letters, or the fragmentary ejaculations of a private journal.  But Mr. Parker never scrupled to exhibit before the world all that was worst in him.  There are few chapters that will not recall defects publicly shown by the preacher and author.  The reader can scarcely miss a corroboration of a shrewd observation of Macaulay, that there is no proposition so monstrously untrue in politics or morals as to be incapable of proof by what shall sound like a logical demonstration from admitted principles.  Theodore Parker was a strong and honest man.  Yet few strong men have so lain at the mercy of some narrow bit of logic; few honest ones have so warped facts to match opinions.  We speak of exceptional instances, not of ordinary habits.  He seemed unable to persuade himself that a scheme of faith which was false to him could be true to others of equal intelligence and virtue.  He fell too easily into the spasmodic vice of the day, and said striking things rather than true ones.  He assumed a basis of faith every whit as dogmatic as special revelation, and sometimes grievously misrepresented the creeds which he assailed.  Strangers might go to the Music Hall to breathe the free air of a catholic liberality, and find nothing but the old fierceness of sectarianism broken loose against the sects.  Let us make every deduction which a candid criticism is compelled to claim, and Theodore Parker stands a noble representative of Republican America.  His place is still among the immortals who are not the creatures of an age, but its regenerators.  For it is not the life of a great skeptic, but the work of a great believer, which is brought before us in these volumes.  This uncompromising enemy of the creeds was the ally of their highest uses.  His soul never lacked that dear and personal object of worship which is offered by the Christian Revelation in its common acceptance.  He could have lived in no more jubilant confidence of immortality, had he enjoyed the tactual satisfactions of Thomas himself.  No Catholic nun feels more delicious assurance of the protection of the Virgin, no Protestant maiden knows a more blissful consciousness of the Saviour’s marital affection towards her particular church, than felt this Theodore Parker in the fatherly and motherly tenderness of the Great Cause of All.  Certainly, few doubters have ever doubted to so much purpose as he.  Men who are skeptical through the intellect in the Christian creeds seldom live so sturdily the Christian life.  Yet we cannot think that the fervent faith with which he wrought came from what was exceptional in his belief; it was rather a good gift of native and special sort.  For it is a true insight which leads Tennyson to warn him whose faith does not trust itself to form, that his sister is “quicker unto good” from the hallowed symbol through which she receives a divine truth.  Many who flatter themselves that they have outgrown the need of a human embodiment of the Father’s love have only induced a plasticity of mind which prevents the life from taking shape in any positive affirmation.  “It is a strong help to me,” writes a Congregational minister, “to find a man, standing on the extreme verge of liberal theology, holding so firmly, so tenaciously, to the one true religion, love to God and man.”  But may all men stand there, and cling to it as resolutely as he did?