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To write about Theodore Parker without trenching on theology, may seem as preposterous as to take up Milton without reference to poetry, or Mozart irrespective of music, or Titian exclusive of art Nevertheless, we must here omit the capital feature in question, or leave out Mr. Parker from this patchwork series—the pages of this Journal affording do space for Church militant polemics. But a writer so marked in contemporary "American Authorship"—so hotly vituperated on the one hand, and on the other resorted to as a real Sir Oracle,—may not be ignored with impunity in any such miscellaneous reviewal. If we do touch on his Absolute Religion, it shall be but a touch; and then off at a tangent.
Perhaps we are already convicted, by some judges, of reckless effrontery in introducing at all this writer's name—a name tantamount, in the estimate of not a few, to the incarnate essence of infidel and heretic. He is regarded in many quarters with the kind, if not degree, of shuddering aversion[1] expressed by the Jewish high priest in "Athalie"
Vous souffrez qu'il vous parle? et vous ne craignez pas
Que du fond de l'abîme entr'ouvert sons ses pas
Il ne sorte à l'instant des feux qui vous embrasent,
On qu'en tombant sur lui ces murs ne vous écrasent?
Que veut-il? De quel front cet ennemi de Dieu
Vient-il infecter l'air qu'on respire en ce lieu?
- ↑ If there be any section of English Churchmen which tolerates, and even views with some improper fractional sort of interest, the writings of this American "theist" it is that represented, prominently if but partially however, by Mr. ex-Professor Maurice. And here, in consideration of the ferment recently caused by Mr. Maurice's yeast—the little leaven which it is feared may leaven the whole lump of our Churchmanship—we will bestow a few words on what seems to us (in a literary, not theologico-critical aspect) of that gentleman's writings.By that particular "following" of which Mr. F. D. Maurice is the accredited chieftain, is pronounced the man of men in these days of trouble, and rebuke, and blasphemy. His influence has been slowly but steadily advancing, since the publication, years ago, of his letters to a Quaker, on the constitution and character of the Church—two volumes which puzzled perhaps every clique of readers, now gratifying them with an assurance that here their own special "interest" (in Nonconformist parlance) might boast of a sterling acquisition to their ranks, and now mortifying them by an abrupt change of tactics all in favour of their foe. Something of the same alternation and antithesis of feeling he has produced, more or less, in all his subsequent (theological) writings. These are so numerous, that, would Mr. Maurice only renounce the single habit of thinking while he writes, and of drawing on that reasoning organ, his brain, as well as on that mechanical agent, the pen of a ready writer, he might positively rival Dr. John Cumming in fecundity. But as he does not make the wrist and fingers his sole agent, his factatum in composition, he must be content to lag a little in the rear of the prolific Presbyterian—that G. P. R. James of "religious worldliness"—that indefatigable purveyor of safe light reading to "serious families"—whose "last" exposition is as
