PARKER'S SERMONS OF RELIGION. * THE charm of Theodore Parker's writings

lies not in what he de- monstrates for the intellect, or creates for the imagination, but in the powerful appeals he makes to the conscience and the heart. He addresses himself to the sense which exists more or less vividly in all of as of a dissonance between the actual and ideal—to the desire of being wiser, better, and happier than we are. His own ideal of man, and of human life, is high and distinct ; it embraces clearly conceived with all its details, the harmonious activity Lui full satisfaction of the various faculties within us. All which promotes this is to him sacred and religious; all which checks it is ungodly and inhuman, whether it issues its mandates in the name of divine or human authority and tradition. We may differ from him in.his estimate of certain doctrines we may esteem the influence of ear- tionlar creeds upon human life, and the development of humanity, very much higher or lower than he does ; but we can scarcely dispute with him the test he applies to doctrine and to creed, whether political, social, or theological. In spite of the criticism thundered against Pope's dictum, "For modes of faith let graceless bigots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right," we hold that the only satisfactory ultimate test of a doctrine is its influence upon the character and happiness of those who believe it. That religion, that theory of the universe, is truest and best, under the influence of which men grow to be best and happiest, because men can only be happy when living in conformity to the laws of the world and of their own nature ; and those laws are best tested by the experience of generations. We believe Christianity to be the highest form of religion ever received among mankind, because it satis- fies human nature most completely, and tends to produce the noblest human characters. That it admits and promotes a com- plete human culture, is the most convincing evidence of a religion, and in practice religion and human culture are identical. From this point of view Parker criticizes the life of the society around him, in Europe in America—the speculative opinions and the practical morality of the churches ; and we can none of us fail to derive advantage from looking at our political, social, or religious life, by the side of so lofty a standard. If he who undertakes to be our demonstrator, and to comment on the contrasts thus pre-

sented, errs in his estimate, it is surely not because his standard is wrong, but because from his peculiar opinions he is forced into an unwholesome antagonism with the majority of his coun- trymen, and, with the common tendency of our nature, depre- ciates the practical character of those with whom he has specu- lative differences. Still we are all so disposed to take a flattering and comfortable estimate of our attainments in morality and wisdom, that we shall be sure to supply the full cor- rection to this personal obliquity of view, and can be none the i worse for the sound rating we get n this much extolled nineteenth century from jeremiades such as Parker and Carlyle indulge us with. We should especially commend Parker's Sermons to those who differ most widely from his purely theological opinions : they will find in them a just estimateof their own deficiencies and positive errors ; and if they do not find a recognition of their virtues, they will be tolerably sure to supply the defect for themselves, or their favourite preachers have done it and will continue to do it for them. So that, putting together Parker's estimate of them and their own they will probably be as near the truth as is ordinarily

given to own, mortals to arrive at.

An American excused his countiTmen to Mr. Pulszky for drink-

ing the unfiltered water of the Mississippi, on the ground that they were too go-ahead a people to stay to filter their water. We wish that it were only. in American water that we had to com- plain of want of filtering. But certainly some leading American writers would be much better for the process and Theodore Parker is among the number. A printed book should be somewhat more careful than conversation, and no amount of brilliant and epi- grammatic passages atones for a random pouring forth of

• Ten Sermons of Religion. By Theodore Parker. Published by Chapman.

crude audacities and hasty generalizations. If all that men like Emerson and Parker have written were as good as their best sayings, few writers could be placed above them ; and if all were on the level of their worst, few would rank below them. It is this characteristic of saying everything and anything that comes upper- most which accounts for the extremely contradictory opinions one hears about them. One man thinks them prophets, and another man thinks them fools; and both can prove their assertions by abundant quotation. Perhaps it is one effect of a very stringent orthodoxy to make dissentients vain of their opinions, and to tempt them to brandish their heterodoxes in the face of society, as very young men sometimes flourish their sprouting vices as a proof of manhood and emancipation from restraint. On no other theory can we understand why Parker should so perpetually be offending what he would call the prejudice of his readers by ranking Confu- cius, Mehemet, and other founders of what Europe considers false religion, with him from whom we call ourselves by the name of Christians. No possible good is effected by thus insulting and outraging the feelings of ninety-nine hundredths of Christian peo- ple, any more than by saying, as he does, that the American Tract Society is doing more damage to the nation than all the sellers of intoxicating drink and all the prostitutes in the land; a form of expression he seems fond of, as he makes the same charge against the statesmen of his country, and asserts that the Athanasian Creed and the Westminster Catechism have retarded the religious development of Christendom more than all the ribald works of con- fessed Infidels from Lucian to our own days. In spite of such defects, we have read these ten Sermons with far greater pleasure than sermons ordinarily give us. The sense of a noble and happy human life paints itself on every page, and appeals to us both as reproach and encouragement. Parker speaks more like a genial man, a man of culture and of wide sympathies, than most preachers from our pulpits : he addresses what is deeper in us than opinions; and his audience will not, consequently, be limited by the church-walls of thir that sect. Men of all theo- logical opinions, or of none, reap slerive good from the manly thoughts and generous sentiments' mattered through the book. The writer strikes us so much more in isolated fine sayings than in conclusive chains of argument or sustained rhetorical passages, that we shall deviate from our usuaI practice, and quote scraps

here and there, rather than whole phs; premising that the specimens are but specimens, and that the volume is rich in matter for a commonplace-book.

"Ask any popular minister, in one of the predominant sects, for the man most marked for piety, and he wilt,• not show you the men with the power of business who do the work oP4i6,—the upright mechanic, merchant, or farmer • not the men with the r-er of thought, of justice, or of love; not him whose whole life is an act ftsurfold piety. No; he will show you some men who are always a dawdling over their souls, going back to the baby- jumpers and nursery rhymes of their early days, and everlastingly coming to the church to fire themselves up, calling themselves 'miserable offenders,' and saying 'save us, good Lord.' If a man thinks himself a miserable of- fender, let him away with the offence, and be done with the complaint at once and for ever. It is dangerous to reiterate so sad a cry."

"Some theologies confront us, calling wisdom foolish,' reason carnal,' scoffing at science with a priestly sneer, as if knowledge of God, of God's world, and of its laws, could disturb the natural service of God. We are -warned against the arrogance of the philosopher ' but by the arrogance of the priest. We are told to shun the 'pride of Wisdom' ; alas! it is some- times the pride of folly which gives the caution."

"Politics is the science of exikencies. The eternal truth of things is the exigency which controls the science of men as the science of matter. De- pend upon it, the Infinite God is one of the exigencies not likely to be dis- regarded in the ultimate events of human development. Truth shall fail out of geometry and politics at the same time ; only we learn first the sim- pler forms of truth."

"A thousand generations live in you and Inc."

"The beat gift we can bestow upon man is manhood."

"Whom escapes a duty avoids a gain."

"Ideas are the persons of the intellect, and persons the ideas of the heart."

"The mass of men have more confidence in a man of great affection than in one of great thought."

"I have heard a boorish pedant wonder how a woman could spend so many years of her life with little children, and be content. In her satisfac- tion be found a proof of her inferiority, and thought her but the 'servant of a wooden cradle, herself almost as wooden. But in that gentle companion- ship she nursed herself and fed a higher faculty than our poor pedant, with his sophomoric wit, had yet brought to consciousness, and out of her wooden cradle got more than he had learned to know. A physician once, with un- professional impiety, complained that we are not born men, but babies. He aid not see the value of infancy as a delight to the mature, and for the edu- cation of the heart. At one period of life we need objects of instinctive pas- sion; at another, of instinctive benevolence, without passion."

" Drive out Nature with a dollar, still she comes back. [A neat enough American version of Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurreti "The fighter is only the hod-carrier of the philanthropist." "American politics—where a reputation is gained without a virtue, or lost without a crime.

"Religion made these men formidably strong. The axe of the tormentor was as idle to stay them as the gallows to atop a sunbeam. This power of endurance is general, of all forms of religion. It does not depend on what is Jewish in Judaism, or Christian in Christianity ; but on what is religious in religion, what is human in man."

"Genius is the father of a heavenly line; but the mortal mother, that is Industry."

"When John Quincy Adams died, his piety was one topic of com- mendation in most of the many sermons preached in memory of the man. What was the proof or sign of that piety ? Scarcely any one found it in his integrity, which heel Mit failed for many a year ; or his faithful attendance on his political duty ; or his unflinching love of liberty, and the noble war the aged champion fought for the inalienable rights of man. No; they found the test in the fact that he was a member of a church ; that he went to meeting, and was more decorous than most men while there ; that Ile daily read the Bible, and repeated each night a simple and beautiful little prayer, which mothers teach their babes of grace. No regular minister, I think, found the proofs of his piety in his zeal for man's welfare, in the clearness of his life, and hands which never took a bribe. One, I remember, found a sign of that piety in the fact that he never covered his reverend head till fairly out of church !"

"After ecclesiastical men produce their piety, they do not aim to set it to do the natural work of mankind. Morality is not thought to be the proof of piety, nor even the sign of it. They dam up the stream of human nature till they have got a sufficient head of piety, and then, instead of setting it to turn the useful mill of life, or even drawing it off to water the world's dry grounds, they let the waters run over the dam, promoting nothing but sectarian froth and noise ; or, if it be allowed to turn the wheels, it must not grind sound corn for human bread, but chiefly rattle the clapper of the theologic mill."

It would not be easy to find ten sermons preached in our Eng- lish pulpits from which such passages could be extracted ; and these are but random specimens.