Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/25

xxvi and purer life into their souls. Even to those who came to him for counsel he commonly acted thus; he lifted their eyes to God, and then bade them in His light behold their duties.

Happily for those who might regret that he had told us no more of his thoughts on these matters, we possess in Newman's Book of the Soul, the noblest exposition of the practical doctrines of a deeply spiritual Theism.

Such, then, are the writings of Theodore Parker now presented to the public. It will be for the reader to judge for himself of their prophetic power and truth, their glowing eloquence, their profound and varied learning, and of that supreme honesty of purpose which made Lowell say of him,

Of the life and actions of Parker little need here be said. The concluding volume of this series will contain his few autobiographical remains, and possibly the Memoir shortly to be published by his friends in America. A few words may, however, be not inappropriately prefixed to his writings; for of him, more than of most men, might it be said that his doctrines and his life were one. What he preached to the world he had first found in the depth of his own consciousness, and that which he preached he lived out in his own noble life. The great lessons of the Absolute Religion truly penetrated his whole being. He seemed always to live in the light of God's love, and to be able to work for his fellows with the unwavering faith and tireless energy of one who actually beheld in vision the foregleams of an immortality, wherein all souls shall be redeemed and glorified.

Theodore Parker was born in 1810, near Lexington, Massachusetts. His parents were of the yeoman class, and old Puritan stock. His grandfather had fired the first shot in the war of Independence. From childhood he was a laborious student; at twenty-four, after passing through Harvard University, he knew ten languages, and before his death he is said to have acquired no less than twenty. His vocation was little doubtful. “In my early boyhood," he says, “I felt I was to be a minister.” In 1837 he was ordained and appointed to the Unitarian Church at West Roxbury, near Boston. Very soon