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ARTICLE VIII.-WEISS' LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THEODORE PARKER.

Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, Boston. By JOHN WEISS. Two Volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1864. 8vo. pp. 478, 530.

Ir is said of the philosopher Hegel, that when Napoleon had fought the battle of Jena, he was so far affected by the noise and rumor of the actualities going on about him, as to leave for a while the consideration of the logical relations of Notions, in order that he might take a look at the man who had just laid Germany at his feet. After looking steadily at the Emperor for a while, he ventured the remark, "Ein bedeutender Begriff," and went back to his pipe and his logic. The story is very likely a myth, but it has none the less pertinency and truth, especially if tried by the Hegelian criterion, that whatever is rational is actual!

Theodore Parker was in like manner a "bedeutender Begriff” -a most significant as well as a most potent conception-because he represented the opinions and tendencies of a large body of the influential men of his time. It is this circumstance which imparts to his life its chief interest and importance. It is because he gave both form and expression to these fermenting and indefinite tendencies, and devoted to the propagation of the creed which had been crystallized in his mind, all the energies of a bold and zealous nature, that his name will be prominent upon the memorial tablets of the present century. Theodore Parker was eminently a representative man, because he had the power to conceive distinctly, to state forcibly, and to adorn and illustrate eloquently, the anti-christianism of the present generation. His power to do all this with effect did not depend solely, perhaps not chiefly, upon his intellectual superiority. It arose quite as much from what he was as a

man,-at once formed by and in his turn forming his time,-as from his genius and power as a thinker and writer.

Mr. Weiss' biography enables us to understand this representative person, both as a thinker and as a man, and as acting upon and influenced by the times in which he lived. It displays him to us in his strength and weakness, in all his varied qualities of good and evil. Very few men are as outspoken as he was. Very few have left behind them so many letters, and so full a diary as he. From all these superabundant materials, Mr. Weiss has made a very liberal selection, not always, indeed, with the best judgment—as the unpleasant personalities, both those that were published and those that were sup pressed in the American edition equally testify, but with no desire to hide from the public those sides of character which would be most likely to give offense or to give prominence to those features which would enforce a favorable judgment.

Different readers will, however, judge Mr. Parker very dif ferently, according to the eyes which they bring to the reading. Some will be greatly moved by the kindness of his nature, by his persevering industry, his scholarly aims, his large-hearted philanthropy, his all embracing humanity, his love for poor and honest men, his hatred for the knavish and disingenuous in high places, and, most of all, by his sturdy and defiant courage in uttering sentiments which would give offense. Others will be repelled by his want of self-knowledge, his failures to do justice to the opinions and motives of those from whom he differed, his violations of the decorums of speech and of courtesy, and, above all, by the irreverent and almost profane language which he allowed himself to use concerning doctrines and personages which the Christian church has always hallowed with the most sacred associations.

The impression left upon the majority of readers will, we think, be more kindly, when they finish these volumes, than when they begin to read them. If we compare Mr. Parker as a man, with any of the rejectors of historical Christianity, there is not one, with the exception of Lord Herbert, whose personal traits were not immeasurably more offensive, while there is not one who can be compared with him in tenderness of

sensibility, in practical and self-forgetting kindness, in delicate conscientiousness, and in reverent love for his ideal Jesus. The real solution of the strange contradictions which seemed to meet in his character, and of the singular extremes of opinion into which he run with an almost insane haste and inconsideration, can be furnished only as we discover in him powers and attainments, appropriate to a giant, combined with the intellectual weaknesses proper to a child. All candid and kindly readers of his Life will, we think, unite in the opinion, that it is rare to find a man who could see and state certain principles and facts so clearly, who was, at the same time, so preeminently endowed with the capacity of overlooking other principles and facts quite as important and quite as evident which bore in the opposite direction. Incurable one-sidedness of intellect was most conspicuous in his nature. With apparent many sidedness in his tastes and sympathies, he was narrow in his judgments and bigoted in his creed. The fervor of his feelings blinded his power to judge. The radiance of his genius invested his conclusions with preternatural glory, so that he became almost a supernaturalist when he faced his own ethical and religious intuitions. The felicity and beauty of his style, when sounded in his own ears, seemed to invest his own sayings with the authority appropriate to the responses of an oracle. The man who could always find some weak or laughable side in the sayings and doings of the great men of the world, never hesitated to accord the most unhesitating faith to an endless series of the most positive and unsupported dicta of his own respecting any person or principle in regard to whom he conceived it his duty to affirm. It seemed not only literally true, as the author of the Fable for Critics wrote, "that he believed in nothing but Parker," but that he believed in Parker with such an earnestness and singleness of faith as in some measure to compensate for the energy and all comprehensiveness of his disbelief in each and all of other men. Regarded in one aspect, this all-repelling and critical distrust of others, and this unquestioning and complacent confidence in himself, were most repulsive and uncomfortable, but in Parker they were attended by so much real kindliness and

gentleness of love, as well as by such a childlike disposition to sympathize with and confide in other men, that one must needs, in spite of himself, ascribe these peculiarities to one of those unaccountable idiosyncrasies of natural constitution which are exceptions to all general rules.

The power to see himself as others saw him, seems to have been totally denied to Mr. Parker, and with it the capacity to measure the import of his own sayings, or the mischievous tendency of his own influence. At least, it must be acknowledged that the excitement of his own rapid and restless activity, and the rush of the moving tide of opinion and reforms on which he had so early cast himself, absorbed him so entirely that the power and the habit of critical self-judgment were placed and held in perpetual abeyance. Witness the strange mistakes which he committted in the direction of the antislavery movement, and mistakes strangely inconsistent with the kind temper, the large charity, and the practical good sense, which were congenial to the man-mistakes which stand out in conspicuous relief because contrasted with the sagacity with which he judged of passing tendencies in respect to that same movement, and the almost prophetic foresight with which he read the eventful future.

But we do not care to analyze the peculiarities of Mr. Parker as a man. We have only interposed these hints to serve for those who may read these volumes of biography, as a clue by which they may appreciate him more justly, and be saved from overestimating the lights and shades of his character. That this Life will be read by many persons with intense interest, we do not doubt. As a psychological study it is fitted to excite thoughtful minds to the highest pitch of intensity. The biographer is an admirer and disciple of Mr. Parker, allowing him to speak for himself with never a word of caution or criticism. He does not even hint at the possibility that Mr. Parker should not, in every case, have judged correctly, or reasoned soundly, or acted wisely. Hence there is the greater need that some cautions should be suggested to those whose own reflections would not furnish them.

Our chief concern is with the principles of Mr. Parker.

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We have said that he was an efficient and able representative of an anti-christian system. This charge Mr. Parker himself was ever most forward to repel and deny. He claimed to be a restorer of Christianity to its original simplicity and its native power. He labored, as he said, to divest it of the false principles with which a traditional Theology had overlaid it, and to clear it of the unreal events with which a mythological or untrue History had invested its real personages. He asserted that he cleared it of the Transient that he might vindicate for it the Permanent. Never was a mistake more egregious, or a claim more monstrous. Rather is it true that he rejected all that in Christianity which is essential to its conception, or necessary for its effective working.

To the simplest possible conception of Christianity, two thing: are required which may be likewise conceived as the necessary constituents of its ideal essence-the fact of sin, and the fact of a deliverer. We cannot conceive that Christianity should be reduced to a simpler expression than that man is, in some sense, a sinner, and Christ is, in some sort, a redeemer. The creed of Mr. Parker, when divested of all that is figurative and extraneous, may be thus enounced: men, in general, through immaturity and bad social influences, make sad mistakes in morality and religion, both in theory and practice. Jesus, by his intuitive insight, was saved from all mistakes in the theory of religion and morality, and, to a large extent, from mistakes of practice. Hence Jesus, by his teaching and his life, so far as we can reach the truth of either, is to be accepted as the instructor and model of the race. All else is tradition and falsehood.

These were the two cardinal theses of Mr. Parker. Both of these are opposed to the Christian theses concerning Sin and its Redeemer. But both of them Mr. Parker was bold to assert and to attempt to defend. In this attempt he of course. rejected the largest portion of the history and doctrine of the Old and New Testaments. In doing this he was bound not only to furnish satisfactory reasons for rejecting these teachings and this narrative, but also satisfactorily to explain how this rejected history and doctrine could possibly have been superin24

VOL. XXIII.

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