Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

On the whole, then, I should say that manliness was Theodore Parker's crowning quality and supreme claim to distinction. That he had other most remarkable gifts is conceded as a matter of course. Everybody knows that he had. But this was his prime characteristic. The other gifts he had in spite of himself – his thirst for knowledge, his love of books, his all-devouring industry, his unfailing memory, his natural eloquence or power of affluent expression; but character men regard as less a gift than an acquisition, – the fruit of aspiration, resolve, fidelity, – the product of daily, nay, of hourly, endeavor. Hence it is that intellectual greatness does not impress the multitude; even genius has but a limited sway over the masses of mankind. But character goes to the roots of life. In fact, Theodore Parker's eminence as a man of thought and expression in words has concealed from the world at large the intrinsic quality of the person. His reputation as theologian, preacher, controversialist, has concealed the real greatness which comes to light as the dust of controversy subsides. The very causes in which the heroism of his manliness was displayed – as, for example, the anti-slavery cause, to which he devoted so much of his time and vitality – rendered inconspicuous the contribution he made to the treasury of humane feeling. Now that that great conflict is over, now that its agitations have ceased and its heats have cooled, the character of which this conflict revealed but a portion, the career in which this long agony was but an episode, loom up into distinctness. The greatest of all human achievements is a manly character – guileless, sincere, and brave; that he by all admission possessed. He earned it; he prayed for it; meditated for it; worked for it; – how hard, his private journals show. And for this he will not be forgotten. For this he will be remembered as one of the benefactors, one of the emancipators, of his kind.

From a shelf in his library, I took Schwegler's "Nachapostolische Zeitalter," a work which threw a flood of light on the problems of New-Testament criticism. This led to a study of the writings of F. C. Baur, the founder of the so-called "Tübingen School." A complete set of the Theologische Jahrbücher, the organ of his ideas, was imported from Germany, and carefully perused. These volumes contained full and minute studies on all the books of the New Testament – Gospels, Epistles, the writing termed "The Acts of the Apostles," with incidental glances at the "Apocalypse." The calm, consistent strength of these expositions commended them to my mind. The author was a university professor, a man of practical piety, a Lutheran preacher of high repute, simple, affectionate, faithful to his duties, quite unconscious that he was undermining anybody's faith, so deeply rooted was the old Lutheran freedom of criticism in regard to the Bible. In the German mind, religion and literature, Christianity and the Scriptures, were entirely distinct things. The scholar could sit in his library in one mood and could enter his pulpit in another, preserving in both the single-mindedness that became a Christian and a student.

Other theories have arisen since, but none that have taken hold of such eminent minds have appeared. Theodore Parker accepted it; James Martineau adopted its main proposition in several remarkable papers written at various times, last in the Unitarian magazine Old and New. In the brilliant lectures delivered in London, during the spring of 1880, on the Hibbert Foundation, Ernest Renan's striking account of early Christianity owed its force to the assumption of the fundamental postulate of the Tübingen School. In the latter years of his life, Baur summed up the results of his criticism in a pamphlet that was designed to meet objections; and in 1875-1877 his son-in-law, the learned Edward Zeller, one of his ablest disciples, an eminent professor of history at Berlin, published an earnest, carefully considered, masterly report of the writings of the now famous teacher, in the course of which he paid a merited tribute to his character, vindicated his views from the charge of haste and partisanship, and predicted for them a triumphant future.1

The adoption of these opinions, so opposed to the views current in the community, compelled the adoption of a new basis for religious conviction. Christianity, in so far as it depended on the New Testament or the doctrines of the early Church, was discarded. The cardinal tenets of the Creed – the Deity of the Christ, the atonement, everlasting perdition – had been dismissed already, and I was virtually beyond the limits of the Confession. But Theism remained, and the spiritual nature of man with its craving for religious truth. Without going so far as Theodore Parker did, who maintained that the three primary beliefs of religion – the existence of God, the assurance of individual immortality, the reality of a moral law – were permanent, universal, and definite facts of human nature, found wherever man was found; without going so far as this, I contended that man had a spiritual nature; that this nature, on coming to consciousness of its powers and needs, gave expression to exalted beliefs, clothing them with authority, building them into temples, ordaining them in the form of ceremonies and priesthoods. In support of this opinion, appeal was made to the great religions of the world, to the substantial agreement of all sacred books, to the spontaneous homage paid, in all ages, to saints and prophets; to the essential accord of moral precepts all over the globe, to the example of Jesus, to the Beatitudes and Parables, to the respect given by rude people to the noblest persons, to the credences that inspire multitudes, to the teachings of Schleiermacher, Fichte, Constant, Cousin, Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson, in fact, to every leading writer of the last generation. All this was so beautiful, so consistent and convincing, so full of promise, so broad, plain, and inspiring that, with a fresh but miscalculated enthusiasm, over-sanguine, thoughtless, the young minister undertook to carry his congregation with him, but without success; so he went elsewhere. This action proceeded from the faith that Parker instilled. Parker was pre-eminently, to those who comprehended him, a believer.

In the words of D. A. Wasson, his successor in Music Hall:

Theodore Parker was one of the most energetic and religious believers these later centuries have known. This was the prime characteristic of the man. He did not agree in the details of his unbelieving with the majority of those around him, because it was part of his religion to think freely, part of their religion to forbear thinking freely on the highest matters. But he was not only a powerful believer in his own soul, but was the believing Hercules who went forth in the name of divine law to cleanse the Augean stables of the world… This, I repeat, and can not repeat with too much emphasis, was the characteristic of the man – sinewy, stalwart, prophetic, fervid, aggressive, believing… The Hercules rather than the Apollo of belief, it was not his to charm rocks and trees with immortal music, but to smite the hydra of publicity, iniquity, and consecrated falsehood with the club or mace of belief; if this might not suffice, then to burn out its foul life with the fire of his sarcasms.

To quote my own words, written in 1873 (see "Life." p. 566):

With him the religious sentiment was supreme. It had no roots in his being wholly distinct from its mental or sensible forms of expression. Never evaporating in mystical dreams nor entangled in the meshes of cunning speculation, it preserved its freshness and bloom and fragrance in every passage of his life. His sense of the reality of divine things was as strong as was ever felt by a man of such clear intelligence. His feeling never lost its glow, never was damped by misgiving, dimmed by doubt, or clouded by sorrow. Far from dreading to submit his faith to test, he courted tests; was as eager to hear the arguments against his belief as for it; was as fair in weighing evidence on the opponent's side as on his own. "Oh, that mine enemy had written a book!" he was ready to cry, not that he might demolish it, but that he might read it. He knew the writings of Moleschott, and talked with him personally; the books of Carl Vogt were not strange to him. The philosophy of Ludwig Büchner, if philosophy it can be called, was as familiar to him as to any of Büchner's disciples. He was intimate with the thoughts of Feuerbach. He drew into discussion every atheist and materialist he met, talked with them closely and confidentially, and rose from the interview more confident in the strength of his own positions than ever. Science he counted his best friend; relied on it for confirmation of his faith, and was only impatient because it moved no faster. All the materialists in and out of Christendom had no power to shake his conviction of the Infinite God and the immortal existence, nor would have had had he lived till he was a century old, for, in his view, the convictions were planted deep in human nature, and were demanded by the exigencies of human life. Moleschott respected Parker; Dessor was his confidential friend; Feuerbach would have taken him by the hand as a brother.

There can be no greater mistake than to call Theodore Parker a Deist; than to class Theodore Parker with the Deists. He was utterly unlike Chubb or Shaftesbury, Herbert of Cherbury or Bolingbroke. Even the most philosophical of them had nothing in common with him. Hume and Voltaire, for instance, were utterly unlike him. They, it is true, believed in a God, the "First Cause," the "Author of Nature," the "Supreme Being," and in a future life. But their belief was merely logical and mechanical, his was vital; he believed in the real, living, immanent Deity. They thought that religion was an imposition, a policy of the priests, who played upon the fears of mankind; he believed that religion was a working power in the world, the origin of the highest achievement, the soul of all aspiration. They had no faith in the direct communication of the "Supreme Mind" with the soul of man; he believed in the infinite genius of man, and in the direct communication of the absolute intelligence. They thought of justice as a contrivance for securing happiness; he thought of it as the law of life. One of Mr. Parker's friends ascribed to him a gorgeous imagination; if he had it, it is a surprise that it should have been so completely suppressed as it was, for his taste in pictures and in poetry was very questionable. His want of speculative talent probably helped him with the people. Whether he formulated his thoughts is uncertain. Such was not his genius. He was a constructive, not a destructive. It was his faith that he criticised the Bible in order that he might release its piety and righteousness; that he tore in pieces the creeds in order to emancipate the secrets of divinity.

It is useless to conjecture what Parker might have been had he lived. That he would have held to his primary convictions is almost certain; it is quite certain that he would have loved mental liberty. He would have been a great power in our Civil War; he would probably have been a leader in the free religious movement. Parker, when I first knew him, was in full life and vigor. He had gone to Boston a short time before my ordination in 1847, and had before him a long future of usefulness. All the exigencies in which he might have been conspicuous were distant. That the effect of such a man on me and my connections was exceedingly great is not strange. It would have been strange had it been otherwise. In sermon, prayer, private conversations my convictions came out. That the people were disappointed may be assumed, but they were kind, generous, and patient. The congregations did not fall off; there was little violence or even vehement expostulation. But the position was not comfortable, and when an invitation came from Jersey City to found a new Society, I accepted it at once. It had been a dream of Dr. Bellows to establish a Society at that place, and, learning that I was in search of another sphere of activity, he asked me to undertake the work. This was seconded by a cordial representation from Jersey City itself, on the part of some who were Dr. Bellows' own parishioners. The uprooting was not easy, for Salem had become endeared to me as the first scene of my ministry, a place where I could be useful in many ways, and which contained a delightful society; an established, well-furnished town, with historic associations; a country centre, an agreeable situation. But the waters were getting still there, and the sentiment of the past was getting to over-weigh the promises of the future.

VI.

JERSEY CITY

Jersey City, to which I went directly from Salem, was a very different place from what it is now; smaller and perhaps pleasanter. Where now is a large city, a few years ago was but a village. Now it is a manufacturing place, with great establishments, foundries, machine-shops, banks, insurance companies, newspapers, more than forty schools, and more than sixty churches. Then it was a large town, though it was nominally a city (incorporated in 1820), with a population of about twenty thousand, the increase being chiefly due to the annexation of suburbs, not to its own vital growth. It was substantially rural in character, with extensive meadows, broad avenues; a place of residence largely, the gentlemen living there and doing business in New York. There were a few Unitarians, a few Universalists, but there was no organized Unitarian society before I went there. A great many cultivated people resided in this place. There was wealth, culture, and interest in social matters. A meeting-house was built for me and dedicated to a large, rational faith.

The chief peculiarity of my ministry there was the disuse of the communion service. This rite I had thought a great deal about in Salem. There had been, then, a well-meant proposal on the part of the pastor to make an alteration in the form of administering the communion service. The custom had been (quite an incidental one, for the usage was by no means the same in all the churches of the denomination) to thrust the rite in once a month, between the morning worship and dinner time, and to offer it then to none but the church-members, who composed but a small part of the congregation. As a consequence of this arrangement, the observance became formal, dry, short, and tiresome. To the majority of the Society it seemed a mystical ceremony with which they had no concern, while those who stayed to take part in it, wearied already by the preceding exercises, and hungry for their mid-day meal, gave to it but half-hearted attention. The observance was thus worse than thrown away; for, in addition to the loss of an opportunity for spiritual impression, a dangerous kind of self-righteousness was encouraged in the few church-members, who regarded themselves as in some way set apart from their fellow-sinners, either as having made confession of faith or as being subjects of a peculiar experience. To impart freshness to the rite, and at the same time to extend its usefulness as a "means of grace," the minister proposed to celebrate it less frequently (once in two or three months), to substitute it in place of the usual afternoon meeting, to make special preparation for it by the co-operation of the choir, and to throw it open to as many as might choose to come, be they church members or not. The suggestion met with feeble response, and that chiefly from young people who had hitherto stayed away out of a laudable feeling of modesty, not wishing to remain when their elders and betters went out, and not thinking themselves good enough to partake of a special privilege. The "communicants," as a rule, set their faces against the innovation, perhaps because they were secretly persuaded that the change portended the secularizing of Christianity by a removal of the barrier that divided the church from the world, possibly because they wished to retain an exclusive prerogative which had always marked the "elect."

The matter was not pressed; the routine went on as before; the minister did his best to render the service impressive and interesting. But his studies and meditations led him to the conclusion that the observance had no place in the Unitarian system; that it was a mere formality, without an excuse for being; that it contained no idea or sentiment that was not expressed in the ordinary worship; that it was a remnant of an otherwise discarded form of Christianity, where it had a peculiar significance; that it was the last attenuation of the Roman sacrament of transubstantiation; that it ought to be dropped from every scheme of liberal faith as an illogical adjunct, a harmful excrescence, a hindrance, in short. No whisper of these doubts was breathed at the time, but the pastor's silence allowed the scepticism to strike the deeper root in his mind. Mr. Emerson's departure from his parish, on the ground that he could no longer administer the communion rite according to the usage of the sect, had occurred many years before this, but was still remembered in discussion and talk. Theodore Parker had no communion; but he was an established leader of heresy, and did not furnish an example. Many, agreeing with Emerson's reasoning, disapproved of his course in resigning his pulpit rather than continue to administer the bread and wine. He himself advised others to hold on to the observance, if they could, hoping for the time when it might be universally vivified by faith. Some might do it as it was. The congregations would, it is likely, without exception, have decided as his did, to lose their minister sooner than their "Supper." Some years later, on passing through Boston on my way to another scene of labor, I called on a distinguished clergyman who had taken a part in my ordination, and was asked by him what I intended to do in my new parish with regard to the communion. I replied that it was not my purpose to have it, "You cannot give it up," he said; "it is stronger than any of us. I should drop it if I dared, for there is nothing real in it that is not in the general service, but I am afraid to try. I shall watch your experiment with interest, but without expectation of its success." "Very well," I replied, "we shall see." The experiment was tried and succeeded. For four years I had no communion, and not a word was said about it. On leaving for New York, several of my friends, who had been accustomed to the ceremony all their lives, were asked if they did not think it would be wise to reinstate the rite. To my surprise, they with one voice said that there was no need of it, that the Society got along perfectly well without it. It is needless to say that in New York the observance was never celebrated.

The ceremony was justified among Unitarians by various reasons which, in the end, seemed apologies. With the old-fashioned, semi-orthodox members of the congregations it was a precious heirloom, prized for its antiquity; a link that still held them in the bond of fellowship with the universal church; a last relic of the supernaturalism to which they clung without knowing why; the pledge of a mystical union with their Christ. Any change in the administration of it was regarded as a desecration; the suggestion of its complete discontinuance could, they thought, arise in no mind that was not fatally poisoned by infidelity. It was not, in their opinion, a symbol of doctrine, but a channel of divine influence, which no intellectual doubts could touch, which spiritual deadness alone could dispense with. Tenets might be abandoned, forms of belief might be discredited, but this citadel of faith must not be assailed or approached by irreverent feet. Mr. Emerson's example was not followed by his contemporaries. His fellows did not so soon reach his point of conviction. Even radicals, like George Ripley, did not. In my own case it was the growth of time. At the moment there was no disposition to abandon the observance, simply a desire to reanimate it. It was not perceived till much later that the changes proposed implied a virtual abandonment of the rite itself; that the communion is regarded as a sacrament, that as a sacrament it might be presumed to be supernaturally instituted for the communication of the divine life; that, when faith in the supernatural declines, the sacrament no longer has a function as a medium, and must be omitted; that no attempts to revive it as a sentimental practice could be justified to reason; that all endeavors to awaken interest in it by assuming some occult efficacy must be futile because groundless. The "memorial service" can in no proper sense be called a sacrament. It may be a pleasing expression of sentiment, somewhat over-strained and fanciful, but capable of being made attractive. The task of reproducing the emotions of the early disciples as they sat at supper with their Master, nearly two thousand years ago, is too severe for the ordinary imagination, and when persisted in from a sense of duty may become a dull, creaking performance, against which the sensitive rebel and the witty are tempted to launch the shafts of their sarcasm. The only way of saving it from gibes is to ascribe to it some mystical efficacy for which there is no logical excuse. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation had a foundation in the philosophy of the Church. The Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation, which recognized the presence of Christ on the occasion, but not the literal change of the substance of his flesh, was legitimate. But the Sabellian theory, which the Unitarians inherited, was in no respect justified, save as a tradition.

The sole alternative at that time for me, when the Communion service was made a test question between the "conservative" and the "radical," was to drop it. At present the situation is altered. It is no longer a ceremony or a tradition, but a means of spiritual cultivation. It stands for fellowship and aspiration, not for a communion of saints, but of all those who desire to share the saintly mind, of all who aim at perfection. The rite is one in which all may unite who wish, however fitfully, for goodness; all, whether Romanist or Protestant, and Protestant of whatever name; all, in every religion under the sun, Eastern or Western, Northern or Southern, old or new, every dividing line being erased. I once attended the Communion service of a Broad Churchman. The invitation was large and inclusive, comprehending everybody who, though far off, looked towards the light, everybody who had the least glimmer of the divine radiance; and none but an absolute infidel was shut out. There was a recognition of a divine nature in men, —

Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,But dream of him, and guess where he may be,And do their best to climb and get to him.

The idea of spiritual communion is a grand one. It is universal too; it is human in the best sense. The symbols were ancient when Jesus used them, the Bread signifying Truth, the Wine signifying Life. Originally the symbols referred to the wealth of nature, as is evident from an ancient prayer. It was the custom for the master of the Jewish feast to repeat this form of words: "Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, who givest us the fruits of the vine," and then he gave the cup to all.

Leaving out the personal application which is purely incidental, and discarding the sacramental idea which is a corruption, throwing the service open to the whole congregation as an opportunity, a great deal may be accomplished in the way of spiritual advancement. True, the ceremony contains no thought or sentiment that is not expressed in the sermon or the prayer, but it puts these in poetic form, it addresses them directly to the imagination, it associates them with the holier souls in their holiest hours, and brings people face to face with their better selves in the tenderest and most touching manner, teaching charity, love, endeavor after the religious life. The rite is full of beauty when confined within the bounds of Christianity, but when extended to the principles of other faiths, it is rich in meaning, and may be used with effect by those who wish to educate the people in the highest form of idealism, who desire comprehensiveness. A symbol often goes further than an argument, and a symbol so ancient and so consecrated ought to be preserved. A friend of mine included all religious teachers in his commemoration. This was a step in the right direction, but if the people are not ready for this yet, they may welcome an extension of the reign of spiritual love among the disciples whom theological hatred has kept apart. But this was not suspected then.