p A K P A R 301 principal modern European languages. When he entered the divinity school he was an orthodox Unitarian; when he left it, he entertained strong doubts about the infallibility of the Bible, the possibility of miracles, and the exclusive claims of Christianity and the church. Emerson s trans cendentalism greatly influenced him, and Strauss s Lelen Jfsu left its mark upon his thought. His first ministerial charge was over a small village parish, Roxbury, a few miles from Boston. He was ordained June 1837, and held his pastorate there until the autumn of 1843. He was extremely happy in his position. His parishioners loved him, he had ample time to pursue his studies, and the neighbourhood of Boston gave him congenial society. His views were slowly assuming the form which subse quently found such strong expression in his writings ; but the process was slow, and the cautious reserve of his first rationalistic utterances was in striking contrast with his subsequent rashness. But in 1841 he preached at Boston a sermon on "the transient and permanent in Christianity," which presented in embryo the main principles and ideas of his final theological position, and the preaching of which determined his subsequent relations to the churches with which he was connected and to the whole ecclesiastical world. The only permanent element he discovered in the Bible, in Christianity, in Christ, was " absolute, pure morality, absolute, pure religion, the love of man, -the love of God acting without let or hindrance." He denied all special authority to the Bible, to Christ, to Christianity. He maintained that " Jesus had not exhausted the fulness of God." The Boston Unitarian clergy denounced the preacher, and declared that the "young man must be silenced." No Unitarian publisher could be found for his sermon, and nearly all the pulpits of the city were closed against him. To exchange with him was fatal to a minister s reputation for Unitarian orthodoxy. But when the Unitarian clergy cast Parker off the laity took him up. A number of gentlemen in Boston invited him to give a series of lectures there. The result was that he delivered in the Masonic Hall, in the winter of 1841-42, as lectures, substantially the volume afterwards published as the Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion. The lectures in their published form made his name famous throughout America and Europe, and confirmed the stricter sect of the American Unitarians in their attitude towards him and his supporters. His friends, however, resolved that he should be heard in Boston. They engaged for him the Music Hall in that city, in which he regularly preached to a congregation of some three thousand persons during the remaining fourteen years of his life. Previous to his removal from Roxbury to Boston, Parker spent a year in Europe, calling in Germany upon Paulus, Gervinus, De Wette, and Ewald amongst other savants, and preaching in Liverpool in the pulpits of James Martineau and J. H. Thorn. Soon after his return, in 1844, to America he resigned his charge at Roxbury, and devoted himself exclusively to his work in Boston. In addition to his Sunday labours, he lectured throughout the States, and prosecuted his wide studies, collecting particularly the materials for an opus magnum on the development of religion in mankind. Above all he took up the question of the emancipation of the slaves, and at the imminent risk of his life nobly and powerfully advocated in Boston and throughout the States, from the platform and through the press, the cause of the negroes. Indeed, he did more. He assisted actively in the escape of fugitive slaves, and helped to furnish John Brown with means for carrying out his schemes of liberation. His Sunday sermons were themselves often elaborate essays, almost treatises, on great questions of social and political reform, and he was all along contributing articles and papers on literary, political, social, and theological subjects to the periodical press. By his voice, his pen, and his utterly fearless action in social and political matters, he became a great power in Boston and America generally. But his days were numbered. From his mother he inherited consump tion, and the reckless disregard of the laws of health which he was guilty of in his early years, combined with the tremendous strain of his ordinary work, and the terrible privations and fatigues of his lecturing tours, developed in the prime of his life the fatal seeds. In January 1859 he had an attack of bleeding of the lungs, and sought relief by retreating first to Santa Cruz, and afterwards to Europe. He died at Rome, May 10, 1860. The fundamental articles of Parker s religious faith were the three "instinctive intuitions" of God, of a moral law, and of immortality. His own mind, heart, and life were undoubtedly pervaded, sustained, and ruled by the feelings, convictions, and hopes which he formulated in these three articles. But he cannot be said to have achieved success when he came to strictly define, expound, and establish them. In his doctrine of God he maintains that man has an innate idea of God as a being of infinite power, goodness, and wisdom ; but he often uses language which borders on pantheism, while his criterion of the notions men have formed of the Divine Being appears to leave him no foundation for anything higher than an abstract pantheistic idea of Him. His proof of his fundamental creed is no less at fault than his statement and exposition of it. It is strange that a man who had read so widely and honestly the best literature of his day on the religious ideas of mankind should have referred to the consensus gentium for his main proof of the universality of his triad of religious ideas. His own chapter on the immortality of the soul in his Discourse abundantly illustrates the weakness of his proof from induction. The dis tinction he was compelled to draw between the conception and the idea of God illustrates the weakness of his deductive proof. Parker s definitions of religion are various, and show that he had never closely traced its true nature. Of revelation the counterpart of religion Ids notions were of the vaguest description. He could ask "Is Newton less inspired than Simon Peter ? " He had never formed any approximately just conception of the work of a great religious teacher, and could say, "Christianity, if true at all, would be just as true if Herod or Catiline had taught it." Naturally, therefore, lie never formed an adequate idea of the place of Christianity amongst the world s religions, though he often used language about Christ which in the case of a closer thinker would have indicated the acceptance of Christianity as the absolute and final religion for man. But in truth Parker was more of a speaker than a thinker, of a reformer than a philosopher. He had a wide and firm grasp of facts and principles, but his thought was neither profound nor subtle, neither accurate nor self-consistent. Although rich in poetic elements, he was singularly defective, too, in artistic faculty. He has produced nothing that is perfect in form, while all his works are disfigured by outrageous violations of taste and good feeling. But with all his numerous defects Pavker ranks amongst America s great and noble sons, and may perhaps obtain finally a place amongst the world s great men. A future biographer will have to assign him his final position. The three biographies which at present exist Weiss s (1863), Frothingham s (1874), and Dean s (1877) are the work of eager partisans and admiring panegyrists rather than of calm critics and historians. Parker s principal works are A Discourse on Jlfatters pertaining to Religion, 1842; Ten Sermons of Religion, 1852; Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, 1853. A collected edition of his works has been published in England by Frances Power Cobbe, in 12 vols. A German translation of part of his works was made by Ziethen, Leipsic, 1854-57. Valuable reviews of his theological position and of his character and work have appeared by James Martineau, in the National Review (April I860), and J. H. Thorn, in the Theological Review (March 18G4). (J. F. S.) PARKERSBURG, a city of the United States, next to Wheeling the largest city in West Virginia, is the capital of Wood county, and lies on the left bank of the Ohio, at the mouth of the Little Kanawha, It is the western terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and is con nected by a fine railway bridge (1^ miles in length, and constructed at a cost of more than 81,000,000 in 1869- 1871) with Belpre, where the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad begins. Steamers ply both on the Ohio and the Little Kanawha (rendered navigable for 38 miles). The staple industry is the refining of petroleum, but there are also foundries, flour-mills, saw-mills, brickyards (most of the buildings are of brick), &c. The population was 2493 in 1860, 5546 in 1870, and 6582 in 1880. As a town Parkersburg dates from 1820, as a city from 1860.
