The next discourse on our list (that of Rev. C. A. Bartol) is an indictment under the guise of friendliness. Beginning in the Quorum magna pars fui style, indicating the man who would fain link his name with that of scholars whilst evading their sacrifices, he at length says: "He even charged on some, who thought he went too far, the secret treachery of opinions like his own, which they were ashamed to divulge and afraid to enact.” A most disingenuous sentence this must seem to those who know the very names of distinguished Doctors of Divinity in Boston and vicinity, who began in frank sympathy with Strauss and Parker, but shrank back when they saw the heavy price which was demanded of the brave pioneer. Again, with insufferable conceit, this Bartol says: "He had not imagination, simple reverence, and holy wonder, to admit the marvels at which, on the road of investigation, the scientific understanding balks, but which are welcome to the higher reason in every artist and true spiritualist, to poet and painter, to Dante and Shakspeare and Milton and Raphael, to genius of all sorts treading on the mysterious borders, none ever measured, of the unseen world." That is, in plain speech, the miracles are conveniently credible to such artists, poets, "geniuses of all sorts," illuminati of "the higher reason,' as Bartol, Gannet, Ellis & Co.; but Göthe, Carlyle, Emerson, Parker and others, men of mere "scientific understanding," must move on the lower plain! It is amusing to find this critic after this flattering Emerson, who said that in the mouth of the Church "miracle means monster," and unable to suppress his jealousy that the Sage of Concord should have termed Parker the only thoroughly faithful preacher of morals in the land. 66 Mr. Hepworth's discourse must be recognized as a hearty and brave word from a rising young man, who, although surrounded by such influences as those which penned the last-mentioned sermon, remembers Schiller's advice, Follow the dreams of thy youth." It is the inevitable response of a noble instinct to a noble life. And Transitional Unitarianism may well heed the blasts of the horns about its Jericho-walls, when the young ministers in old pulpits about Boston utter such sentiments as the following: He said of God, "If He is, He is always near: not here to-day, and there to-morrow; but here always." And when he denied the miraculous coming of Christ, it was not that he would put God away from the world, as the Church had done in saying that He was closer at one time than at another; but that he would have God as close to-day and to each as He was eighteen hundred years ago and to Christ. And, in this denial of what others believed to be miracles, both his logical faculty and his instincts were at one. He could see no historical evidence, nothing compulsory, in the facts given. No man sought more carefully or more earnestly than he; and his soul certainly, as no soul can, did not relish the doctrine. His instincts corroborated his judgment. For I imagine, that, if we believe in miraculous interposition to save us, we do it only on compulsion. It is more natural to believe, and more satisfactory, that God's plan was so arranged in the first place that no emergency could arise for which it would become necessary to suspend his laws and act in an extraordinary way. The next sermon which we are to mention is by Mr. Alger; and it is one whose merits and defects are equally startling. To speak of the last and least first, how strange that any one speaking of a simple old Puritan, like Parker, could utter such a sentence as the following: Not frittering himself away in dissipated miscellaneousness of effort, but pouring himself in a cumulative course of foreseeing and single purpose, he will not evaporate like a shower of isolated exertions in the desert of contemporaneous notice, but roll as a voluminous river of influence across the plains of posthumous fame. Here we have, one may say, Eastern Splendor added to Oriental Magnificence! And throughout the discourse there is too much ambition, too little of the simplicity eminently befitting the occasion. Yet the discourse presents a broader and more patient comprehension of the subject than any we have read. We are sorry that we are able to cull but one of the incisive passages which invite us : And now that his great soul has gone up to judgment, and his poor form sleeps in the earth, nor recks how they rave, shall petty men, who, as far as appears from any thing they ever did, were not worthy to unloose the latchets of his shoes, stand up and condemn him because he offended their views, their taste and prejudices? Shall the merest fledglings of the traditional church assume seats of superiority, and complacently sit in judgment on his genius and his works, amidst the applause of those who knew little of him except blindly to fear his teachings? With their three-inch calipers, shall they take the smallness of his mind? with their ludicrous ignorance, pronounce on his lack of learning. with their thricerefined parrotry, declaim on his want of originality? out of their abject submission to outgrown dogmas of folly and fear, bewail the benighted 1 ness of his belief? and, in their hooded bigotry, accuse him of blasphemous arrogance, and doom him to eternal perdition? Undoubtedly they will. This is one of the penalties of, heroic greatness, marching before the van of its age, must always pay. Mean men thus revenge themselves on it; or they thus seek to appear great themselves by showing how easily they include a great man, and toss off an exhaustive estimate of him. To the despicable nature the glorious nature looks despicable too; and when an ant measures Olympus, Olympus is an inch high. Since the above was in print, we have received from London a discourse, entitled "Lessons from the Life of Theodore Parker," by the former pastor of our Cincinnati Church, now the honored successor of James Martineau in Liverpool, W. H. Channing. Mr. Channing's difficulty is evidently his personal nearness to Parker to speak of his lost friend was too much like speaking of himself, for him to feel perfectly free. The very printed words of this pamphlet are choked with emotion. Leaving out for want of space many noble bursts, we dwell for a moment on the following, which seems to us a strange misconception: He taught that God is immanent alike in the Universe and in Man; but he did not recognize that He is INFLUENT yet more. Hence his theory of Inspiration was limited to instinct and to genius, and virtually excluded direct communication from the Divine Spirit to the Human Spirit, as from person to person. Logically carried out, this mode of speculation would have plunged him into the abyss of Pantheism, from which his great heart and brave energy alone kept him back. And from Pantheism he was saved by this happy inconsistency. In distinct assertions, often reiterated, he avowed himself to be a Theist. He worshipped The Infinite Person, with whom each Finite Person may hold loving, intelligent intercourse, in whom all Finite Persons may be made one by sympathetic cooperation. Hence he prayed in the closet, in the family group, in the great congregation. And how fervent, exalting, and overflowing with courageous trust and joyful tenderness, were his public devotions, thousands of fellowworshipers will testify. Such experience of personal intercommunion with the Divine Being, by Will on will, and Mind on mind, should have taught him a higher view of Inspiration, than can be derived from the doctrine of God's immanence, alone. It seems to us, on the contrary, tha. Mr. Parker made the “ communication from the Divine Spirit to the Human Spirit" too direct. His Theory teaches that the World is not nearer to our bodies than God to the Soul; "for in Him we live, and move, and have our being." As we have bodily senses to lay hold on matter and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain, naturally, all needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on God, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed spiritual things.-Discourses of Religion, p. 202. We have always felt that, though undoubtedly the truth of spiritual communion is clearly deducible from this analogue, it was chargeable with making such communion too simple, in the sense of too easy. It seems to put the pearls on the surface of the waves, instead of in the caverns of the deep, to be reached only by the skilled and fearless diver. The soul's rapture is not so much a theme as a symphony: a child may sing the theme, but ages of culture and experience must go to such a development of that theme into all its possibilities as makes the symphony. At any rate, it is clear to us that Parker had evolved this divine symphony, though he may have misjudged that it could be as familiar to all as the lullaby. As the last of these echoes awakened by the knell which tells of a great man's departure, dies, we pause once more to consider our loss. Every word quoted has an indication that we are in the midst of a Revolution of thought. It is not given to any one mind to revolutionize any system; for each such epoch there. must be the scholastic Erasmus, the genial Melancthon, the persistent Zwingle, as well as the courageous monk of Erfurth. And when the smoke has cleared from the battle-field of the American theology, it will not be hard to find, along with its scholars and poets, who was its eloquent and lion-hearted Luther. Meanwhile, we rejoice to witness signs that the Liberal Church has learned a lesson from the sad history of its relations with Theodore Parker, which will prevent such wretched self-stultification in the future. Thus by his stripes shall some wounded hearts be healed, and in his grave shall be buried many unholy weapons, unworthy of the spirit of the age. Therefore, the Church of the Future, when she makes up her jewels, will hang, as the charm about her neck, the memory of him by the interpretation of whose life her other children were recognized. He, says Ruskin, who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart. or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust. But the lesson which men receive as individuals, they do not learn as nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tombstone, when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honor to the ashes which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not displease them, that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few voices and watch for the few lamps which God has toned and lighted to guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay. AB URBE. FAREWELL to Traffic's ceaseless stir, To crowded throngs and hurrying feet; I hold with Pan communion sweet. Farewell to smirking fraud and trick, Farewell to social feuds and hate, Farewell to Love's bewitching spells, Farewell to quack and demagogue,— In the free air, cures all my ills. The elm-tree, maple, birch and pine Call me with words sincerely meant; The newer, better continent. |