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.
the great party leaders, advising them with an authority which they
could not resent, such were its mass and weight.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 to v20 - Phi to Qui
11065 (#277) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11065
Private Gellatly spoke softly: "Angels betide me, it's little
we knew the great of him till he wint away; the pride, and the
law-and the love of him. "
In the tragedy that faced them this Christmas morning, one
at least had seen "the love of him. " Perhaps the broncho had
known it before.
Old Aleck laid a palm upon the hand he had never touched
when it had life. "He's-too-ha'sh," he said, slowly.
Private Gellatly looked up wonderingly.
But the old man's eyes were wet.
VALMOND
From When Valmond Came to Pontiac. ' Copyright 1895, by Stone &
Kimball
ON
N ONE Corner stood the house of Monsieur Garon the avocat;
on another, the shop of the Little Chemist; on another,
the office of Medallion the auctioneer; and on the last,
the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief characteristics of Monsieur
Garon's house were its brass door-knobs, and the verdant luxuri-
ance of the vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist's
shop, the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober
wall-paper, and the bottles of colored water in the shop windows;
of Medallion's, the stoop that surrounded three sides of the build-
ing, and the notices of sales tacked up, pasted up, on the front;
of the Hotel Louis Quinze, the deep dormer windows, its solid
timbers, and the veranda that gave its front distinction;- for this
veranda had been the pride of several generations of landlords,
and its heavy carving and bulky grace were worth even more
admiration than Pontiac gave to it.
The square which the two roads and the four corners made
was on week-days the rendezvous of Pontiac and the whole par-
ish; on Sunday mornings the rendezvous was shifted to the
large church on the hillside, beside which was the house of the
curé, Monsieur Fabre. Traveling towards the south, out of
the silken haze of a midsummer day, you would come in time
to the hills of Maine; north, to the city of Quebec and the River
St. Lawrence; east, to the ocean; and west, to the Great Lakes
and the land of the English. Over this bright province Britain
## p. 11066 (#278) ##########################################
11066
GILBERT PARKER
raised her flag; but only Medallion and a few others loved it for
its own sake, or saluted it in the English tongue.
In the drab velvet dust of these four corners were gathered,
one night of July a generation ago, the children of the village
and many of their elders. All the events of that epoch were
dated from the evening of this day. Another day of note the
parish cherished, but it was merely a grave fulfillment of the
first.
Upon the veranda stoop of the Louis Quinze stood a man
of apparently about twenty-eight years of age. When you came
to study him closely, some sense of time and experience in his
look told you that he might be thirty-eight, though his few gray
hairs seemed but to emphasize a certain youthfulness in him.
His eye was full, singularly clear, almost benign; at one mo-
ment it gave the impression of resolution, at another it suggested
the wayward abstraction of the dreamer. He was well figured,
with a hand of peculiar whiteness, suggesting in its breadth more
the man of action than of meditation. But it was a contradic-
tion, for as you saw it rise and fall, you were struck by its
dramatic delicacy; as it rested on the railing of the veranda, by
its latent power.
You faced incongruity everywhere. His dress
was bizarre, his face almost classical, the brow clear and strong,
the profile good to the mouth, where there showed a combina-
tion of sensuousness and adventure. Yet in the face there was
an elusive sadness, strangely out of keeping with the long linen
coat, frilled shirt, the flowered waistcoat, lavender trousers, boots
of enameled leather, and straw hat with white linen streamers.
It was a whimsical picture.
At the moment that the curé and Medallion the auctioneer
came down the street together towards the Louis Quinze, talking
amiably, this singular gentleman was throwing out hot pennies
with a large spoon from a tray in his hand, calling on the child-
ren to gather them, in French which was not the French of
Pontiac-or Quebec; and this fact the curé was quick to detect,
as Monsieur Garon the avocat, standing on the outskirts of the
crowd, had done some moments before. The stranger seemed
only conscious of his act of liberality and the children before
him. There was a naturalness in his enjoyment which was almost
boy-like; a naïve sort of exultation seemed to possess him.
He laughed softly to see the children toss the pennies from
hand to hand, blowing to cool them; the riotous yet half timorous
## p. 11067 (#279) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11067
scramble for them, and burnt fingers thrust into hot blithe
mouths. And when he saw a fat little lad of five crowded out
of the way by his elders, he stepped down with a quick word of
sympathy, put a half-dozen pennies in the child's pocket, snatched
him up and kissed him, and then returned to the veranda, where
were gathered the landlord, the miller, and Monsieur De la Ri-
vière the young Seigneur. But the most intent spectator of the
scene was Parpon the dwarf, who sat grotesquely crouched upon
the wide ledge of a window.
Tray after tray of pennies was brought out and emptied, till
at last the stranger paused, handed the spoon to the landlord,
drew out a fine white handkerchief, dusted his fingers, standing
silent for a moment and smiling upon the crowd.
It was at this point that some young villager called, in pro-
fuse compliment, "Three cheers for the Prince! "
The stranger threw an accent of pose into his manner, his
eye lighted, his chin came up, he dropped one hand negligently
on his hip, and waved the other in acknowledgment. Presently
he beckoned, and from the hotel were brought out four great
pitchers of wine and a dozen tin cups; and sending the garçon
around with one, the landlord with another, he motioned Parpon
the dwarf to bear a hand. Parpon shot out a quick, half resent-
ful look at him; but meeting a warm, friendly eye, he took the
pitcher and went among the elders, while the stranger himself
courteously drank with the young men of the village, who, like
many wiser folk, thus yielded to the charm of mystery. To
every one he said a hearty thing, and sometimes touched his
greeting off with a bit of poetry or a rhetorical phrase. These
dramatic extravagances served him well, for he was among a
race of story-tellers and crude poets.
Parpon, uncouth and furtive, moved through the crowd, dis-
pensing as much irony as wine:-
―
"Three bucks we come to a pretty inn:
'Hostess,' say we, 'have you red wine? '
Brave! Brave!
'Hostess,' say we, have you red wine ? >
Bravement!
Our feet are sore and our crops are dry,
Bravement! »
This he hummed to Monsieur Garon the avocat, in a tone all
silver; for he had that one gift of Heaven as recompense for his
## p. 11068 (#280) ##########################################
11068
GILBERT PARKER
It
deformity, his long arms, big head, and short stature, - a voice
which gave you a shiver of delight and pain all at once.
had in it mystery and the incomprehensible. This drinking song,
lilted just above his breath, touched some antique memory in the
avocat; and he nodded kindly at the dwarf, though he refused.
the wine.
"Ah, M'sieu' le Curé," said Parpon, ducking his head to avoid
the hand that Medallion would have laid on it, "we're going to
be somebody now in Pontiac, bless the Lord! We're simple folk,
but we're not neglected. He wears a king's ribbon on his breast,
M'sieu' le Curé! »
This was true. Fastened by a gold bar to the stranger's
breast was the crimson ribbon of an order.
The Curé smiled at Parpon's words, and looked curiously and
gravely at the stranger. Tall Medallion, the auctioneer, took a
glass of the wine, and lifting it, said, "Who shall I drink to,
Parpon, my dear? What is he? "
"Ten to one, a dauphin or a fool," answered Parpon with a
laugh like the note of an organ.
"Drink to both, long legs. "
Then he trotted away to the Little Chemist.
"Hush, my brother," said he, and he drew the other's ear
down to his mouth. "Now there'll be plenty of work for you.
We're going to be gay in Pontiac, We'll come to you with our
spoiled stomachs. "
He edged round the circle, and back to where the miller his
master, and the young Seigneur stood.
"Make more fine flour, old man," said he to the miller:
pâtés are the thing now. " Then, to Monsieur De la Rivière,
"There's nothing like hot pennies and wine to make the world
love you.
But it's too late, too late for my young Seigneur! "
he added in mockery, and again he began to hum in a sort of
amiable derision:
"My little tender heart,
O gai, vive le roi!
My little tender heart,
O gai, vive le roi!
'Tis for a grand baron,
Vive le roi, la reine;
'Tis for a grand baron,
Vive Napoléon! »
With the last two lines the words swelled out far louder than
was the dwarf's intention; for few save Medallion and Monsieur
## p. 11069 (#281) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11069
De la Rivière had ever heard him sing. His concert house was
the Rock of Red Pigeons, his favorite haunt, his other home,
where, it was said, he met the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet
Hills, and had gay hours with them. And this was a matter of
awe to the timid habitants.
At the words "Vive Napoléon! " a hand touched him on the
shoulder. He turned and saw the stranger looking at him in-
tently, his eyes alight.
"Sing it," he said softly, yet with an air of command.
pon hesitated, shrank back.
_
ear.
"Sing it," he persisted; and the request was taken up by
others, til Parpon's face flushed with a sort of pleasurable de-
fiance. The stranger stooped and whispered something in his
There was a moment's pause, in which the dwarf looked
into the other's eyes with an intense curiosity, or incredulity,-
and then Medallion lifted the little man onto the railing of the
veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts of the people
there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet com-
ing as a new revelation to them all.
1
"My mother promised it,
O gai, vive le roi!
My mother promised it,
O gai, vive le roi!
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive le roi, la reine;
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoléon! »
This was chanted lightly, airily, with a sweetness almost
absurd, coming as it did from so uncouth a musician.
verses had a touch of pathos, droll yet searching:-
The last
"Oh, say, where goes your love.
O gai, vive le roi?
Par-
Oh, say, where goes your love,
O gai, vive le roi?
He rides on a white horse,
Vive le roi, la reine;
He wears a silver sword,
Vive Napoléon!
"Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
## p. 11070 (#282) ##########################################
11070
GILBERT PARKER
Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
Gold and silver he will bring,
Vive le roi, la reine;
And eke the daughter of a king-
Vive Napoléon! »
The crowd, women and men, youths and maidens, enthusias-
tically repeated again and again the last line and the refrain,
"Vive le roi, la reine! Vive Napoléon ! »
Meanwhile the stranger stood, now looking at the singer with
eager eyes, now searching the faces of the people, keen to see
the effect upon them. His glance found the curé, the avocat,
and the auctioneer, and his eyes steadied successively to Medal-
lion's humorous look, to the curé's puzzled questioning, to the
avocat's birdlike curiosity. It was plain they were not antago-
nistic; (why should they be? ) and he was there any reason
why he should care whether or no they were for him or against
him?
True, he had entered the village in the dead of night, with
much luggage and many packages; had aroused the people at
the Louis Quinze; the driver who had brought him departing
gayly, before daybreak, because of the gifts of gold given him
above his wage. True, this singular gentleman had taken three
rooms in the little hotel, had paid the landlord in advance, and
had then gone to bed, leaving word that he was not to be
waked till three o'clock the next afternoon. True, the landlord
could not by any hint or indirection discover from whence this
midnight visitor came. But if a gentleman paid his way, and
was generous and polite, and minded his own business, wherefore
should people busy themselves about him? When he appeared
on the veranda of the inn with the hot pennies, not a half-dozen
people in the village had known aught of his presence in Pon-
tiac. The children came first to scorch their fingers and fill their
pockets; and after them the idle young men, and the habitants
in general.
The song done, the stranger, having shaken Parpon by the
hand, and again whispered in his ear, stepped forward. The
last light of the setting sun was reflected from the red roof of
the Little Chemist's shop, upon the quaint figure and eloquent
face, which had in it something of the gentleman, something of
the comedian. The alert Medallion himself did not realize the
## p. 11071 (#283) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11071
comedian in it till the white hand was waved grandiloquently
over the heads of the crowd. Then something in the gesture
corresponded with something in the face, and the auctioneer
had a nut which he could not crack for many a day. The voice
was musical,-as fine in speaking almost as the dwarf's in sing-
ing, and the attention of the children was caught by the warm,
vibrating tones. He addressed himself to them.
"My children," he said, "my name is-Valmond!
begun well; let us be better friends. I have come from far off
to be one of you, to stay with you for a while-who knows how
long-how long? " He placed a finger meditatively on his lips,
sending a sort of mystery into his look and bearing. "You are
French, and so am I. You are playing on the shores of life, and
so am I. You are beginning to think and dream, and so am I.
We are only children till we begin to make our dreams our life.
So I am one with you; for only now do I step from dream to
action. My children, you shall be my brothers, and together we
will sow the seed of action and reap the grain; we will make a
happy garden of flowers, and violets shall bloom everywhere out
of our dream,- everywhere. Violets, my children; pluck the
wild violets and bring them to me, and I will give you silver
for them, and I will love you. Never forget," he added with a
swelling voice, "that you owe your first duty to your mothers,
and afterward to your country, and to the spirit of France.
see afar" he looked toward the setting sun, and stretched
out his arm dramatically, yet such was the impressiveness of his
voice and person that not even the young Seigneur or Medallion
smiled "I see afar," he repeated, "the glory of our dreams
fulfilled, after toil, and struggle, and loss; and I call upon you
now to unfurl the white banner of justice, and liberty, and the
restoration! "
་་
The good women who listened guessed little of what he
meant by the fantastic sermon; but they wiped their eyes in
sympathy, and gathered their children to them, and said, "Poor
gentleman, poor gentleman! " and took him instantly to their
hearts. The men were mystified; but wine and rhetoric had
fired them, and they cheered him- no one knew why. The curé,
as he turned to leave with Monsieur Garon, shook his head in
bewilderment; but even he did not smile, for the man's eloquence.
had impressed him. And more than once he looked back at
the dispersing crowd and the picturesque figure posing on the
## p. 11072 (#284) ##########################################
11072
GILBERT PARKER
veranda. The avocat was thinking deeply, and as in the dusk he
left the curé at his own door, all that he ventured was: "Singu-
lar, a most singular person! "
"We shall see, we shall see," said the curé abstractedly, and
they said good-night. Medallion joined the Little Chemist in his
shop door, and watched the habitants scatter, till only Parpon and
the stranger were left. Presently these two faced each other,
and without a word passed into the hotel together.
"H'm, h'm," said Medallion into space, drumming the door-
jamb with his fingers, "which is it, my Parpona dauphin, or a
fool? »
He and the Little Chemist talked long, their eyes upon the
window opposite, inside which Monsieur Valmond and the dwarf
were talking. Up the dusty street wandered fitfully the refrain:
"To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoléon! »
And once they dimly saw Monsieur Valmond come to the
open window and stretch out his hand, as if in greeting to the
song and the singer.
## p. 11073 (#285) ##########################################
11073
THEODORE PARKER
(1810-1860)
BY JOHN WHITE CHADWICK
HEODORE PARKER was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, Au-
gust 24th, 1810; the eleventh and youngest child of John
and Hannah (Stearns) Parker. His grandfather, John Parker,
commanded the company of militia on Lexington Green, April 19th,
1775; and said to his men as the British soldiers were approaching,
"Don't fire unless fired upon; but if they mean to have a war, let it
begin here. " A certain fighting temper in
Parker rooted back into this family tradi-
tion, and was nourished by the circumstance
that his father's carpenter-shop was the bel-
fry from which the summons to the farmer
folk rang out on that eventful day. From
his father, who was both carpenter and
farmer, he inherited a strong and active
mind, and a disposition "not to take things
for granted"; from his mother his finer
and more sympathetic qualities. Speaking
of Daniel Webster's mother, and thinking
of his own, he wrote: "When virtue leaps
high in the public fountain, you seek for
the lofty spring of nobleness, and find it far
off in the dear breast of some mother who melted the snows of win-
ter and condensed the summer's sun into fair sweet humanity, which
now gladdens the face of man in all the city streets. "
THEODORE PARKER
He was still a mere boy when he resolved upon a life of study
and the work of a minister. His first book-ultimately one of some
twenty thousand volumes and pamphlets-was a Latin dictionary,
which he earned by picking berries in the Lexington pastures. One
of his rarest books had long eluded him, when he finally got upon its
scent in a Southern paper sent to him that he might have the ben-
efit of some abusive article upon his antislavery course. 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
## p. 11074 (#286) ##########################################
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
## p. 11075 (#287) ##########################################
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.
## p. 11076 (#288) ##########################################
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
## p. 11077 (#289) ##########################################
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
## p. 11078 (#290) ##########################################
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
―――――――
## p. 11079 (#291) ##########################################
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.
## p. 11080 (#292) ##########################################
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
>>>
## p. 11081 (#293) ##########################################
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
## p. 11082 (#294) ##########################################
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
## p. 11083 (#295) ##########################################
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,
-
-
―――――
## p. 11084 (#296) ##########################################
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;
## p. 11085 (#297) ##########################################
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
## p. 11086 (#298) ##########################################
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.
## p. 11086 (#299) ##########################################
## p.
GILBERT PARKER
11065
Private Gellatly spoke softly: "Angels betide me, it's little
we knew the great of him till he wint away; the pride, and the
law-and the love of him. "
In the tragedy that faced them this Christmas morning, one
at least had seen "the love of him. " Perhaps the broncho had
known it before.
Old Aleck laid a palm upon the hand he had never touched
when it had life. "He's-too-ha'sh," he said, slowly.
Private Gellatly looked up wonderingly.
But the old man's eyes were wet.
VALMOND
From When Valmond Came to Pontiac. ' Copyright 1895, by Stone &
Kimball
ON
N ONE Corner stood the house of Monsieur Garon the avocat;
on another, the shop of the Little Chemist; on another,
the office of Medallion the auctioneer; and on the last,
the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief characteristics of Monsieur
Garon's house were its brass door-knobs, and the verdant luxuri-
ance of the vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist's
shop, the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober
wall-paper, and the bottles of colored water in the shop windows;
of Medallion's, the stoop that surrounded three sides of the build-
ing, and the notices of sales tacked up, pasted up, on the front;
of the Hotel Louis Quinze, the deep dormer windows, its solid
timbers, and the veranda that gave its front distinction;- for this
veranda had been the pride of several generations of landlords,
and its heavy carving and bulky grace were worth even more
admiration than Pontiac gave to it.
The square which the two roads and the four corners made
was on week-days the rendezvous of Pontiac and the whole par-
ish; on Sunday mornings the rendezvous was shifted to the
large church on the hillside, beside which was the house of the
curé, Monsieur Fabre. Traveling towards the south, out of
the silken haze of a midsummer day, you would come in time
to the hills of Maine; north, to the city of Quebec and the River
St. Lawrence; east, to the ocean; and west, to the Great Lakes
and the land of the English. Over this bright province Britain
## p. 11066 (#278) ##########################################
11066
GILBERT PARKER
raised her flag; but only Medallion and a few others loved it for
its own sake, or saluted it in the English tongue.
In the drab velvet dust of these four corners were gathered,
one night of July a generation ago, the children of the village
and many of their elders. All the events of that epoch were
dated from the evening of this day. Another day of note the
parish cherished, but it was merely a grave fulfillment of the
first.
Upon the veranda stoop of the Louis Quinze stood a man
of apparently about twenty-eight years of age. When you came
to study him closely, some sense of time and experience in his
look told you that he might be thirty-eight, though his few gray
hairs seemed but to emphasize a certain youthfulness in him.
His eye was full, singularly clear, almost benign; at one mo-
ment it gave the impression of resolution, at another it suggested
the wayward abstraction of the dreamer. He was well figured,
with a hand of peculiar whiteness, suggesting in its breadth more
the man of action than of meditation. But it was a contradic-
tion, for as you saw it rise and fall, you were struck by its
dramatic delicacy; as it rested on the railing of the veranda, by
its latent power.
You faced incongruity everywhere. His dress
was bizarre, his face almost classical, the brow clear and strong,
the profile good to the mouth, where there showed a combina-
tion of sensuousness and adventure. Yet in the face there was
an elusive sadness, strangely out of keeping with the long linen
coat, frilled shirt, the flowered waistcoat, lavender trousers, boots
of enameled leather, and straw hat with white linen streamers.
It was a whimsical picture.
At the moment that the curé and Medallion the auctioneer
came down the street together towards the Louis Quinze, talking
amiably, this singular gentleman was throwing out hot pennies
with a large spoon from a tray in his hand, calling on the child-
ren to gather them, in French which was not the French of
Pontiac-or Quebec; and this fact the curé was quick to detect,
as Monsieur Garon the avocat, standing on the outskirts of the
crowd, had done some moments before. The stranger seemed
only conscious of his act of liberality and the children before
him. There was a naturalness in his enjoyment which was almost
boy-like; a naïve sort of exultation seemed to possess him.
He laughed softly to see the children toss the pennies from
hand to hand, blowing to cool them; the riotous yet half timorous
## p. 11067 (#279) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11067
scramble for them, and burnt fingers thrust into hot blithe
mouths. And when he saw a fat little lad of five crowded out
of the way by his elders, he stepped down with a quick word of
sympathy, put a half-dozen pennies in the child's pocket, snatched
him up and kissed him, and then returned to the veranda, where
were gathered the landlord, the miller, and Monsieur De la Ri-
vière the young Seigneur. But the most intent spectator of the
scene was Parpon the dwarf, who sat grotesquely crouched upon
the wide ledge of a window.
Tray after tray of pennies was brought out and emptied, till
at last the stranger paused, handed the spoon to the landlord,
drew out a fine white handkerchief, dusted his fingers, standing
silent for a moment and smiling upon the crowd.
It was at this point that some young villager called, in pro-
fuse compliment, "Three cheers for the Prince! "
The stranger threw an accent of pose into his manner, his
eye lighted, his chin came up, he dropped one hand negligently
on his hip, and waved the other in acknowledgment. Presently
he beckoned, and from the hotel were brought out four great
pitchers of wine and a dozen tin cups; and sending the garçon
around with one, the landlord with another, he motioned Parpon
the dwarf to bear a hand. Parpon shot out a quick, half resent-
ful look at him; but meeting a warm, friendly eye, he took the
pitcher and went among the elders, while the stranger himself
courteously drank with the young men of the village, who, like
many wiser folk, thus yielded to the charm of mystery. To
every one he said a hearty thing, and sometimes touched his
greeting off with a bit of poetry or a rhetorical phrase. These
dramatic extravagances served him well, for he was among a
race of story-tellers and crude poets.
Parpon, uncouth and furtive, moved through the crowd, dis-
pensing as much irony as wine:-
―
"Three bucks we come to a pretty inn:
'Hostess,' say we, 'have you red wine? '
Brave! Brave!
'Hostess,' say we, have you red wine ? >
Bravement!
Our feet are sore and our crops are dry,
Bravement! »
This he hummed to Monsieur Garon the avocat, in a tone all
silver; for he had that one gift of Heaven as recompense for his
## p. 11068 (#280) ##########################################
11068
GILBERT PARKER
It
deformity, his long arms, big head, and short stature, - a voice
which gave you a shiver of delight and pain all at once.
had in it mystery and the incomprehensible. This drinking song,
lilted just above his breath, touched some antique memory in the
avocat; and he nodded kindly at the dwarf, though he refused.
the wine.
"Ah, M'sieu' le Curé," said Parpon, ducking his head to avoid
the hand that Medallion would have laid on it, "we're going to
be somebody now in Pontiac, bless the Lord! We're simple folk,
but we're not neglected. He wears a king's ribbon on his breast,
M'sieu' le Curé! »
This was true. Fastened by a gold bar to the stranger's
breast was the crimson ribbon of an order.
The Curé smiled at Parpon's words, and looked curiously and
gravely at the stranger. Tall Medallion, the auctioneer, took a
glass of the wine, and lifting it, said, "Who shall I drink to,
Parpon, my dear? What is he? "
"Ten to one, a dauphin or a fool," answered Parpon with a
laugh like the note of an organ.
"Drink to both, long legs. "
Then he trotted away to the Little Chemist.
"Hush, my brother," said he, and he drew the other's ear
down to his mouth. "Now there'll be plenty of work for you.
We're going to be gay in Pontiac, We'll come to you with our
spoiled stomachs. "
He edged round the circle, and back to where the miller his
master, and the young Seigneur stood.
"Make more fine flour, old man," said he to the miller:
pâtés are the thing now. " Then, to Monsieur De la Rivière,
"There's nothing like hot pennies and wine to make the world
love you.
But it's too late, too late for my young Seigneur! "
he added in mockery, and again he began to hum in a sort of
amiable derision:
"My little tender heart,
O gai, vive le roi!
My little tender heart,
O gai, vive le roi!
'Tis for a grand baron,
Vive le roi, la reine;
'Tis for a grand baron,
Vive Napoléon! »
With the last two lines the words swelled out far louder than
was the dwarf's intention; for few save Medallion and Monsieur
## p. 11069 (#281) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11069
De la Rivière had ever heard him sing. His concert house was
the Rock of Red Pigeons, his favorite haunt, his other home,
where, it was said, he met the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet
Hills, and had gay hours with them. And this was a matter of
awe to the timid habitants.
At the words "Vive Napoléon! " a hand touched him on the
shoulder. He turned and saw the stranger looking at him in-
tently, his eyes alight.
"Sing it," he said softly, yet with an air of command.
pon hesitated, shrank back.
_
ear.
"Sing it," he persisted; and the request was taken up by
others, til Parpon's face flushed with a sort of pleasurable de-
fiance. The stranger stooped and whispered something in his
There was a moment's pause, in which the dwarf looked
into the other's eyes with an intense curiosity, or incredulity,-
and then Medallion lifted the little man onto the railing of the
veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts of the people
there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet com-
ing as a new revelation to them all.
1
"My mother promised it,
O gai, vive le roi!
My mother promised it,
O gai, vive le roi!
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive le roi, la reine;
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoléon! »
This was chanted lightly, airily, with a sweetness almost
absurd, coming as it did from so uncouth a musician.
verses had a touch of pathos, droll yet searching:-
The last
"Oh, say, where goes your love.
O gai, vive le roi?
Par-
Oh, say, where goes your love,
O gai, vive le roi?
He rides on a white horse,
Vive le roi, la reine;
He wears a silver sword,
Vive Napoléon!
"Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
## p. 11070 (#282) ##########################################
11070
GILBERT PARKER
Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
Gold and silver he will bring,
Vive le roi, la reine;
And eke the daughter of a king-
Vive Napoléon! »
The crowd, women and men, youths and maidens, enthusias-
tically repeated again and again the last line and the refrain,
"Vive le roi, la reine! Vive Napoléon ! »
Meanwhile the stranger stood, now looking at the singer with
eager eyes, now searching the faces of the people, keen to see
the effect upon them. His glance found the curé, the avocat,
and the auctioneer, and his eyes steadied successively to Medal-
lion's humorous look, to the curé's puzzled questioning, to the
avocat's birdlike curiosity. It was plain they were not antago-
nistic; (why should they be? ) and he was there any reason
why he should care whether or no they were for him or against
him?
True, he had entered the village in the dead of night, with
much luggage and many packages; had aroused the people at
the Louis Quinze; the driver who had brought him departing
gayly, before daybreak, because of the gifts of gold given him
above his wage. True, this singular gentleman had taken three
rooms in the little hotel, had paid the landlord in advance, and
had then gone to bed, leaving word that he was not to be
waked till three o'clock the next afternoon. True, the landlord
could not by any hint or indirection discover from whence this
midnight visitor came. But if a gentleman paid his way, and
was generous and polite, and minded his own business, wherefore
should people busy themselves about him? When he appeared
on the veranda of the inn with the hot pennies, not a half-dozen
people in the village had known aught of his presence in Pon-
tiac. The children came first to scorch their fingers and fill their
pockets; and after them the idle young men, and the habitants
in general.
The song done, the stranger, having shaken Parpon by the
hand, and again whispered in his ear, stepped forward. The
last light of the setting sun was reflected from the red roof of
the Little Chemist's shop, upon the quaint figure and eloquent
face, which had in it something of the gentleman, something of
the comedian. The alert Medallion himself did not realize the
## p. 11071 (#283) ##########################################
GILBERT PARKER
11071
comedian in it till the white hand was waved grandiloquently
over the heads of the crowd. Then something in the gesture
corresponded with something in the face, and the auctioneer
had a nut which he could not crack for many a day. The voice
was musical,-as fine in speaking almost as the dwarf's in sing-
ing, and the attention of the children was caught by the warm,
vibrating tones. He addressed himself to them.
"My children," he said, "my name is-Valmond!
begun well; let us be better friends. I have come from far off
to be one of you, to stay with you for a while-who knows how
long-how long? " He placed a finger meditatively on his lips,
sending a sort of mystery into his look and bearing. "You are
French, and so am I. You are playing on the shores of life, and
so am I. You are beginning to think and dream, and so am I.
We are only children till we begin to make our dreams our life.
So I am one with you; for only now do I step from dream to
action. My children, you shall be my brothers, and together we
will sow the seed of action and reap the grain; we will make a
happy garden of flowers, and violets shall bloom everywhere out
of our dream,- everywhere. Violets, my children; pluck the
wild violets and bring them to me, and I will give you silver
for them, and I will love you. Never forget," he added with a
swelling voice, "that you owe your first duty to your mothers,
and afterward to your country, and to the spirit of France.
see afar" he looked toward the setting sun, and stretched
out his arm dramatically, yet such was the impressiveness of his
voice and person that not even the young Seigneur or Medallion
smiled "I see afar," he repeated, "the glory of our dreams
fulfilled, after toil, and struggle, and loss; and I call upon you
now to unfurl the white banner of justice, and liberty, and the
restoration! "
་་
The good women who listened guessed little of what he
meant by the fantastic sermon; but they wiped their eyes in
sympathy, and gathered their children to them, and said, "Poor
gentleman, poor gentleman! " and took him instantly to their
hearts. The men were mystified; but wine and rhetoric had
fired them, and they cheered him- no one knew why. The curé,
as he turned to leave with Monsieur Garon, shook his head in
bewilderment; but even he did not smile, for the man's eloquence.
had impressed him. And more than once he looked back at
the dispersing crowd and the picturesque figure posing on the
## p. 11072 (#284) ##########################################
11072
GILBERT PARKER
veranda. The avocat was thinking deeply, and as in the dusk he
left the curé at his own door, all that he ventured was: "Singu-
lar, a most singular person! "
"We shall see, we shall see," said the curé abstractedly, and
they said good-night. Medallion joined the Little Chemist in his
shop door, and watched the habitants scatter, till only Parpon and
the stranger were left. Presently these two faced each other,
and without a word passed into the hotel together.
"H'm, h'm," said Medallion into space, drumming the door-
jamb with his fingers, "which is it, my Parpona dauphin, or a
fool? »
He and the Little Chemist talked long, their eyes upon the
window opposite, inside which Monsieur Valmond and the dwarf
were talking. Up the dusty street wandered fitfully the refrain:
"To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoléon! »
And once they dimly saw Monsieur Valmond come to the
open window and stretch out his hand, as if in greeting to the
song and the singer.
## p. 11073 (#285) ##########################################
11073
THEODORE PARKER
(1810-1860)
BY JOHN WHITE CHADWICK
HEODORE PARKER was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, Au-
gust 24th, 1810; the eleventh and youngest child of John
and Hannah (Stearns) Parker. His grandfather, John Parker,
commanded the company of militia on Lexington Green, April 19th,
1775; and said to his men as the British soldiers were approaching,
"Don't fire unless fired upon; but if they mean to have a war, let it
begin here. " A certain fighting temper in
Parker rooted back into this family tradi-
tion, and was nourished by the circumstance
that his father's carpenter-shop was the bel-
fry from which the summons to the farmer
folk rang out on that eventful day. From
his father, who was both carpenter and
farmer, he inherited a strong and active
mind, and a disposition "not to take things
for granted"; from his mother his finer
and more sympathetic qualities. Speaking
of Daniel Webster's mother, and thinking
of his own, he wrote: "When virtue leaps
high in the public fountain, you seek for
the lofty spring of nobleness, and find it far
off in the dear breast of some mother who melted the snows of win-
ter and condensed the summer's sun into fair sweet humanity, which
now gladdens the face of man in all the city streets. "
THEODORE PARKER
He was still a mere boy when he resolved upon a life of study
and the work of a minister. His first book-ultimately one of some
twenty thousand volumes and pamphlets-was a Latin dictionary,
which he earned by picking berries in the Lexington pastures. One
of his rarest books had long eluded him, when he finally got upon its
scent in a Southern paper sent to him that he might have the ben-
efit of some abusive article upon his antislavery course. 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
## p. 11074 (#286) ##########################################
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
## p. 11075 (#287) ##########################################
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.
## p. 11076 (#288) ##########################################
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
## p. 11077 (#289) ##########################################
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
## p. 11078 (#290) ##########################################
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
―――――――
## p. 11079 (#291) ##########################################
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.
## p. 11080 (#292) ##########################################
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
## p. 11082 (#294) ##########################################
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
## p. 11083 (#295) ##########################################
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,
-
-
―――――
## p. 11084 (#296) ##########################################
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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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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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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