Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, Jan. 4, 1846, preaching in the Melodeon till Nov. 21, 1852, when the Society removed to the Music Hall, just built, and continued their pastor till death.

In its outward aspects the movement was a brilliant success. The Melodeon or Music Hall could not seat the crowd that flocked to the new preacher. The pulpit of the Twentyeighth Congregational Society was one of the lions of Boston. Strangers, of evangelical faith, were curious to hear the apostle of unbelief. The sermons preached on Sunday were published in the week, and found an audience in distant states. It became a centre of influence on the moral and social questions of the day. Impressible young men and women gathered there, to be beguiled from their faith in the Bible, and make shipwreck of character and life. Men in middle life came, to lose all fear of a judgment as a restraint upon their passions or their worldliness. Possibly old men strayed thither, whose lives had been darkened by scepticism and immorality, who were won to faith in virtue, and to reverence for God. One may charitably hope that some good was done, as a counterpoise to the evil which no finite mind can measure. But, whether for good or evil, it can hardly be questioned that Mr. Parker, for a series of years, exerted a wider influence than any man in New England, or any preacher in the land. Henry Ward Beecher, perhaps, has had a greater popularity, and addressed larger audiences, but his influence has never been so positive or sharply defined.

His position was not won by the power of his religious teaching. It was due to his generous sympathies, his love for man, and his unrelenting hatred to oppression and social wrongs. The poor never appealed for help in vain. The friendless wanderer was cheered by kind words and wise counsel. The fallen woman was not spurned. The trembling fugitive found shelter and sympathy and defence. If Mr. Parker's theology was vague, his philanthropy was sublime. He was indifferent to fatigue, or expense, or odium

in behalf of the hunted slave, for whose return to bonds the laws of the land were perverted, and its great men leagued with the oppressor. He will be remembered by future generations, not for his theology, which is narrow and incomplete; nor for his philosophy, which is strangely deficient in idealism and spiritual depth, and cannot outlast his age; nor for his learning, which will be talked of as among the doubtful traditions of the past; but his memory will be fragrant as a zealous preacher of "the higher law" in the state, when some preachers of a better faith denounced it; as a champion of the helpless, when many evangelical men, like the priest and Levite, passed by on the other side; as an uncompromising foe to slavery, when statesman, divine, and merchant joined in the cry: "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." It was a proof of manhood, that he was incorruptible, when thousands bowed to Baal. To his persistent efforts for the rescue of Craft, Sims, Sha drach, and Burns; to his anathemas against the oppressor; to his indignant appeals to justice and right, New England is largely indebted for that education of the conscience, and that unflinching moral courage which prepared her to act a leading part in the suppression of the rebellion.

The amount of work done by Mr. Parker was prodigious. Lecturing sixty or eighty times a year, preaching every Sabbath, maintaining an extensive correspondence, reading more than most men of leisure, and writing more than most men of letters, visiting in an extensive parish, and receiving visits at all hours from all sorts of persons, were more than any organism of flesh and blood could bear, and it is not surprising that his iron frame suddenly gave way under the intolerable pressure. Even his amazing vitality was exhausted; consumption, the fatal family disease, set in, and when it was too late to retrieve his error he gave up toil and went abroad to die. But his cheerfulness did not abate, nor his hope fail, nor his indomitable will lose its vigor. Travelling as a worn-out invalid, he formed plans of study that a scholar in vigorous health might shrink from, and did

hard days' work in London and Rome that few travellers would care to undertake. He hoped and struggled for recovery till the last, but the vital powers, exhausted by long abuse, could not rally; slowly and surely disease claimed its victim, and he died, without pain, in Florence, May 10, 1860, not having quite completed his fiftieth year. It is not easy to define Mr. Parker's religious views or position. His scholarship, from its wide range, was wanting in accuracy and exactness; and his thinking, from its rapidity and breadth, was equally deficient in precision and completeness. He often contradicts himself. The views of to-day are modified or discarded to-morrow. He formed no system of theology, and had he lived twenty years longer and completed the great works in philosophy and religion he had planned, it is doubtful if they would have possessed any true unity.

He was no atheist, but had a profound horror of the tendencies of this form of unbelief. His spirit was catholic to fellowship disciples of the most ultra schools in religion and morals, but he publicly disclaimed sympathy with the followers of Tom Paine, and declared his antipathy to the principles and the character of that champion of atheism.

He disclaimed also any affinity with pantheism, and his sharp realism criticized remorselessly Mr. Emerson's poetic dreams. But he glides unconsciously into pantheistic thought and language. The following is a specimen :

"God is the soul of man, and gives us all the life we have. Reason is not personal, but is a great plane which cuts the centre of all souls-the larger the soul the greater portion of the one and indivisible God is intercepted thereby. The life of God is in my soul: it is vain that you tell me of a God out of me. The senses wish for such a God; they find him, for all they perceive is but the varied Deity. Light and beautiful forms are God to the eye, perfumes to the smell, and so of the rest.”

This might easily pass for one of the "Orphic sayings" of Mr. Alcott.

He rejected the mythical theory of Strauss, arguing from well known laws of human nature that a real person must

always precede any marvellous accounts of such an one; and that unless Christ had made an impression on his age as an extraordinary person no one would have cared to invent miraculous stories about him. The historical person, he claimed, must go before the ideal person, and be large enough to carry the mythology invented for him.

He rejected, too, the bald deism of Tindal and Herbert, and the English freethinkers, though he agreed with them in a denial of inspiration, miracles, and a special providence. His own views were peculiar. He says:

"God created the world out of himself; so he is still in it, creating every day; not only working hitherto, but now likewise.”—Vol. I. p. 153.

"I have dwelt often on what I call the immanency of God in matter and in spirit. His perpetual presence and activity in the world of matter and the world of spirit, the laws whereof are but the modes of his activity; and the results, forms of his manifestation. "—Vol. I. p. 197.

There is ample room here for miracle, and special providence, and prayer; and on this platform Mr. Parker might have accepted, with a child-like faith, all the supernatural elements in Christianity.

He seems to have cherished a firm belief in the general providence of God. It was a cardinal point in his theology. The following passages are explicit :

"A part of the decision of these great questions rests with me; a part upon something exterior to myself - upon Providence."-Vol. I. p. 74. "How much of our life rests upon accident, as it seems

Providence,

as it is. Men would not see it; God knows it all.”—Vol. I. p. 312. "The ways of the All-wise Father you and I cannot scrutinize; we are only to submit. We feel that they are right, we know that they are good, and lead to a higher and nobler end than we had dared to propose to ourselves."-Vol. I. p. 354.

He prayed often, with apparent simplicity and devoutness, like Luther and the old reformers. The following are specimens of the petitions recorded in his journals:

"O God, wilt thou help me to become more pure in heart, more holy, and better able to restrain all impetuous desires and unholy passions; may I put down every high thought that would exalt itself against the perfect law of God! Help me in the intercourse of life to discharge my duties

with a more Christian-like fidelity; to love thee the more, and those with whom I am to deal."-Vol. I. p. 86.

"Father, help me to live better; more useful, more acceptable to thee. As the years go by me, may I grow in manliness and all noble qualities. Teach me truth, justice, love, and trust. Let me not be idle nor unfaithful. Give me a clean and holy life, and may each year bring me nearer to the measure of a man."-Vol. I. p. 56.

"I took Eichhorn's Introduction to the New Testament and prayed (kneeling) that I might not be led astray by one whom some called an infidel, while I sought after truth."

It is very noteworthy, however, that the recorded prayers are never offered in the name of Jesus, and that, as life advances, they grow less simple and earnest, and resemble more the utterance of an ecstatic frame than the petition of a yearning heart. One who has learned to wrestle with God, like Jacob, and to kindle the affections to a holy glow by closet communion, will feel sad at Mr. Parker's recipe for stirring devotional feeling :

"I have had a little time to gather up myself for the coming Sunday. I don't like to rush from a week of hard work into the prayers and hymns of the Sunday without a little breathing time of devotion, so I walk about the study, and hum over bits of hymns, or recall various little tender emotions, and feel the beating of that great Heart of the universe which warms us all with the life that never dies. I don't know that these are not the richest hours of my life; certainly they have always been the happiest." -Vol. I. p. 309.

This reads more like a leaf from Spinoza than from Paul or John.

It is instructive to trace the growth of unbelief in his mind, following an inevitable law of progress, and diverging more widely from the orthodox belief, till he rejected every distinctive doctrine of Christianity. In the Divinity School, he wrote to his nephew:

.....

"I believe in one God, . . . . . who will reward the good and punish the wicked, both in this life and in the next. This punishment may be eternal. "I believe the books of the Old and New Testaments to have been written by men inspired of God for certain purposes, but I do not think them inspired at all times. I believe that Christ was the Son of God, born in a miraculous manner, that he came to preach a better religion, by which men may be saved."-Vol. I. p. 66.