s'ils n'écraseront pas sous leurs décombres et ceux qui les ébranlent et ceux lui les défendent, un homme tel que Parker est un prophête de consolation et d'espérance.”[1]
In the hope that thus it may prove, these Works of Theodore Parker are published in England.
The chief interest of these books is, of course, a theological
one; and to discourses immediately directed to that subject,
the first three volumes of the present series are devoted. It
was, however, a leading principle of their author, that religion
was no concern for the church and sabbath-day alone, but for
all the pursuits and affairs of man. Accordingly, we find him
applying his faith to every good work which his hand found to
do. In his own pulpit, and over the whole country, he laboured
to arouse the consciences of his countrymen to their national
sins, their unjust wars, their, unrighteous politics, the miseries
of the poor, the degradation of women, and above all, the one
monster crime of slavery, from which America is now purging
herself through seas of blood. Among the sermons and
lectures he delivered on these topics, three volumes of the present
series have been arranged as Discourses of Politics, of Slavery,
and of Sociology. Beyond these, again, as a man of vast learning
and fine literary taste, Parker wrote a variety of papers
on matters of scholarship and history, collected in two volumes
of Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. The first of these is
already known in England; the second will consist of articles
now first collected from various sources, many of them of great
interest and beauty.
As in this long series of work's the greater part consists of detached addresses, it will be anticipated that the great fundamental truths, which it was the task of his life to enforce, were frequently reproduced. A large portion of the matter now collected was taken down by shorthand writers from extempore sermons and orations. These facts will account for occasional repetitions, and for the expressions, perhaps, sometimes all too vivid, of sarcasm and scorn, against the errors of Calvinistic theology and pro-slavery politics. To the congregation, whose prayers he had led with profoundest reverence, the eloquent outbursts of his subsequent discourse would naturally assume a wholly different character from that they bear to us, who read coldly the notes
- ↑ Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Octobre, 1861, p. 746.
