Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/23

xxiv 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.”

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