buechner's disciples. He was intimate with the thoughts of Feuerbach.
He drew into discussion every atheist and materialist he met, talked
with them closely and confidentially, and rose from the interview
more confident in the strength of his own positions than ever.
Science he counted his best friend; relied on it for confirmation of
his faith, and was only impatient because it moved no faster. All
the materialists in and out of Christendom had no power to shake his
conviction of the Infinite God and the immortal existence, nor would
have had had he lived till he was a century old, for, in his view,
the convictions were planted deep in human nature, and were demanded
by the exigencies of human life. Moleschott respected Parker; Dessor
was his confidential friend; Feuerbach would have taken him by the
hand as a brother.
There can be no greater mistake than to call Theodore Parker a Deist;
than to class Theodore Parker with the Deists. He was utterly unlike
Chubb or Shaftesbury, Herbert of Cherbury or Bolingbroke. Even the most
philosophical of them had nothing in common with him. Hume and Voltaire,
for instance, were utterly unlike him. They, it is true, believed in _a_
God, the "First Cause," the "Author of Nature," the "Supreme Being," and
in a future life. But their belief was merely logical and mechanical,
his was vital; he believed in the real, living, immanent Deity. They
thought that religion was an imposition, a policy of the priests, who
played upon the fears of mankind; he believed that religion was a
working power in the world, the origin of the highest achievement, the
soul of all aspiration. They had no faith in the direct communication of
the "Supreme Mind" with the soul of man; he believed in the infinite
genius of man, and in the direct communication of the absolute
intelligence. They thought of justice as a contrivance for securing
happiness; he thought of it as the law of life. One of Mr. Parker's
friends ascribed to him a gorgeous imagination; if he had it, it is a
surprise that it should have been so completely suppressed as it was,
for his taste in pictures and in poetry was very questionable. His want
of speculative talent probably helped him with the people. Whether he
formulated his thoughts is uncertain. Such was not his genius. He was a
constructive, not a destructive. It was his faith that he criticised the
Bible in order that he might release its piety and righteousness; that
he tore in pieces the creeds in order to emancipate the secrets of
divinity.
It is useless to conjecture what Parker might have been had he lived.
That he would have held to his primary convictions is almost certain; it
is quite certain that he would have loved mental liberty. He would have
been a great power in our Civil War; he would probably have been a
leader in the free religious movement. Parker, when I first knew him,
was in full life and vigor. He had gone to Boston a short time before my
ordination in 1847, and had before him a long future of usefulness. All
the exigencies in which he might have been conspicuous were distant.
That the effect of such a man on me and my connections was exceedingly
great is not strange. It would have been strange had it been otherwise.
In sermon, prayer, private conversations my convictions came out. That
the people were disappointed may be assumed, but they were kind,
generous, and patient. The congregations did not fall off; there was
little violence or even vehement expostulation. But the position was not
comfortable, and when an invitation came from Jersey City to found a new
Society, I accepted it at once. It had been a dream of Dr. Bellows to
establish a Society at that place, and, learning that I was in search of
another sphere of activity, he asked me to undertake the work. This was
seconded by a cordial representation from Jersey City itself, on the
part of some who were Dr. Bellows' own parishioners. The uprooting was
not easy, for Salem had become endeared to me as the first scene of my
ministry, a place where I could be useful in many ways, and which
contained a delightful society; an established, well-furnished town,
with historic associations; a country centre, an agreeable situation.
But the waters were getting still there, and the sentiment of the past
was getting to over-weigh the promises of the future.