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Chadivick : Theodore Parker 375 Mr. Chadwick is aware how far from judicial were the occasional pulpit utterances of the preacher, how removed from charity were ex- l)ressions printed in his private correspondence. No defence can be made of the description (in a letter to Dr. Francis) of certain Unitarian ministers — men of gracious and useful lives — in terms that might have been permitted to Savonarola in a characterization of Alexander VI. But the best of us write carelessly to friends who will sprinkle our hasty sentences with the proverbial grains of salt, and so we are ready to ac- cept the biographer's kindly generalization that Parker " thought in per- sons and could with difficulty separate the opinion from the man." Yet every reader will not agree with Mr. Chadwick that the liberal ministers were wrong in desiring Parker's withdrawal from their body since it stood for free inquiry and free utterance. But how if this same free inquiry had led one of their associates to return to the worship of Minerva or to accept the inspired leadership of Joseph Smith? And the leap from the authority of a revelation to what the most kindly of their number had called "the new gospel of a shallow naturalism " seemed scarcely less momentous. Parker never made allowance for the fact that his own jubilant assurance of a divine parent full of tenderness for men could not be shared by all who ceased to base this belief upon a scriptural record. Yet Mill, Parker's peer in intelligence and in devo- tion to the service of his fellows, could discover no more than a possible deity of limited powers, and Tennyson — far from observing that " the .Mmighty takes such bounteous care of all little things that no animal can be found all of whose wants are not perfectly satisfied" — heard through the raven of the lower creation, a shriek of protest against the creeds of men. It must also be remembered that he who found only empty bluster in the Southern threat of secession might be over-bitter in criticism of neighbors who believed what the event afterwards proved, and who regarded the maintenance of the Union a fundamental condition of human progress. The complementary qualities that make for the improvement of man's condition must find embodiment in different individuals. It is fortunate when one of these qualities, calling for change in the conception of the religious life, is so robustly represented as in Parker. Of the books that bring the fearless preacher before another generation, Mr. Chadwick's — though not the most voluminous — is easily the best. It is fortunate that, owing to his early death, Parker left friends so able to do justice to the spirit that was in him. We are shown the scholar as a persistent truth- seeker, the minister " never engaged in the attempt to make his inherited opinions plausible and satisfactory," the sternest censor of his time over- shadowed by a nature full of love and sympathy. This " transcendental- ist with an inductive attachment " supplied the missing link between the serene philosophy of Concord and the persistent push of physical science. He stood before his people as one whose convictions were contagious, whose words could rivet the attention of the drowsiest church-goer.