No More Learning

In 1830 he
entered Harvard College, and for four years kept pace with the studies
there, while still working on the farm or engaged in teaching school.
Harvard might well give him the degree A. M. in 1840; for by that
XIX-693



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11074
THEODORE PARKER
time he was master of a dozen languages, with a good smattering of
half a dozen more. He entered the Divinity School in 1834, midway
of the course, and was graduated in 1836. His first settlement was in
West Roxbury, Massachusetts; which, though a suburb of Boston, was
then so much of a farming village that the young preacher, always
soundly practical, found in 'The Temptations of Milkmen' an appro-
priate subject for a sermon. During his Roxbury ministry he was
translating De Wette's 'Introduction to the Old Testament; but his
great acquisitions in the way of learning never burdened him in
his pulpit work. Even when he waxed philosophical, he translated
his philosophy into the vernacular speech.
Whatever the natural tendencies of Parker's mind, it is unques-
tionable that they were much affected by the Transcendental move-
ment of which Emerson was the New England coryphæus, and which
found its inspirations from abroad in Coleridge and Carlyle rather
than in the great German idealists. So far as Parker's Transcend-
entalism had any German stamp on it, it was that of Jacobi. It
was certainly not that of Kant, whose God and immortality were not
even inferences of the moral law, but good working hypotheses.
Parker proclaimed the soul's direct consciousness of all three of these
great objects of belief. But it may well be questioned whether he
was not a philosopher more by accident than by any natural bent,
and whether his Transcendentalism was not rather a crude expression
of the robust and joyous faith of his own believing soul than any
doctrine of universals, carefully thought out. It is impossible to read
him widely and not feel that in what is inductive and scientific in
his thinking, much more than in what is deductive and metaphysical,
we have the natural gesture of his mind. No one ever reveled in
facts more joyously than he, or had more of a stomach for statistics
which his digestion of them could not match.
When Emerson gave his famous Divinity School address in July
1838, Parker was there to hear it with a quick-beating heart; and
walking home that night, he resolved to keep silence no longer on
the matters which that address made a subject of general discus-
sion in the Unitarian churches. When, in 1839, Professor Andrews
Norton animadverted on Emerson's address as The Latest Form
of Infidelity,' and George Ripley, of Brook Farm distinction, took
Norton in hand, Parker also took part in the controversy, but, with
becoming modesty, in an anonymous pamphlet. Anonymity was not,
however, the habit of his life; though frequently resorted to when, as
a notorious heretic, he feared to injure some good cause by having
his connection with it known. On May 19th, 1841, he was engaged
to preach the ordination sermon of Mr. Charles Shackford, in South
Boston. He took for his subject The Transient and Permanent in


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THEODORE PARKER
11075
Christianity,' and the sermon proved to be one of three of the most
epoch-making in the history of American Unitarianism; Emerson's
address a second, Channing's "Baltimore sermon" of 1819 the third.
The doctrine preached was, that the moral and religious teachings of
Jesus were permanent elements in Christianity, and that the miracu-
lous element was transient. There was no denial that miracles had
been associated with the origin of Christianity; only that they are
necessary to its modern acceptance and support. But the conservative
Unitarians contended that Christianity must be accepted because of
the New Testament miracles, or it was no Christianity at all. Where-
upon a controversy arose of great violence and bitterness. Without
being formally excluded from the Unitarian body, Parker was shut
out from all the prominent Unitarian pulpits; the ministers ventur-
ing to exchange with him being punished for their temerity by the
secession from their societies of many "gentlemen of property and
standing," or by the entire loss of their positions. Thereupon cer-
tain persons came together, and voted "that Theodore Parker have a
chance to be heard in Boston"; and he had it, giving in the form of
lectures his 'Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion,' — the book
which is at once the best expression of his theological mind and of
his literary methods. In 1845 he began preaching every Sunday in
Boston, without surrendering his Roxbury parish; but in 1846, finding
this double work too arduous, he concentrated his energies on his
Boston pulpit; first at the Melodeon and afterward at the Music Hall,
preaching to a congregation much larger than any other in the city.
This continued until 1859, when his health broke down. He went to
the West Indies, and there wrote an elaborate account of his minis-
try, which is one of the most impressive and affecting of his many
publications. From the West Indies he went to Europe, and died
in Florence, May 10th, 1860. His body is buried there in the English
cemetery.
It was much easier for Parker to give up the traditional supports
of religion, because he was naturally a believer of uncommon spon-
taneity. For all his denials, his piety was so warm and glad that
it put to shame the colder temper of the Unitarians who could not
endure his heresies. These were more pronounced as he went on.
From denying the permanent necessity for the miraculous, he passed
to a denial of its historical evidence, anticipating the position of
Huxley and Matthew Arnold: in proportion to the divergence from
our habitual experience, alleged facts must have more evidence to
establish them, and the New Testament miracles do not meet this
requisition. His published sermons do not in their aggregation give
a just impression of his preaching in its proportionate character.
They represent it as more controversial and occasional than it was.


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11076
THEODORE PARKER
His Ten Sermons on Religion' is the volume most representative of
his average strain; while for the tenderness of his piety one must see
his 'Prayers,' caught as they sped to heaven by some loving friend,
and the meditations of his Journal' as they appear in the ill-made
but invaluable 'Life and Correspondence,' written and edited by John
Weiss. The 'Life' by Frothingham is much better written, but far
less rich as an expression of Parker's wonderful range of knowledge,
thought, religious sentiment, and passionate engrossment in political
affairs.
It is in the last of these particulars that a great many persons
who conceive of Parker as believing quite too little or too much, find
ample justification for the warmest eulogy. Think as they may of
his theological opinions, or of the invectives which he launched at
those of the traditional stripe, they cannot but perceive that he was
one of the greatest leaders in the antislavery conflict, intimately
associated with Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, Chase, John Brown, and
others who were profoundly engaged in that conflict. On the best of
terms with the abolitionists, and always welcome and willing to speak
on their platform, he could not withhold himself from the political
organization which, avowedly powerless for the destruction of slavery,
sternly resolved upon its territorial limitation. This antislavery
work was of itself sufficient to exhaust the energy of a much stronger
man than Parker ever was. He was in constant correspondence with
the great party leaders, advising them with an authority which they
could not resent, such were its mass and weight. His lyceum lect-
ures tended to the slavery question with an irresistible gravitation.
He was moreover one of the principal managers of the "under-
ground railroad," among the first to know of any fugitive slave newly
arrived in Boston, and one of the most active in such measures as
were necessary to put him out of reach of harm. In Faneuil Hall
he openly demanded armed resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law
in behalf of Anthony Burns, and put to vote the question when it
should begin. For this offense he was indicted; but greatly to his
disappointment, was not brought to trial. He had, however, the satis-
faction of publishing the Defense he had prepared. He did not
wait till great men died to prepare his sermon on their characters.
His sermon on Daniel Webster was from three to four hours long,
and it drew its waters from the whole area of our political history.
He promised his hearers that they should not sit uneasily in their
chairs; and except for the unqualified admirers of Webster, his
promise was made good.
Parker was much more an orator than a writer; and his published
writings, with few exceptions, reflect two lights that flare upon the
public stage. They are diffuse in matter, and loosely articulated in


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THEODORE PARKER
11077
their form, in spite of the mechanical arrangement of their parts.
What gives to them their greatest charm is a certain vivid home-
liness of phrase, shaping itself upon the facts of nature and of our
human life. Luther nor Latimer excelled him here. He wrote some
beautiful hymns and other poems; but the best of his poetry will not
be found in these, but in passages of his sermons, that go very near
the tenderest joys and simplest tragedies of our experience. Not only
was he so human that nothing human was foreign to him, but his
sympathy was as keen as Wordsworth's with all natural things, and
something of nature's wide inclusiveness and generous toleration was
characteristic of his sympathy with universal life. It is suggestive of
the homeliness of his affections that ninety-one of his words out of
every hundred were Saxon, to eighty-five of Webster's, and seventy-
four of Sumner's; though in the range of his reading and scholarship
he was incomparably inferior to either of these men.
In praising
another for “words so deep that a child could understand them," he
was unconsciously giving a most apt description of his own.
John White Chadurch.
MISTAKES ABOUT JESUS: HIS RECEPTION AND INFLUENCE
From A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion
WⓇ
E OFTEN err in our estimate of this man. The image comes
to us, not of that lowly one: the carpenter of Nazareth;
the companion of the rudest men; hard-handed and poorly
clad; not having where to lay his head; "who would gladly have
stayed his morning appetite on wild figs, between Bethany and
Jerusalem;" hunted by his enemies; stoned out of a city, and
fleeing for his life. We take the fancy of poets and painters:
a man clothed in purple and fine linen, obsequiously attended
by polished disciples, who watched every movement of his lips,
impatient for the oracle to speak. We conceive of a man who
was never in doubt, nor fear; whose course was all marked out
before him, so that he could not err. But such it was not, if
the writers tell truly. Did he say, I came to fulfill the Law and
the Prophets, and it is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass, than
for one jot or tittle of the Law to fail? Then he must have
doubted, and thought often and with a throbbing heart, before he
could say, I am not come to bring peace, but a sword; to kindle


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11078
THEODORE PARKER
a fire, and would God it were kindled! many times before the
fullness of peace dwelt in him, and he could say, The hour com-
eth and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship in spirit
and in truth. We do not conceive of that sickness of soul which
must have come at the coldness of the wise men, the heartless-
ness of the worldly, at the stupidity and selfishness of the disci-
ples. We do not think how that heart, so great, so finely tuned
and delicately touched, must have been pained to feel there was
no other heart to give an answering beat. We know not the
long and bitter agony that went before the triumph cry of faith,
I am not alone, for the Father is with me; we do not heed that
faintness of soul which comes of hope deferred, of aspirations all
unshared by men,-a bitter mockery the only human reply, the
oft-repeated echo, to his prayer of faith. We find it difficult to
keep unstained our decent robe of goodness when we herd only
with the good, and shun the kennel where sin and misery, par-
ent and child, are huddled with their rags; we do not appreciate
that strong and healthy pureness of soul which dwelt daily with
iniquity, sat at meat with publicans and sinners, and yet with.
such cleanness of life as made even sin ashamed of its ugliness,
but hopeful to amend. Rarely, almost never, do we see the vast
divinity within that soul, which, new though it was in the flesh,
at one step goes before the world whole thousands of years;
judges the race; decides for us questions we dare not agitate as
yet, and breathes the very breath of heavenly love. The Christ-
ian world, aghast at such awful beauty in the flesh, transfixed
with wonder as such a spirit rises in his heavenly flight, veils its
face and says, It is a God. Such thoughts are not for men.
Such life betrays the God. And is it not the Divine which the
flesh enshrouds? to speak in figures, the brightness of his glory;
the express image of his person; the clear resemblance of the
all-beautiful; the likeness of God in which man is made? But
alas for us, we read our lesson backward: make a God of our
brother, who should be our model. So the new-fledged eaglets
may see the parent bird, slow rising at first with laborious efforts,
then cleaving the air with sharp and steady wing, and soaring
through the clouds, with eye undazzled, to meet the sun; they
may say, We can only pray to the strong pinion. But anon their
wings shall grow, and flutter impatient for congenial skies, and
their parent's example guide them on. But men are still so sunk
in sloth, so blind and deaf with sensuality and sin, they will not
―――――――


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THEODORE PARKER
11079
see the greatness of man in him who, falling back on the inspi-
ration God imparts, asks no aid of mortal men, but stands alone,
serene in awful loveliness, not fearing the roar of the street, the
hiss of the temple, the contempt of his townsmen, the coldness
of this disciple, the treachery of that; who still bore up, had
freest communion when all alone; was deserted, never forsaken;
betrayed, but still safe; crucified, but all the more triumphant.
This was the last victory of the soul; the highest type of man.
Blessed be God that so much manliness has been lived out, and
stands there yet, a lasting monument to mark how high the tides
of Divine life have risen in the world of man. It bids us take
courage, and be glad; for what man has done, he may do.
Jesus, there is no dearer name than thine,
Which Time has blazoned on his mighty scroll;
No wreaths nor garlands ever did entwine
So fair a temple of so vast a soul.
There every virtue set his triumph seal;
Wisdom conjoined with strength and radiant grace,
In a sweet copy heaven to reveal,
And stamp Perfection on a mortal face.
Once on the earth wert thou, before men's eyes
That did not half thy beauteous brightness see;
E'en as the emmet does not read the skies,
Nor our weak orbs look through immensity. *
The doctrine he taught was the Father's, not his; the per-
sonal will did not mingle its motes with the pure religious light
of Truth; it fell through him as through void space, not colored,
not bent aside. Here was the greatest soul of all the sons of
men; one before whom the majestic mind of Grecian sages and
of Hebrew seers must veil its face. His perfect obedience made
him free. So complete was it that but a single will dwelt in
him and God, and he could say, I and the Father are one. For
this reason his teaching was absolute. God's word was in him.
Try him as we try other teachers. They deliver their word,
find a few waiting for the consolation, who accept the new tid-
ings, follow the new method, and soon go beyond their teacher,
though less mighty minds than he. Such is the case with each
founder of a school in philosophy, each sect in religion. Though
humble men, we see what Socrates and Luther never saw. But
* This poem is by Parker.


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11080
THEODORE PARKER
eighteen centuries have passed since the sun of humanity rose so
high in Jesus: what man, what sect, what church has mastered
his thought, comprehended his method, and so fully applied it
to life? Let the world answer in its cry of anguish. Men have
parted his raiment among them; cast lots for his seamless coat:
but that spirit which toiled so manfully in a world of sin and
death, which did and suffered, and overcame the world, is that
found, possessed, understood? Nay, is it sought for and recom-
mended by any of our churches?
«<
But no excellence of aim, no sublimity of achievement, could
screen him from distress and suffering. The fate of all Saviors
was his, despised and rejected of men. His father's children
"did not believe in him"; his townsmen
and said "Whence hath he this wisdom?
Joseph the carpenter? " Those learned scribes who came all the
way from Jerusalem to entangle him in his talk could see only.
this, "He hath Beelzebub. " "Art thou greater than our father
Jacob? " asked a conservative. Some said, "He is a good man.
"Ay," said others, "but he speaketh against the Temple. " The
sharp-eyed Pharisees saw nothing marvelous in the case. Why
not? They were looking for signs and wonders in the heavens;
not Sermons on the Mount, and a Woe unto you, Scribes and
Pharisees" they looked for the Son of David, a king, to rule
over men's bodies; not the son of a peasant-girl, born in a
stable; the companion of fishermen; the friend of publicans and
sinners, who spoke to the outcast, brought in the lost sheep; and
so ruled in the soul, his kingdom not of this world. They said,
"He is a Galilean, and of course no prophet. " If he called men
away from the senses to the soul, they said, "He is beside him-
self. " "Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on
him? asked some one who thought that settled the matter.
When he said, if a man live by God's law, "he shall never see
death," they exclaimed, those precious shepherds of the people,
"Now we know thou hast a devil, and art mad. Abraham is
dead, and the prophets! Art thou greater than our father
Abraham? Who are you, sir? " What a faithful report would
Scribes and Pharisees and Doctors of the Law have made of the
Sermon on the Mount; what omissions and redundancies would
they not have found in it; what blasphemy against Moses and
the Law, and the Ark of the Covenant, and the Urim and the
Thummim, and the Meat-offering and the New-moons; what
―――――
<<
were oftended at him,"
Is not this the son of
>>>


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THEODORE PARKER
11081
neglect to mention the phylacteries and the shew-bread, and the
Levite and the priest, and the tithes, and the other great essen-
tials of religion; what "infidelity" must these pious souls have
detected! How must they have classed him with Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram, the mythological Tom Paines of old time; with
the men of Sodom and Gomorrah! The popular praise of the
young Nazarene, with his divine life and lip of fire; the popu
lar shout, "Hosannah to the Son of David! " was no doubt "a
stench in the nostrils of the righteous. " "When the Son of
Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? " Find faith?
He comes to bring it. It is only by crucified redeemers that
the world is saved. Prophets are doomed to be stoned; apostles
to be sawn asunder. The world knoweth its own, and loveth
them. Even so let it be; the stoned prophet is not without his
reward. The balance of God is even.
Yet there were men who heard the new word. Truth never
yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul
of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere, and
produce its hundred fold. Some kept his sayings and pondered
them in their heart. Others heard them gladly. Did priests
and Levites stop their ears? Publicans and harlots went into
the kingdom of God before them. Those blessed women whose
hearts God has sown deepest with the Orient pearl of faith;
they who ministered to him in his wants, washed his feet with
tears of penitence, and wiped them with the hairs of their head,
was it in vain he spoke to them? Alas for the anointed priest,
the child of Levi, the son of Aaron,- men who shut up inspira-
tion in old books, and believed God was asleep,-they stumbled
in darkness, and fell into the ditch. But doubtless there was
many a tear-stained face that brightened like fires new stirred as
Truth spoke out of Jesus's lips. His word swayed the multitude
as pendent vines swing in the summer wind; as the Spirit of
God moved on the waters of chaos, and said, Let there be light,
and there was light. No doubt many a rude fisherman of Gen-
nesareth heard his words with a heart bounding and scarce able
to keep in his bosom, went home a new man with a legion of
angels in his breast, and from that day lived a life divine and
beautiful.
No doubt, on the other hand, Rabbi Kozeb Ben Shatan,
when he heard of this eloquent Nazarene and his Sermon on
the Mount, said to his disciples in private at Jerusalem:- This


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11082
THEODORE PARKER
new doctrine will not injure us, prudent and educated men: we
know that men may worship as well out of the Temple as in it;
a burnt-offering is nothing; the ritual of no value; the Sabbath
like any other day; the Law faulty in many things, offensive in
some, and no more from God than other laws equally good. We
know that the priesthood is a human affair, originated and man-
aged like other human affairs. We may confess all this to our-
selves, but what is the use of telling it? The people wish to
be deceived: let them. The Pharisee will conduct wisely like a
Pharisee - for he sees the eternal fitness of things-even if these
doctrines should be proclaimed. But this people who know not
the law, what will become of them? Simon Peter, James, and
John, those poor unlettered fishermen on the lake of Galilee, to
whom we gave a farthing and a priestly blessing in our sum-
mer excursion,- what will become of them when told that every
word of the Law did not come straight out of the mouth of Jeho-
vah, and the ritual is nothing! They will go over to the flesh
and the Devil, and be lost. It is true that the Law and the
Prophets are well summed up in one word, Love God and man.
But never let us sanction the saying: it would ruin the seed of
Abraham, keep back the kingdom of God, and "destroy our use-
fulness. " Thus went it at Jerusalem. The new word was "blas-
phemy," the new prophet an "infidel," "beside himself,» « "had a
devil. " But at Galilee things took a shape somewhat different;
one which blind guides could not foresee. The common people,
not knowing the Law, counted him a prophet come up from the
dead, and heard him gladly. Yes, thousands of men, and women
also, with hearts in their bosoms, gathered in the field and
pressed about him in the city and the desert place, forgetful of
hunger and thirst, and were fed to the full with his words, so
deep a child could understand them; James and John leave all
to follow him who had the word of eternal life; and when that
young carpenter asks Peter, Whom sayest thou that I am? it
has been revealed to that poor unlettered fisherman, not by
flesh and blood, but by the word of the Lord; and he can say,
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Pharisee
went his way, and preached a doctrine that he knew was false;
the fisherman also went his way, but which to the flesh and the
Devil?
We cannot tell, no man can tell, the feelings which the large
free doctrines of absolute religion awakened when heard for the


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THEODORE PARKER
11083
first time. There must have been many a Simeon waiting for
the consolation; many a Mary longing for the better part; many
a soul in cabins and cottages and stately dwellings, that caught
glimpses of the same truth, as God's light shone through some
crevice which Piety made in that wall Prejudice and Superstition
had built up betwixt man and God; men who scarce dared to
trust that revelation,- "too good to be true,"—such was their
awe of Moses, their reverence for the priest. To them the word
of Jesus must have sounded divine; like the music of their home.
sung out in the sky, and heard in a distant land: beguiling toil
of its weariness, pain of its sting, affliction of despair. There
must have been men sick of forms which had lost their mean-
ing, pained with the open secret of sacerdotal hypocrisy, hunger-
ing and thirsting after the truth, yet whom error and prejudice
and priestcraft had blinded so that they dared not think as men,
nor look on the sunlight God shed upon the mind.
But see what a work it has wrought. Men could not hold
the word in their bosoms; it would not be still. No doubt
they sought, those rude disciples, after their teacher's death, to
quiet the matter and say nothing about it: they had nerves.
that quivered at the touch of steel; wives and children whom
it was hard to leave behind to the world's uncertain sympathy;
respectable friends it may be, who said the old Law did very
well. Let well enough alone. The people must be deceived a
little. The world can never be much mended. No doubt Truth
stood on one side, and Ease on the other; it has often been so.
Perhaps the disciples went to the old synagogue more sedulous
than before; paid tithes; kept the new-moons; were sprinkled
with the blood of the sacrifice; made low bows to the Levite,
sought his savory conversation, and kept the rules a priest gave
George Fox. But it would not do. There was too much truth
to be hid. Even selfish Simon Peter has a cloven tongue of
fire in his mouth, and he and the disciples go to their work, the
new word swelling in their laboring heart.
Then came the strangest contest the world ever saw. On the
one side is all the strength of the world, the Jews with their
records from the hand of Moses, David, and Esaias; supernatural
records that go back to the birth of time; their Law derived
from Jehovah, attested by miracles, upheld by prophets, defended
by priests, children of Levi, sons of Aaron, the Law which was
to last forever; the Temple, forty and seven years in being built,
-
-
―――――


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11084
THEODORE PARKER
its splendid ceremonies, its beautiful gate and golden porch; there
was the wealth of the powerful; the pride, the self-interest, the
prejudice of the priestly class; the indifference of the worldly;
the hatred of the wicked; the scorn of the learned; the contempt
of the great.
On the same side were the Greeks, with their
chaos of religion, full of mingled beauty and ugliness, virtue and
vice, piety and lust, still more confounded by the deep mysteries
of the priest, the cunning speculations of the sophist, the awful
sublimity of the sage, by the sweet music of the philosopher
and moralist and poet, who spoke and sung of man and God in
strains so sweet and touching; there were rites in public; solemn
and pompous ceremonies, processions, festivals, temples, games to
captivate that wondrous people; there were secret mysteries, to
charm the curious and attract the thoughtful; Greece, with her
arts, her science, her heroes and her gods, her Muse voluptuous
and sweet. There too was Rome, the queen of nations, and con-
queror of the world, who sat on her seven-hilled throne, and
cast her net eastward and southward and northward and west-
ward, over tower and city and realm and empire, and drew them
to herself, a giant's spoil; with a religion haughty and inso-
lent, that looked down on the divinities of Greece and Egypt, of
"Ormus and the Ind," and gave them a shelter in her capacious
robe; Rome, with her practiced skill; Rome, with her eloquence;
Rome, with her pride; Rome, with her arms, hot from the con-
quest of a thousand kings. On the same side are all the institu-
tions of all the world: its fables, wealth, armies, pride, its folly
and its sin.
On the other hand are a few Jewish fishermen, untaught, rude,
and vulgar; not free from gross errors; despised at home, and
not known abroad; collected together in the name of a young
carpenter, who died on the gallows, and whom they declared to
be risen from the dead; men with no ritual, no learning, no
books, no brass in their purse, no philosophy in their mind,
no eloquence on their tongue. A Roman skeptic might tell how
soon these fanatics would fall out and destroy themselves, after
serving as a terror to the maids and sport to the boys of a
Jewish hamlet; and so that "detestable superstition" come to an
end! A priest of Jerusalem, with his oracular gossip, could tell
how long the Sanhedrim would suffer them to go at large, in
the name of "that deceiver," whose body "they stole away by
night"! Alas for what man calls great; the pride of prejudice;


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THEODORE PARKER
11085
the boast of power! These fishermen of Galilee have a truth
the world has not, so they are stronger than the world. Ten
weak men may chain down a giant: but no combination of errors
can make a truth or put it down; no army of the ignorant equal
one man that has the Word of Life. Besides, all the truth in
Judea, Greece, Rome, was an auxiliary to favor the new doc-
trine.
The first preachers of Christianity had false notions on many
points; they were full of Jewish fables and technicalities; thought
the world would soon end, and Jesus come back "with power
and great glory. " Peter would now and then lie to serve his
turn; Paul was passionate, often one-sided; Barnabas and Mark
could not agree.
There was something of furious enthusiasm in
all these come-outers. James roars like a fanatic radical at the
rich man. But spite of the follies or limitations of these earnest
and manly Jews, a religious fire burned in their hearts; the
Word of God grew and prevailed. The new doctrine passes from
its low beginnings on the Galilean lake, step by step, through
Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Rome, till it
ascends the throne of the world, and kings and empires lie
prostrate at its feet. But alas, as it spreads, it is corrupted also.
Judaism, paganism, idolatry, mingle their feculent scum with the
living stream, and trouble the water of life.
Christianity came to the world in the darkness of the nations;
they had outgrown their old form, and looked for a new. They
stood in the shadow of darkness, fearing to look back nor dar-
ing to look forward; they groped after God. Christianity came
to the nations as a beam of light shot into chaos; a strain of
sweet music-so silvery and soft we know not we are listening
to him who wanders on amid the uncertain gloom, and charms
him to the light, to the River of God and Tree of Life.
It was
the fulfillment of the prophecy of holy hearts. It is human
religion, human morality, and above all things reveals the great-
ness of man.
It is sometimes feared that Christianity is in danger; that its
days are numbered. Of the Christianity of the church, no doubt
it is true. That child of many fathers cannot die too soon. It
cumbers the ground. But the Christianity of Christ, absolute
religion, absolute morality, cannot perish: never till love, good-
ness, devotion, faith, reason, fail from the heart of man; never
till God melts away and vanishes, and nothing takes the place


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11086
THEODORE PARKER
of the All-in-All. Religion can no more be separated from the
race than thought and feeling; nor absolute religion die out
more than wisdom perish from among men. Man's words,
thoughts, churches, fail and pass off like clouds from the sky
that leave no track behind. But God's word can never change.
It shines perennial like the stars. Its testimony is in man's
heart. None can outgrow it; none destroy. For eighteen hun-
dred years the Christianity of Christ has been in the world to
warn and encourage. Violence and cunning, allies of sin, have
opposed it. Every weapon learning could snatch from the ar-
senals of the past, or science devise anew, or pride and cruelty
and wit invent, has been used by mistaken man to destroy this
fabric. Not a stone has fallen from the heavenly arch of real
religion; not a loop-hole been found where a shot could enter.
But alas, vain doctrines, follies, absurdities without count, have
been plied against the temple of God, marring its beauteous
shape. That Christianity continues to live-spite of the tradi-
tions, fables, doctrines wrapped about it is proof enough of
its truth. Reason never warred against love of God and man,
never with the Christianity of Christ, but always with that of
the church. There is much destructive work still to be done,
which scoffers will attempt.
-
Can man destroy absolute religion? He cannot with all the
arts and armies of the world destroy the pigment that colors an
emmet's eye.
He may obscure the truth to his own mind. But
it shines forever unchanged. So boys of a summer's day throw
dust above their heads to blind the sun; they only hide it from
their blinded eyes.


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FRANCIS PARKMAN.
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11087
FRANCIS PARKMAN
―――
(1823-1893)
BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
RANCIS PARKMAN was born in Boston, on what is now Alls-
ton Street, then called Somerset Place, on September 16th,
1823. His father, the Rev. Francis Parkman, was a mem-
ber of an old colonial family that came from Sidmouth in Devonshire,
England. His mother was a direct descendant of John Cotton of
Plymouth. At Chauncey Hall School, in Boston, he was prepared
for college; and in 1840 he entered Harvard as a freshman. In 1844
he took his degree of B. A. , after a course of some distinction, par-
ticularly in history. His first book, The Oregon Trail,' appeared in
1849. In 1851 he issued 'The Conspiracy of Pontiac. ' His one work
of fiction, Vassall Morton, was published in 1856. In 1865 came
< The Pioneers of France in the New World,' the first of the series
'France and England in North America. ' The rest of the series
appeared as follows: The Jesuits in North America,' in 1867; 'La
Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,' in 1869; 'The Old
Régime in Canada,' in 1874; Count Frontenac and New France
under Louis XIV. ,' in 1877; Montcalm and Wolfe,' in 1884, conclud-
ing the series, but leaving an important period untreated.
This gap
was filled by 'A Half-Century of Conflict,' issued in 1892.
In 1866 his hobby of horticulture, which made beautiful his home
at Jamaica Plain, had found expression in a practical little work
called The Book of Roses. ' He died on the 8th of November, 1893.
In Parkman's life the great events are the choice of his life work,
the preparation for it, its execution, and its triumphant accomplish-
ment. In spite of obstacles which would have daunted any one less
than heroic in resolution, the career of Francis Parkman may be
regarded as an ideal type of what a man of letters should aspire to.
Singularly fortunate in finding a theme exactly fitted to his genius,
yet so vast as to require a lifetime for its treatment, he was given
length of days in which to see the triumphant completion of his task.
The story of the struggle of France and England in the New
World was when as a youth Parkman discerned its importance and
marked it for his pen - perhaps the one theme of truly epic propor-
tions then remaining untouched by the historian. It is no wonder


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11088
FRANCIS PARKMAN
It
that the eager and ambitious boy was possessed by it from the
moment when it presented itself to his imagination. It is no wonder
that he jealously kept his design a secret, lest others should awake
to its fascination and forestall him. The subject had many advan-
tages besides that of sheer greatness. Its setting was one reason-
ably accessible to a New-Englander, and he could therefore resolve
to know his landscapes and his backgrounds all at first hand.
afforded an endlessly shifting succession of adventure and incident,
whence he could count upon making his narrative interesting from
page to page. The material from which to spin the story existed
in peculiar abundance: its period being one when the pen was busy,
when annals and chronicles were much in vogue, and when men of
action often found time to keep voluminous records. Parkman knew
that in libraries of Rome, Paris, Quebec, Boston, Halifax, in archive
offices and cloistered corners, lurked manuscripts innumerable, from
which the tale he planned to tell might be patiently unraveled. He
knew that inexhaustible treasure-house of North American history,
the Jesuit Relations.
The magnitude and significance of the subject which he chose
can hardly be exaggerated. That struggle which ended upon the
Plains of Abraham was going on all over the world. It was to
decide a vaster question than the dominance of the New World, that
France and England throughout the course of two centuries were
ever at each other's throats. The question at issue, fought out upon
the Ganges as well as upon the St. Lawrence, was whether the
English or the French stock should replenish the waste places of the
earth. The subject to which Parkman set himself was the duel for
world-empire. The result of this duel not only secured the suprem-
acy of English institutions, ideals, and speech on this continent, but
established beyond cavil England's place as the colonizer of the
world.
Born with a passion for adventure, for the life of the wilderness,
for the companionship of wild nature and half-wild man, Parkman
thus found awaiting him a great historical subject for the sympathetic
handling of which this passion was essential. History as a rule is
largely a matter of courts, and cities, and action working at the
centres of civilization. But the history of the struggle of France and
England in North America is a tale of elemental impulses, of forests
and frontiers, of adventurous rivalries on the shadowy outskirts of
life. It moved in primitive conditions, such as the academic stu-
dent is apt to look upon with the cool eyes of the observer, rather
than with the vital comprehension of one who has played his part
among them. In his delighted wanderings as a boy over the Middle-
sex Fells, in the long backwoods excursions with canoeing, fishing,


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
11089
shooting, that occupied his college vacations, Parkman was fitting him-
self, at first unconsciously and afterwards doubtless of set purpose, for
one side of his great enterprise. In the vehement delight, moreover,
which he took in action, in feats of athletics, and in all strenuous
outdoor effort, he still further widened his sympathies for the com-
prehension of a story of incessant effort of the same description.
His tastes as a student at college led his reading in the direction
best fitted to further his own aim. Romance and history appealed to
him with almost equal force; and the task on which he was soon
to enter was one which required for its execution a right blending of
imagination with exact observation and severe deduction. The inci-
dents of the story whose magic was to be revealed by his pen were
full of romantic color, and of appeal to the heroic emotions. No one
could write of them adequately who was not himself thrilled by them.
At the same time the broad view was necessary, that events might
be seen and set down in their just proportions; the analytic sense
was necessary, that relevant might be separated from irrelevant de-
tails; the philosophic temper was necessary, that the torrential flow
of the story might not carry the narrator off his feet; and above all,
the capacious grasp was necessary, that an Indian raid on the Riche-
lieu, or a brush between rival traders on the St. Clair, might be duly
related to the great world-drama in which Indian and fur-trader alike
were unconscious players. Not only had Parkman these qualities by
native endowment, but his studies and discipline were such as to
develop them. Yet other gifts were needed, to make his equipment
complete. The command of an adequate prose style was indispensa-
ble if he would have his work fit to endure. And for prose expres-
sion he had a natural aptitude, which he cultivated assiduously by
composition, and by study of the masters of English. An unrestricted
catholicity of sympathy and judgment was equally indispensable, if
he would do even justice between mutually destructive ideals, warring
creeds, and races grappling for life and death. He could see the man
behind all accidents of color, creed, or speech; and so his characters
live. The savage from his wigwam, the black-robed scholar from his
cloister, the cavalier from the salons of Versailles, the soldier from
camp or foray,—each has some point of contact with Parkman's sym-
pathies, and is therefore presented from within, is recreated rather
than depicted on his page.
After Parkman had finished his arts course at Harvard, he stud-
ied law purely as a means of fitting himself for dealing with the
constitutional questions which, as he realized, would confront him in
the course of his proposed work. After two years of the law, his
next step was to study the Indians as they were before the contact
with civilization changed them. To find such Indians, in 1846, it was
XIX-694


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11090
FRANCIS PARKMAN
necessary to seek the Dakota and other wild tribes of the Far West.
In that year he set out from St. Louis, with his cousin and comrade
Quincy Shaw, and followed the track of the great migration then
setting toward the Pacific coast. For some weeks he lived in the
lodge of a Dakota chief. His hosts were exactly suited to his pur-
pose. As he wrote afterwards:-"Neither their manners nor their
ideas were in the slightest degree modified by contact with civiliza-
tion.
They fought with the weapons that their fathers fought
with, and wore the same garments of skins. " This trip, which lasted
five months, gave him just that kind of first-hand knowledge which
he desired. It bore immediate fruit in that fascinating book of travel,
'The Oregon Trail. ' But the hardships and exposure which he en-
dured on the expedition undermined a constitution never robust; and
from this period date the beginnings of that ill-health with which the
whole of his after life was to be a heroic struggle.
It is one of the marvels of Parkman's career that he was able to
make so light of obstacles which most men would have accounted
insurmountable. Works requiring the most prolonged, arduous, and
minute research for their preparation, he wrote when his eyes were
almost useless. Works requiring continuously sustained thought, he
wrought to completion when often unable to work in any way for
more than fifteen minutes at a time. During these long years of
almost incessant ill-health, his achievements were just of the kind
that fate seemed most determined to forbid.
When three fourths of his great task was done, Parkman began to
fear that he might not live to complete it. After finishing the story
of Frontenac, therefore, he passed over a period of fifty years and
entered upon the composition of those volumes which were to sum
up and crown the whole, - the volumes dealing with Montcalm and
Wolfe. With the completion of these, however, and under the stimu-
lus of the acclaim which greeted them, he entered on a new lease of
productive vigor; and with the two volumes called 'A Half-Century
of Conflict' he filled in the perfect outline of his life's work. This
was in 1892, just long enough before his death to let the chorus of
the world's praise come to his ears, and assure him of the fullness
of his triumph.
Parkman's style shows a steady growth in mastery from the 'Con-
spiracy of Pontiac' to the 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' which latter work
marks the zenith of his powers. Vividness and clarity are qualities
of his writing from the first. But the picturesque affluence which
characterizes his earlier volumes sometimes lacks that simplicity
which is the final touch of power.
The prose style in which his later volumes are written is per-
haps, taking it all in all, the most admirable medium that has been


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
11091
employed by any English-speaking historian. If to have treated a
great theme with absolutely competent scholarship, as well as in a
style of positive and essential beauty, constitutes a claim to rank
among the world's masters of history, then Parkman's claim is beyond
the reach of question.
Charles G. & Robert
DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES
From The Pioneers of France in the New World. ' Copyright 1865, 1885, by
Francis Parkman. Reprinted by permission of the Parkman Estate, and
of Little, Brown & Co. , publishers.
HERE was a gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, Dominique de
Gourgues, a soldier of ancient birth and high renown.
It
is not certain that he was a Huguenot. The Spanish
annalist calls him a "terrible heretic "; but the French Jesuit,
Charlevoix, anxious that the faithful should share the glory of
his exploits, affirms that like his ancestors before him, he was a
good Catholic. If so, his faith sat lightly upon him; and Catholic
or heretic, he hated the Spaniards with a mortal hate. Fight-
ing in the Italian wars,- for from boyhood he was wedded to the
sword,— he had been taken prisoner by them near Siena, where
he had signalized himself by a fiery and determined bravery.
With brutal insult, they chained him to the oar as a galley-slave.
After he had long endured this ignominy, the Turks captured the
vessel and carried her to Constantinople. It was but a change
of tyrants; but soon after, while she was on a cruise, Gourgues
still at the oar, a galley of the Knights of Malta hove in sight,
bore down on her, recaptured her, and set the prisoner free. For
several years after, his restless spirit found employment in voy-
ages to Africa, Brazil, and regions yet more remote. His naval
repute rose high, but his grudge against the Spaniards still ran-
kled within him; and when, returned from his rovings, he learned
the tidings from Florida, his hot Gascon blood boiled with fury.
The honor of France had been foully stained, and there was
none to wipe away the shame. The faction-ridden King was


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11092
FRANCIS PARKMAN
dumb. The nobles who surrounded him were in the Spanish
interest. Then, since they proved recreant, he, Dominique de
Gourgues, a simple gentleman, would take upon him to avenge
the wrong, and restore the dimmed lustre of the French name.
He sold his inheritance, borrowed money from his brother, who
held a high post in Guienne, and equipped three small vessels,
navigable by sail or oar. On board he placed a hundred arque-
busiers and eighty sailors, prepared to fight on land if need were.
The noted Blaise de Montluc, then lieutenant for the King in
Guienne, gave him a commission to make war on the negroes of
Benin,—that is, to kidnap them as slaves, an adventure then held
honorable.
His true design was locked within his own breast.
He mus-
tered his followers,-not a few of whom were of rank equal to
his own, feasted them, and on the twenty-second of August,
1567, sailed from the mouth of the Charente. Off Cape Finis-
terre, so violent a storm buffeted his ships that his men clamored
to return; but Gourgues's spirit prevailed. He bore away for
Africa, and landing at the Rio del Oro, refreshed and cheered
them as he best might. Thence he sailed to Cape Blanco, where
the jealous Portuguese, who had a fort in the neighborhood, set
upon him three negro chiefs. Gourgues beat them off, and re-
mained master of the harbor; whence however he soon voyaged
onward to Cape Verd, and steering westward, made for the West
Indies. Here, advancing from island to island, he came to His-
paniola, where, between the fury of a hurricane at sea and the
jealousy of the Spaniards on shore, he was in no small jeopardy;
-"the Spaniards," exclaims the indignant journalist, "who think
that this New World was made for nobody but them, and that
no other living man has a right to move or breathe here! "
Gourgues landed, however, obtained the water of which he was
in need, and steered for Cape San Antonio, at the western end
of Cuba. There he gathered his followers about him, and ad-
dressed them with his fiery Gascon eloquence. For the first
time he told them his true purpose, inveighed against Spanish
cruelty, and painted with angry rhetoric the butcheries of Fort
Caroline and St. Augustine,
"What disgrace," he cried, "if such an insult should pass un-
punished! What glory to us if we avenge it! To this I have
devoted my fortune. I relied on you. I thought you jealous
enough of your country's glory to sacrifice life itself in a cause


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
11093
like this.
Was I deceived?
I will show you the way; I will be
always at your head; I will bear the brunt of the danger. Will
you refuse to follow me? "
At first his startled hearers listened in silence; but soon the
passions of that adventurous age rose responsive to his words.
The combustible French nature burst into flame. The enthusi-
asm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch that Gourgues had much
ado to make them wait till the moon was full, before tempting
the perils of the Bahama Channel. His time came at length.
The moon rode high above the lonely sea, and, silvered in its
light, the ships of the avenger held their course.
Meanwhile it had fared ill with the Spaniards in Florida: the
good-will of the Indians had vanished. The French had been
obtrusive and vexatious guests; but their worst trespasses had
been mercy and tenderness compared to the daily outrage of
the new-comers. Friendship had changed to aversion, aversion
to hatred, and hatred to open war. The forest paths were beset;
stragglers were cut off; and woe to the Spaniard who should
venture after nightfall beyond call of the outposts.
Menendez, however, had strengthened himself in his new
conquest. St. Augustine was well fortified; Fort Caroline, now
Fort San Mateo, was repaired; and two redoubts, or small forts,
were thrown up to guard the mouth of the River of May,—one
of them near the present lighthouse at Mayport, and the other
across the river on Fort George Island. Thence, on an afternoon.
in early spring, the Spaniards saw three sail steering northward.
They suspected no enemy, and their batteries boomed a salute.
Gourgues's ships replied, then stood out to sea, and were lost in
the shades of evening.
They kept their course all night, and as day broke, anchored
at the mouth of a river, the St. Mary's or the Santilla, by their
reckoning fifteen leagues north of the River of May. Here, as
it grew light, Gourgues saw the borders of the sea thronged with
savages, armed and plumed for war. They too had mistaken the
strangers for Spaniards, and mustered to meet their tyrants at
the landing.