Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/157

 But I nevertheless told him frankly my objections to his Christology, and we had a good deal of quiet controversy. I found Parker extremely agreeable to converse with, willing to listen, gentle, earnest, and cordial. I stated to him also my objections against the Unitarian point of view in general, because from it many of the greatest and most important questions as regards God, humanity and life, must be left unsolved, and never can be solved. Parker heard me with much kindness and seriousness, and conceded various things, conceded among others the reasonableness of miracles, when regarded as produced by a power in nature, but not out of it,—the law of nature on a larger scale.

As I said before, Parker has a Socratic head; he has a pure and strongly moral mind; he is like Waldo Emerson, captivated by the moral ideal; and this he places before his hearers in words full of a strong vitality, and produces by them a higher love for truth and justice in the human breast. Parker, however, as a theologist is not powerful; nor can he talk well upon the most sublime and most holy doctrines of revelation, because he does not understand them. In his outbursts against the petrified orthodoxy, and the petrified church, he is often happy and true. But I think that people may say of him as somebody said about a greater man, Luther, “Il a bien critiqué mais pauvrement doctriné.” Parker, however, investigates earnestly, and speaks out his thoughts honestly, and that is always a great merit. More we can hardly desire of a man. Beyond this he teaches to be very good, to do much good; and I believe that from his kind and beautiful eyes. In short I like the man.

The next day Benzon accompanied me to Cambridge to the Lowells; from whom, as I have already said, I had received an invitation through Mr. Downing, who had written to the poet of the pleasure which his writings had given me.