Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/26

Rh the emancipation from all fetters of thought which he had always sought, brought him to conclusions far beyond his fellow-Unitarians. “The worship of the Bible as a Fetish hindered me at every step.” He wrote two sermons of the Historical and Moral Contradictions in the Bible, but hesitated for a year to preach them, lest he should “weaken men's respect for true religion by rudely showing them that they worshipped an idol.” But at length he could wait no longer, and to ease his conscience preached his two sermons. His hearers told him “of the great comfort they had given them.” “I continued,” he says after this, “my humble studies, and as fast as I found a new truth I preached it. At length, in 1841, I preached a discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity.” This was the crisis. The other ministers, both Trinitarian and Unitarian, were profoundly indignant, and so far as in them lay excommunicated him. “Some of them would not speak to me in the street, and in their public meetings they left the benches where I sat down.” Then he delivered in Boston the lectures which eventually were published in an enlarged form as “Discourses of Matters Pertaining to Religion,”—the book of which the present volume is a reprint of the fourth edition.

In September, 1843, Parker came to Europe, and after a year's travel returned to Boston, strengthened in heart and health. On the 16th February, 1845, he entered on the ministry of that congregation (the 28th Congregational Society), which he served with unwearied energy till that fatal morning, fourteen years afterwards, when his excessive labours brought on bleeding from the lungs, and his place knew him no more.

The present volumes will convey but a partial idea of the extent of Parker's labours during the years of his ministry, the sermons he preached, the orations and lectures he delivered through the States, the books he wrote, the studies he prosecuted, and, above all, the philanthropic and anti-slavery labours which he originated and aided. His congregation, which eventually became the largest in Boston, was foremost in every project of social improvement in the city, and the most outspoken and daring of the abolition party. They formed, under Parker's presidency, a committee of vigilance for the aid of slaves, and in the course of a year succeeded in passing four hundred coloured men and women into Canada. The Fugitive