SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

THEOLOGY,

The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Theodore Parker, Minister of the Second Church in Roxbury, Mass Chapman • POLITICS, Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G., Lord President of the Council, on the late Revolution in France. By Lord Brougham, F.R.S., Member of the National In-

stitute Ridgway. rimiest, Lady Granard's Nieces ; a Novel. In three volumes Newby.

THEODORE PARKER'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

Waux the attention of the religious world has been directed towards the growth of Tractarianism and the increase of Popery, a more threatening danger has been overlooked in the quiet establishment of a religious phi- losophy, which, appealing to the reason and liberality of the age, is more pregnant with future mischief to Trinitarian churches than efforts to re- vive obsolete superstitions can ever be. The name which is borne by the followers of this persuasion, at least in England and America, is that of Unitarians ; though they have not much in common with older Unitarianism, unless Mr. Newman's theory of Develop- ment be applied to a subject he never intended. Except perhaps some coteries of "free-thinking Christians," as they called them- selves, few of the older Unitarians would have tossed aside the inspiration of the Bible with such cool assumption, or, from want of phi- lological data, could have criticized the Scriptures in the manner of their nominal successors ; as the new school possesses an unction and enthu-

siasm that the elder Unitarians wanted. They partook of that dead- ness in spiritual things which overspread all the churches of the last cen- tury; whereas some of the sect we speak of have the sentiment if not the tenderness of a Romish mystic, with the religious feeling as strongly developed as in the Celt, but under the control of a calmer judgment and more cultivated intellect.

How or in what way they grew up, may only perhaps be told by the future examiner, who can survey them from a longer point of sight than is possible now ; but these circumstances have not been without effect. Sceptical minds are no longer excited to hostility against religious esta- blishments, as they were during the preceding century and a half, when triumphant and persecuting Romanism bad lost even the belief in its own superstitions, offering to the eyes of Voltaire and his contemporaries nothing but a mass of corrupt and ridiculous formalism, or when the deadness of Protestantism was rendered offensive even to infidels by the coarse and worldly and often immoral character of its ministers ; not to omit the failure of the French Revolution in establishing the -eign of reason, which induced many to pause even in mid career upon' the prudence of attacking the belief of the multitude. Hence, men with a gregarious feeling, or in a country like America, where the profession of some religion is said to be necessary to a citizen, have enlisted under the Unitarian banner, who of yore would have appeared as open or perhaps hostile sceptics. The absence of abstruse dogmas in Unitarianism with a tolerance as large as the " unity " of Rome itself, has offered a refuge to minds puzzled by the articles of human churches yet still re- taining a reverence for Scripture. The Unitarian manner of presenting Christianity as a system of philosophy, founded in the very nature of man and the universe might really include any one however sceptical, unless he denied the historical authenticity of the Jewish writings and re- pudiated the morality of the Gospel. A tinge of mysticism, ap- parently derived from the German Transcendentalists, and a little of Nonconformist zeal in the cause of humanity," render the sect acceptable to the enthusiastic, from a hero-worshiper like Carlyle to the blind idolator of the "fine man" of a conventicle. The quality of the sect, however, which appeals most directly to the fashion of the age, is its cultivated intelligence. Intellect is the deity it worships, more es- pecially its own intellect. The great Protestant principles of the right of private judgment and the rejection of authority are not only pushed to an extreme, and expressed in a manner which, though logically main- tainable, is startling for the assumption of its tone, but no authority either human or divine is submitted to except reason,—which, of course, is finally resolvable into the reason of the writer : hence a decision, likely to become in many minds a dogmatism, as unflinching as Papal infalli- bility, accompanied in some eases by a certain philosophical intolerance— the bigotry of wisdom. In learned acquirements, the Unitarians lack the scholarship of the two great Western Episcopal churches,—unless the German Rationalists are to be considered Unitarians ; they are rather well-read than learned. Their literature, so far as we have met with it, is always respectable and something more ; the matter real and solid, the style forcible and close, without any of the rhetorical exaggeration of the platform; and frequently accompanied with a graphic power of delineat- ing character, sometimes with a feeling almost poetical. A peculiar style no doubt, distinguishes many of them ; but it has not yet become hacknied or degenerated into mannerism.

Of course, the traits we have endeavoured to enumerate vary in differ- ent persons ; since there is no authority to control an Unitarian's doc- trines, and nature varies in each individual. The Martineaus, we think, exhibit the harder intellectual traits in the most perfect form, as well as the intellectual dogmatism ; Blanco White had most of' the vague religious sentiment; Channing the largest tolerance and the widest sympathies, for even when face to face with an opponent he was rather rhetorical than controversial. We think the most complete representative of the class, in feeling, ability, and doctrines, or rather opinions, is Theodore Parker,— unless his opinions should be considered a degree too liberal for many Unitarians. With this qualification, the volume before us may be considered a type of the sect, and certainly presents an idea of the opinions and mind of the more liberal Unitarians in the briefest compass and the pleasantest way.

The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Theodore Parker

consist of reviews, essays on subjects connected with the social condition or advancement of the people, and of papers which, let their title be what they may, are substantially sermons. The direct reviews are on German Literature, the Life of St. Bernard, Straus's Life of Christ, and Dorner's Christology ; and though the work is frequently left for the subject, and the author delivers his opinion as an essayist rather than as a critic, yet he is more decidedly a reviewer than Macaulay and others of that school, who merely make the book a peg on which to hang a disquisition. The essays proper are on Labour and Education ; chiefly addressed to the pre- judices among Americans on the subject of handicrafts, and to the neces- sity of providing institutions for giving a better education to the people. Theodore Parker does not greatly shine as an economical essayist : he falls into the views of the French philanthropists and Godwin, as to the effects that would flow from an equal distribution of existing wealth, and leans rather too much, we think, to the ideas of modern Socialism and the per- fectibility of the mass of men, if not of man under any circumstances : but the papers contain some intimations of American opinion on the sub- ject of handicraft and trade which show that the Republicans have not yet got rid of the prejudices of feudal and aristocratic Europe : opinion in America, however, seems to place the farmer below the shopkeeper, which is scarcely the case in England now. The sermonizing discourses, except a paper on the Pharisees, are expositions of the author's Views on Christianity past and present, with passing hints as to the possible future. Their titles indicate the character of their subjects,—Primitive Christianity; the Transient and Permanent in Christianity ; the Christi- anity of Christ, of the Church, and of Society. In these productions are passing sketches both social and historical, with various subordinate views of the author on religion : they also con- tam his general ideas upon Christianity, somewhat vague perhaps, but this is to be expected in a sect which eschews articles and dogmas. In Theodore Parker's view the Scriptures stand upon no other footing than any other national writings. They are Hebrew literature, neither more nor less ; and differ from Greek, or Roman, or Sanscrit literature, only by the circumstance of chronology, the then characteristics of the Jewish people, and the genius of the different writers. Theodore Parker agrees with the philological criticism of the Germans, that discovers, for example, two separate sources to which the compiler of Genesis had recourse, and puts aside the authorship of writings long attributed to venerable names. He disagrees with some of the Rationalists, who allow occasional inspira- tion. Unless we misunderstand him, he denies that any part of the Bible is inspired in the sense of a particular communication or prompting from God ; though he would admit much if not all of the moral and hortative portions to be inspired in a critical or poetical meaning,—that is, a great mind, originally emanating from God, devoting itself to moral and religious contemplations, and in fulness of time pouring forth its perceptions of the moral law and the material universe as they were created by God and discovered by this poetically-inspired mind. He admits the historical au- thenticity of the New Testament, but does not rest the proof of Christianity upon this authenticity. The authorship might be wrongly ascribed, and the chronology false, without impairing its truths, which are inherent ; as much founded in the nature of things as the law of gravitation and the circulation of the blood, the truth of which are quite independent of Newton and Harvey. In fine, Christianity is a moral system, founded by Christ, and differing from any other moral system, only by its simplicity, its greatness, its purity, its sufficiency. Yet sometimes the orator, warming with his theme, pours forth a strain of thought which might seem to deny his colder logical conclusions. There are many passages of this kind ; we will take one on "the Word."

"Christ says, his word shall never pass away. Yet, at first sight, nothing seems more fleeting than a word. It is an evanescent impulse of the most fickle element. It leaves no track where it went through the air. Yet to this and this only, did Jesus intrust the troth wherewith he came laden to the this, truth for the salvation of the world. He took no pains to perpetuate his thoughts: they were poured forth where occasion found him an audience,—by the side of the lake, or a well; in a cottage, or the temple; in a fisher's boat, or the synagogue of the Jews. He founds no institution as a monument of his words. He appoints no order of men to preserve his bright and glad relations. He only bids his friends give freely the truth they had freely received. He did not even write his words in a book. With a noble confidence, the result of his abiding faith, he scattered them broad-cast on the world, leaving the seed to its own vitality. He knew that what is of God cannot fail, for God keeps his own. He sowed his seed in the heart, and left it there, to be watered and warmed by the dew and the sun which Heaven sends. He felt his words were for eternity. So he trusted them to the uncertain air; and for eighteen hundred years that faithful element has held them good,—distinct as when first warm from his lips. Now they are translated into every human speech, and murmured in all earth's thousand tongues, from the pine forests of the North to the palm groves of Eastern Ind. They mingle, as it were, with the roar of a populous city, and join the chime of the desert sea. Of a Sabbath morn they are repeated from church to church, from isle to isle and land to land, till their music goes round the world. These words have become the breath of the good, the hope of the wise, the joy of the pious, and that for many millions of hearts. They are the prayers of our churches; our better de- votion by fireside and fieldside; the enchantment of our hearts. It is these words that still work wonders, to which the first recorded miracles were nothing in gran- deur and utility. It is these which build our temples and beautify our homes. They raise our thoughts of sublimity; they purify our ideal of purity; they hal- low our prayer for truth and love. They make beauteous and divine the life which plain men lead. They give wings to our aspirations. What charmers they are! Sorrow is lulled at their bidding. They take the sting out of disease, and rob adversity of his power to disappoint. They give health and wings to the pious soul, broken-hearted and shipwrecked in his voyage through life, and en- courage him to tempt the perilous way once more. They make all things ours; Christ our brother, time our servant, death our ally and the witness of our tri- umph. They reveal to us the presence of God, which else we might not have seen so clearly, in the first wind-flower of spring; in the falling of a sparrow; in the distress of a nation; in the sorrow or the rapture of the world. Silence the voice of Christianity, and the world is well nigh dumb; for gone is that sweet music which kept in awe the rulers and the people, which cheers the poor widow in her lonely toil, and comes like light through the windows of morning to mcil who sit stooping aid feeble with failing eyes and a hungering heart. It is gone —all gone! only the cold bleak uorld left before them." It is not always easy to reach an Unitarian's idea of the character of Christ,—that is to say, whether he looks upon him as divinely inspired in a peculiar manner, or in the way which Jews and Christians regard Moses and the Prophets, or the Mussulmans Mahomet ; or whether as mere man, however highly gifted beyond all other men. This last is evidently the view of Theodore Parker ; though be occasioually uses words that might seem to contradict his conclusion, were they not Clearly used in a poetical sense. The following is part of his sketch of Christ ; the,style partaking of the pulpit, though it is from a paper, not a discourse.

Many years ago, at a time when all nations were in a state of deep moral and religions degradation; when the world lay exhausted and sick with long warfare; at a time when religion was supported by each civilized state, but when every- where the religious form was outgrown and worn out, though the state yet watched this tattered garment with the most jealous care, calling each man a blasphemer who complained of its scantiness or pointed out its rents- ' at a time when no wise man anywhere had the smallest respect for the popular religion, except so far as he found it a convenient instrument to keep the mob in subjection to their lords; and when only the few had any regard for religion, into whose generous hearts it is by nature so deeply sown that they are born religious; at such a time' in a little corner of the world, of a people once pious but then corrupted to the heart, of a nation well known but only to be justly and universally hated, there was born a man—a right true man. He had no advantage of birth, for he was de- scended from the poorest of the people; none of education, for he was brought up in a little village, whose inhabitants were wicked to a proverb; and so little had schools and colleges to do for him, that his townsmen wondered how he had learned to read. He had no advantage of aid or instruction from the great and the wise; but grew up and passed his life mainly with fishers, and others of like occupation—the most illiterate of men.

"This was a true man; such as had never been seen before. None such has risen since his time. He was so true, that he could tolerate nothing false; so pure and holy, that he, and perhaps he alone of all men, was justified in calling others by their proper name, even when that proper name was blind guide, fool, hypocrite, cllild of the Devil. He found men forgetful of God. They seemed to fancy He was dead. They lived as if there had once been a God, who had grown old and deceased. They were mistaken also as to the nature of man. The saw he had a body; they forgot he is a soul, and has a soul's rights, and a soul a du- ties. Accordingly, they believed there had been revelations, in the days of their fathers when God was alive and active. They knew not there were revelations every day to faithful souls; revelations just as real, just as direct, just as true, just as sublime, just as valuable, as those of old time: for the Holy Spirit has not yet been exhausted, nor the river of God's inspiration been drunk dry by a few old

Hebrews, great and divine souls though they were. •

"Before this man had seen five-and-thirty summers, he was put to death, by such men as thought old things were new enough, and false things sufficiently true, and like owls and bats shriek fearfully when morning comes, because their

i

day s the night, and their power, like the spectres of fable, vanishes as the cock- crowing ushers the morning in. Scarce had this divine youth begun to spread 'forth his brightness; men had seen but the twilight of his reason and inspiration; the full noon must have come at a later period of life, when experience and long contemplation had matured the divine gifts, never before nor since so prodigally bestowed, nor used so faithfully. But his doctrine was ripe though he was young. The truth he received at first hand from God required no age to render it mature. So he perished. But as the oak the woodman fells in autumn on the mountain side scatters ripe acorns over many a rood, some falling perchance into the bosom of a stream, to be cast up on distant fertile shores, so his words sprang up a host of men; living men like -himself, only feebler and of smaller stature."

Enough has been said to indicate Theodore Parker's theology : we will not quit his volume without giving an idea of his lay composition. This picture of a "dead age," though primarily applied by him to the times immediately preceding the Advent, is true of several epochs, and in some points not altogether unlike the present age. •

'There are some ages when all seem to look for a great man to come up at God's call and deliver them from the evils they groan under. Then humanity seems to lie with its forehead in the dust, calling on Heaven to send a man to save it. There are times when the powers of the race, though working with their wonted activity, appear so misdirected, that little permanent good comes from the efforts of the gifted ; times when governments have little regard for the welfare of the subject, when popular forms of religion have lost their hold on the minds of the thoughtful, and the consecrated augurs, while performing the accustomed rites, dare not look one another in the face, lest they laugh in public and disturb the reverence of the people, their own having gone long before. Times there are when the popular religion does not satisfy the hunger and thirst of the people themselves. Then mental energy seems of little value, save to disclose and chronicle the sadness of the times. No great works of deep and wide utility are then undertaken for existing or future generations. Original works of art are not sculptured out of new thought. Men fall back on the achievements of their fathers; imitate and reproduce them, but take no steps in any direction into the nntrodden infinite. Though wealth and selfishness pile up their marble and mor- tar as never before, yet the chisel, the pencil, and the pen, are prostituted to imi- tation. The artist does not travel beyond the actual At such times, the rich are wealthy only to be luxurious and dissolve the mind in the lusts of the flesh. The cultivated have skill and taste only to mock, openly or in secret, at the forms of religion, and its substance also; to devise new pleasures for themselves; pur- sue the study of some abortive science, some costly game, or dazzling art. When the people suffer for water and bread, the king digs fish-pools that his parasites may fare on lampreys of unnatural size. Then the poor are trodden down into the dust. The weak bear the burden of the strong; and they who do all the work of the world, who spin and weave and delve and drudge, who build the pa- lace and supply the feast, are the only men that go hungry and bare, live nn- cared for, and when' they die are huddled into the dirt, with none to say God bless you.' Such periods have occurred several times in the world's history. "At these times man stands in frightful contrast with nature. He is dissatis- fied, ill-fed, and poorly clad; while all nature through, there is not an animal, from the mite to the mammoth, but his wants are met and his peace secured by the great Author of all. Man knows not whom to trust, while the little creature that lives its brief moment in the dew-drop which hanga on the violet's petal en- joys perfect tranquillity so long as its little life runs on. Man is in doubt, dis- tress, perpetual trouble; afraid to go forward, lest he go wrong; fearful of stand- ing still, lest he fall; while the meanest worm that crawls under his feet is all and enjoys all its nature allows, and the stars over head go smoothly as ever on their way."

The following sketch of the real and the ideal fulfils Addison's definition of fine writing—natural, but not obvious.

"Every man has at times in his mind the ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character. Perhaps no one is satisfied with himself so that he never wishes to be wiser, bet- ter, and more holy. Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself. This ideal man, which we project, as it were, out of ourselves, and seek to make real; this wisdom, goodness, and holiness, which we aim to transfer from our thoughts to our life, has an action more or less powerful, on each man ren- dering him dissatisfied with present attainments, and restless unless he is becom- ing better. With some men it takes the rose out of the cheek, and forces them to wander a long pilgrimage of temptations, before they reach the delectable mountains of tranquillity, and find 'rest for the soul' under the tree of life. "Now there is likewise an ideal of perfection floating before the eyes of a com- munity or nation; and that ideal, which hovers, lofty or low, above the heads of our nation, is the Christian ideal, the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus.' Christianity, then, is the ideal our nation is striving to realize in life; the sublime prophecy we are labouring to fulfiL Of course, some part thereof is made real and actual, but by no means the whole; for if it were, some higher ideal must immediately take its place. Hence there exists a difference between the ac- tual state in which our countrymen are, and the ideal state in which they should be; just as there is a great gulf between what each man is and what he knows he ought to become. But there is at this day not only a wide difference between the true Christian ideal and our actual state, but, what is still worse, there is a great dissimilarity between our ideal and the ideal of Christ. The Christianity of Christ is the highest and most perfect ideal ever presented to the longing eyes of man; but the Christianity of the Church, which is the idea held up to our eyes at this day, is a very different thing; and the Christianity of Society, which is that last ideal imperfectly realized, has but the slightest affinity with Christ's sublime archetype of man."- It will be seen from these extracts, that Theodore Parker is a writer of considerable power and freshness, if not originality. Of the school of Carlyle, or rather, taking the same German originals for his models, Parker has a more sober style and a less theatrics taste. He has also very genial feelings, which impart warmth to what would otherwise be the cold- ness of his theology, and which temper his examinations of other churches. His composition wants the grotesque animation and richness of Carlyle ; but it is vivid, strong, and frequently picturesque, with a tenderness that the great Scotchman does not possess. Parker is strongest, however, on his own ground : his theological discourses are superior to his literary! criticisms ; as these, in their turn, are beyond his economical or political papers.