West Roxbury sermons...1837-1848...

Front matter

WEST ROXBURY SERMONS.

THEODORE PARKER'S PRATERS.

A new edition, with Preface by Louisa M. Alcott, a Memoir by F. B. Sanborn, and a Portrait. i6mo, $1.00.

Contents

Page

Introduction v

Biographical Sketch xvii

Introduction

,NE of the tests of a great preacher is his power

V_y/ to get and hold the ear of the community or of the age in which he lives. He may do it by studying the arts of popularity, or, like the great preachers and prophets of every age, he may do it when the ears of men are closed against him. Neither in his presentations of theology nor in his advocacy of reforms was Theodore Parker on the popular side. Strange as it seems to us to-day, his utterances were deemed so dangerous that at first no publisher would consent to put his name on Parker's pamphlets; and yet, either through the force of his ideas or through the force of his personality, he compelled a hearing.

When a man succeeds in doing this, the question often arises, What is the secret of his power? Sometimes this is easily apparent. It lies in the arts of rhetoric, in grace of elocution, in fascination of manner, in artistic power of depiction. Dickens or Howells could write interestingly about a three-legged stool. Chrysostom, if he had taken the same text, might have shown its relation to the Delphic tripod, and then preached a glowing sermon on the divine oracles.

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On the other hand, the secret of oratorical or sermonic power is often strangely elusive; it resides in some mysterious element of personality which we can feel, bnt cannot define. The speaker magnetizes his audience, not by the force of his ideas or the force of his words, but by the personality which projects them. It is not the nature of the message, but the shock of the battery which we feel. The message might be changed; but if we were brought within the circuit of influence, we should feel the electricity just the same. This accounts for the great disparity which often exists between a man's spoken and written word. When we read in print the utterances of some of the great preachers of the present or the past, we fail to get any idea of their power. The thought is commonplace ; it does not set us thinking. ^ Exhortation is there; it does not move us. On the other hand, there are preachers who throw themselves in a remarkable manner into their writings. They magnetize type as easily as they can an audience. We feel the force of their ideas, the glow of their emotions, the play of their wit, the melting tenderness of their pathos, in the printed page. They set us thinking, or they set us feeling; they stir our pulses.

Theodore Parker's presence and delivery added, as every true preacher's must, to the power of his message; but his effective force did not depend upon his elocution or graces of delivery. Undoubtedly, he first attained prominence by what he had to say, not merely by the way he said it. His sermon was carefully pre-

INTRODUCTION.

vii pared before it was brought into the pulpit. It was not drawn merely from inkstand and dictionary, but from the best powers of mind and heart.

The writer's interest in Parker was kindled, not by hearing him, but by taking from the shelves of a library a volume of his sermons. It glowed with conviction and quickened thought and sentiment ; it was a live coal from the altar.

There were thousands during the life of Parker, as there have been thousands since, who knew him only through the printed page. They could not see the fountain play every Sunday, but their brains and hearts were irrigated by the stream which flowed through the channel of the press. Such a stream may flow on and swell the currents of human life long after the fountain has ceased to play.

It was said of Increase Mather by his admiring parishioners that he seldom preached a sermon that was not worth printing. After Parker came into public notice and influence in Boston, the demand for the publication of his sermons was so constant that we may suppose his warmest admirers held his discourses in similar esteem. He preached much on the topics of the time; and many of his most direct and forcible sermons in that influential period of his life were printed at once by his followers. The English edition of Theodore Parker's works, in fourteen volumes, edited by Prances Power Cobbe, contains the cream of all that he wrote in the most active period of his life, — his discourses on "Religion," on "Slavery," "Politics,"

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" Social Science," his "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, ' ' his 6 6 Historic Americans, " " Prayers, ' ' and much miscellaneous matter. In the Boston Public Library there is a large collection of pamphlets, duplicating some of the subjects in these volumes, giving many discussions and discourses of the hour, and showing how remarkably fruitful and industrious was their author.

The period in Parker's life which has not been covered in his publications, and which was therefore known only by those who came into personal relations with him as parishioners, is the period of his ministry at "West Boxbury, Massachusetts. This volume therefore has a twofold raison d'etre. Pirst, it throws light upon Parker's character and development by presenting some of his early and hitherto unpublished sermons. Secondly, the sermons themselves deal with themes of perennial interest, and have an immediate relation to life and character.

It is natural that the early period of a public man's life should be the last to receive attention. It is not until he has made his way into fame that people begin to ask how he got there, and to study the trail he followed. His early works are, then, most valuable as links in the chain of his development. It is true of Parker as of Channing, that the development of his opinions needs to be studied with reference to their chronological order. His public reputation, foreshadowed by his South Boston sermon in 1841, really began when he came to Boston, Feb. 16, 1845, to preach

INTRODUCTION.

ix at the Melodeon in the forenoon, though still retaining his connection with the West Eoxbury parish, and preaching there in the afternoon. The Theodore Parker the public is familiar with is the Theodore Parker of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. Yet before he began to preach in Boston, he had preached 362 sermons to his West Eoxbury congregation. Counting his exchanges, he had preached 766 times. He was then thirty-five years of age, and had been pastor of the West Eoxbury church for eight years. Of these 362 sermons, the discourse on " The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," and the fire discourses on "Matters pertaining to Eeligion, " given in the autumn of 1841, were printed, the first one in pamphlet form; the others were reported in the New York "Tribune," and published in a volume the next spring.

More than two years ago the whole collection of Parker's sermons in manuscript was kindly placed at my service by his literary executor, Mr. Prank B. Sanborn. They are 925 in number, and have been carefully bound. An interesting guide-book to this vast mass of manuscript is Parker's index, kept in a square blank-book, in his own hand, in a systematic way. It is entitled "Preachings." In one column he records consecutively the number of preachings ; in a second column the number of the sermon, followed by the record of place, time, subject, and text. In the latter part of the book there is another list of sermons, with number, subject, text, and occasionally comments on his sermons. This book furnishes an indication of

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Parker's own relative estimate of his unpublished discourses. Another guide in studying them has been one which every minister will appreciate. When we find a sermon preached ten or a dozen, or, as with one of Parker's sermons, twenty-five times, it is a sufficient indication that the sermon was a favorite one with the preacher and his audiences. I have picked out, therefore, those which he preached most on exchange.

What shall we say? then, of these earlier sermons of Parker, covering as they do in number more than one fourth of his manuscripts? He has left us his own testimony as to the general fruitfulness and interest of this early period when he was spreading his wings and learning to fly.

On leaving the Divinity School, to which, against the advice of many friends, he had been drawn by irresistible attraction, Parker preached in various places, particularly Salem and Xorthfield, until called to West Roxbury. He wrote about forty sermons before his settlement. Of these early sermons he says, in his "Experience as a Minister —

8 f Of course, my first sermons were only imitations ; and even if the thought might perhaps be original, the form was old, the stereotype of the pulpit. I preached with fear and trembling, and wondered that old and mature persons, rich in the experience of life, should listen to a young man, who might indeed have read and thought, but yet had had no time to live much and know things by heart. I took all possible pains with the matter of the discourse, and always appealed to the religious instinct in mankind. At the beginning I resolved to preach the natural laws of man as they are writ in

INTRODUCTION.

xi his constitution, no less and no more. After preaching a few months in various places, and feeling my way into the consciousness of man, I determined to preach nothing as religion which I had not experienced inwardly and made my own, knowing it by heart. Thus not only the intellectual, but also the religious part of my sermons would rest on facts that I was sure of, and not on the word of another."

Of these forty sermons preached before settlement, seven were Divinity School exercises, and written on the following topics, ■ — "Idolatry," " Excuses of the Irreligious/' " The Way of Salvation/' " Disinterested Virtue/' " Retribution/' " Necessity of an Honest Life," " Religion a Principle and Sentiment." These Divinity School discourses are what we might expect of a young theological student. Parker properly characterized them as imitation sermons. There was no lack of earnestness and sincerity; but their form was conventional. His progressive spirit is easily apparent in these early sermons ; but they were not aggressive or polemic. He had not entered into the storm and stress which came upon him six years later.

The spirit in which Parker did his work at West Poxbury, on his settlement in 1837. is set forth in his own recital of his experiences as a minister : —

'•On the longest day of 1837 1 was ordained minister of the Unitarian church and congregation at West Roxbury, a little village near Boston, — one of the smallest societies in X ew England, — where I found men and women whose friendship is still dear and instructive. . . . For the first year or two the congregation did not exceed seventy persons, including the children. I soon became well acquainted with all xii

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in the little parish, where I found some men of rare enlightenment, some truly generous and noble souls. I knew the characters of all, and the thoughts of such as had them. I took great pains with the composition of my sermons: they were neyer out of my mind. I had an intense delight in writing and preaching ; but I was a learner quite as much as a teacher, and was feeling my way forward and upward with one hand, while I tried to lead men with the other. I preached natural laws, nothing on the authority of any church, any tradition, any sect, though I sought illustration and confirmation from all these sources. For historical things I told the historical eyidence : for spiritual things I found ready proof in the primal instincts of the soul, and confirmation in the life of religious men. The simple life of the farmers, mechanics, and milkmen about me, of its own accord, turned into a sort of poetry, and reappeared in the sermons, as the green woods not far off looked in at the windows of the meeting-house. I think I preached only what I had experienced in my own inward consciousness, which widened and grew richer as I came into practical contact with liying men, turned time into life, and mere thought became character.''

It was said by Parker's parishioners in West Eoxbury, who afterward heard him in Boston, that some of bis most beautiful discourses were those preached in the little country church which be loyed so well. He dealt not only with the great problems of the uniyerse. but with the problems of daily life. The tojDies of his first year's discourses, after his settlement, were nearly all practical themes, such as "The Use of Crosses/' "Spirituality of IVLan, n ''Knowing Thyself/"' "The Duty of Veracity, " " Self-Renewal, 99 " Tranquillity." ' ' Labor, " 1 1 Happy Home, ' ' < <A Penny a Day, " " Self-

INTRODUCTION.

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Command/ 5 Besignation, " " Independence," "Education," etc. There was one sermon, on " The Fall of Man," more or less polemical ; and he also wrote in that year two sermons on " Contradictions in Scripture/' but he tells us in his record-book, " These two were not preached till fifty-five other sermons were written." In this instance at least, he was not hasty in presenting new theories or in attacking old ones.

In reading over and preparing for the press this volume of Parker's unpublished sermons, I have purposely omitted those of his early years on doctrinal subjects, which he treated more fully and with greater maturity in later life. If we wish to study a man's doctrinal system, it is best to take it when it is most developed. We must wait until the mind has attained its best culture, and until the intellect has had time to digest its accumulations. With feeling and sentiment it is different; these are often warmest, most buoyant and influential, in one's early ministry. Parker's feelings never could be extinguished; they surged up all through his life in his most powerful sermons against every form of injustice and wrong ; but it is interesting to see them in their early expression. The historic Theodore Parker, distinguished as a leader in social, moral, and theological reform, is a controversialist. When summoned by what he interpreted as the voice of duty, he entered the conflict with great power. He was led by the intensity of his feeling to say sharp and bitter things, which served to alienate some of his Unitarian brethren who might not have been alienated xiv

INTRODUCTION, by his doctrines. His sermons became far less conventional; they were more intellectual, more scholastic, adorned with the pictures woven by a glowing imagination. We miss the tranquillity of the studious, happy life in the country parsonage, surrounded by genial and loving parishioners, to whom he tenderly and faithfully ministered. Very significant and pathetic is his entry in the index of his sermons, after ISTo. 413, in 1846. " Here sorrowfully I end my connection with the parish in West Boxbury . Alas, me ! ? '

The present volume, therefore, is in some respects a new contribution to the mental and religious history of Theodore Parker. He does not appear here so much as the reformer or controversialist, but as the preacher of a suburban parish, breaking the bread of life to his congregation from week to week. Many know what Parker's great sermons were. It will be interesting to see what was the weekly fare he gave to his congregation. They are sermons chosen not so much for their thought-power as for their relation to life and conduct, and are as good to-day as when they were delivered. They cover the period from the beginning of his ministry at West Boxbury to the year following his settlement in Boston. Six of them were delivered before his famous South Boston sermon; and nine were delivered after it. Three were delivered both in West Boxbury and in Boston, when Parker was preaching in the morning in Boston and in the afternoon at 6 6 home, ; ; as he called the West Boxbury pulpit. Two of them were delivered in 1846, the year after he began preaching

INTRODUCTION.

XV in Boston. They show that the spirit of the West Roxbury ministry was continued in Boston.

The work of transcribing and preparing the manuscripts has been an interesting but difficult task. Parker was an inspired writer, not an inspired penman. His earliest sermons are comparatively legible, but the trail of his pen soon becomes difficult to follow, and leads the transcriber into mazes of doubt and conjecture. The use of abbreviations increases the difficulty. The transcripts were first made in the rough by a typewriter, and then subjected to two and sometimes three comparisons with the original. Difficult passages have been submitted to experts, but for the general accuracy of transcription the reader is most indebted to my wife, Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, who has carefully compared each line with the original manuscript. Occasionally a sentence which could be spared has been omitted on account of some unconquerable word. The punctuation has been modernized, but the characteristics of Parker's style, often leading to peculiar and individual turns of expression, have been preserved. Here and there in the manuscripts are indications that extemporaneous illustrations were introduced; but the sermons show for the most part the nature and extent of Parker's pulpit preparation. The man and the day must be added to reproduce the impression they made.

In selecting the sermons, I have had the -advantage of the judgment of Rev. Samuel Longfellow in regard to some, and of Rev. 0. B. Frothingham in regard xvi

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to others. Mr. Sanborn has kindly read the revised proof.

Undoubtedly, were Parker living now, he woul<\ change a few expressions in his sermons. Keeping abreast of modern scholarship, as he certainly would have done, such changes would here and there have been necessary. In his sermon on "Tranquillity.'' for instance, he speaks of three millions of Hebrew slaves rising as one man. Had he been familiar with the result of later biblical criticism, he would have reduced these magnificent millions to smaller proportions. Yet it is remarkable that so few changes are necessary. Parker, if behind modern scholarship, was often in advance of modern thought. Fifteen years before Darwin's " Origin of Species 99 was printed, lie partially anticipated the development theory in his sermon on "Christian Advancement " (1844).

It is proper that the reader should know that while the work of the Editor and his wife has been wholly a labor of love, the cost of transcription was generously borne by three of "the old guard."' — Mr. John L. Whiting. Mr. John C. Haynes. and Mr. A. A. Burrage. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the main facts of Parker's career, a brief sketch of his life has been contributed by Mr. Sanborn.

SAMUEL J. BARROWS.

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.

I HAVE been asked, as I was asked ten years ago, when an edition of Theodore Parker's "Prayers " was reprinted, to furnish a brief sketch of the man, whom I knew intimately, and whom few that saw or heard him could ever forget. He was born in Lexington, two miles south of the battle-ground (where his grandfather commanded the minute-men of Lexington, April 19, 1775), on the farm of his father, John Parker, Aug. 24, 1810 ; he died in Florence, May 10, 1860, and is buried, with Landor, Mrs. Browning, and other illustrious Protestants, in the small and crowded cemetery outside the old walls of that city of Dante and Michael Angelo, — men whom he resembled in courage and faith, and somewhat in fortune. I would not compare him to the half-insane monk, Savonarola, whom he equalled as a preacher ; for Parker never yielded to the delusions of power, and never had occasion to recant or retract. Over his grave, two months ago, the sculptor Story, with funds contributed by the friends of freedom and of Parker, — they were never disjoined, — xviii

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placed a monument bearing the Platonic features of the man. and inscribed. —

THEODORE PARKER,

THE GREAT AMERICAN PREACHER.

This volume will indicate how early and by what rich eloquence, yet simple, searching, and full of high aspiration, Parker won this title. He had educated himself at home, and in the schools which he taught, rather than in those where he was pupil, when, in 1834, he entered the Divinity School of Cambridge, where Andrews Xorton, Henry Ware the younger, and Doctor Palfrey, the historian, became his instructors in theology. Graduating thence in 1836, he entered the pulpit with diffidence and hope, and at the age of twenty-seven began to preach as a pastor at TVest Eoxbury, where the sermons in this collection were delivered to a small congregation, gradually growing larger as the remarkable powers of this rustic scholar and apostle began to be appreciated in the neighboring city of Boston, of which Parker's country parish has now become a rural quarter. In 1837-45 it was, as Ellery Channing said of Baker Farm, a

M Cell of seclusion, Haunt of old Time,"

where the hours were long, the books many, the scholastic friends few, and where Parker laid broad the foundations of that scholarship which he afterward used so effectively. But in these early sermons little display of learning appears ; here is heart speaking to

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

xix heart, and soul inquiring of soul, not with Hebrew treachery, but with Saxon sincerity, " Art thou in health, my brother? "

In 1843 his own physical health began to suffer, and he took a year's furlough for a visit to Europe, where no man ever put his days to better interest, — fixing in his retentive mind, through those searching and profound eyes of his, the latitude and longitude of the religious, political, and social world of his time, as well as the situation of cities, the manners of men, the secret treasure of libraries, and the marvellous accumulations of art, religious and pagan. Fortunate in his companions, among whom were Horace Mann, Dr. Howe the philanthropist, and his poetic wife, he was also fortunate in the friends he made in England and Germany, among whom may be named that venerable scholar, Dr. Martineau, who has done for his native country what Parker did for America, through a longer life and a more precise scholarship, though with an eloquence less fervid and popular.

Eeturned to £few England, Parker soon found himself invited to preach to a larger audience in Boston, and there, Eeb. 16, 1845, he gave his first discourse in the old Melodeon on Washington Street, on " The Indispensableness of True Eeligion for Man's Welfare in his Individual and Social Life." That title might serve for the whole body of his doctrine and especially for this volume, — since true religion and man's welfare are his constant themes in these pages. But the place and the crisis — the same which the young poet

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Lowell depicted in his verses of that period ("The Present Crisis — soon invited him to a mission truly apostolic, in which he fairly earned the name our sculptor has given him. It was left for Story's friend, this same young poet. Lowell, in 1848, when Parker had been for three years wrestling with principalities and powers at Boston, to describe the great preacher in words which need but little change, in view of his later life, — so true is the critical insight : —

" Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man Whom the Chnrch undertook to put under her ban;

But the ban was too small, or the man was too big. For lie reeks not their bells, books, and candles a fig. He don't look like a man who would stay treated shabbily, Sophroniscus's son's head o'er the features of Rabelais; He bangs and bethwacks them. — their backs he salutes With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots.

Now 3 P/a creed than yours may be lighter or darker. But in one thing 't is clear he has faith : namely — Parker. And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher, There's a background of god to each hard-working feature; Every word that he speaks has been fierily f urnaced In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest.

But his periods fall on you. stroke after stroke, Like the blows of a lumberman felling an oak.

You forget the man wholly. — you 're thankful to meet With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, And to hear, you're not over-particular whence.

Almost Taylors profusion, quite Latimer's sense.''

This last line might well describe these early sermons; and here I might leave the subject. But the

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

xxi great work of Parker's life was still before him at the age of thirty-five, as that of most men is. He preached in Boston, and lectured and spoke at political gatherings and before committees of the Massachusetts Legislature, for fourteen years after February, 1845, and both his toil and its result were enormous. The labor broke him down, and in January, 1859, he left Boston for the West Indies, Switzerland, and, finally, Italy; from that beautiful land he never returned. His mortal illness came upon him at Rome, but he refused to die in that seat of ecclesiastic tyranny, and what was then political slavery. He bent his will, strong even in that agony, toward the freer air of Florence, and in that he breathed for a few weeks, with pain and languor, until death came to relieve him one lovely morning in May, —

" And there, at Florence, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, 1 Under whose colors he had fought so long."

I have cited Lowell, our second among American critics, as to the Parker of 1845-48. Let me now recall the words of a critic, greater and of profounder insight, Emerson, uttered at the funeral service for Parker at Boston, in June, 1860. They cover the

1 I make no scruple to apply this eulogy of the ''banished Norfolk " to Theodore Parker, for Jesus was his captain, though not his God. It has never been said that the Romans were more valiant when their general was worshipped as a deity, than when he was imitated as a hero.

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period following that in which Lowell described him,

and have even greater weight : —

" He has so woven himself in these few years (1845-1859) into the history of Boston, that he can never be left out of your annals. In the plain lessons of Theodore Parker, in this Music Hall, 1 in Faneuil Hall, or in legislative committee rooms, the true temper and authentic record of those days will be read. The next generation will care little for fine gentlemen who behaved shabbily, but it will read very intelligently in his rough story, fortified with exact anecdotes, precise with names and dates, what part was taken by each actor ; who threw himself into the cause of humanity ; who came to the rescue of civilization at a hard pinch, — and who blocked its course. In terrible earnest he denounced the public crime, and meted out to every official, high and low, his true portion. He took away the reproach of silent consent that would otherwise have lain against the indignant minority. The brave know the brave. His manly enemies honored him ; and it is well known that his great hospitable heart was the sanctuary to which every soul conscious of an earnest opinion came for sympathy. For every sound heart loves sa responsible person, — one who does not in generous company say generous things, and in mean company base things, but says one thing, now cheerfully, now indignantly, but always because he must. Ah, my brave brother ! it seems as if, in a frivolous age, our loss were immense, and your place cannot be supplied. But the nature of the world will affirm to all men, in all times, that which for twenty-five years you valiantly spoke ; the winds of Italy murmur the same truth over your grave; the winds of America over these bereaved streets. The sea that bore your mourners home affirms it, the stars in their courses, and the inspirations of youth; whilst the polished and pleasant traitors to human

1 He preached there for seven years.

xxiii rights, with perverted learning and disgraced graces, rot and are forgotten with their double tongue, saying all that is sordid for the corruption of man."

It was needful for Emerson to say this, with a censure as sharp as Parker's own, in that dismal day before our Civil War, when the horizon looked darkest, and the fortunes of our country trembled in the balance. Much has been destroyed and forgotten since then, and much will hereafter come into remembrance that has been for a time forgotten.

" Now has descended a serener hour, And with inconstant fortune friends return."

I seem to recognize in the advanced theology of An™ dover and Princeton, in the promotion to high clerical preferment of the tolerant and forward-looking Dr, Brooks, and in the lofty theologic ideal of Dr. Lyman Abbott, whom crowds in Boston and Brooklyn throng to hear, some of the harvest for which Emerson and Parker sowed the seed.