found in Butler's Analogy. In that work the foundation principle is, that things will be according to past experience where there is no reason to the contrary. The writer then exhibits evidence that in past experience the soul goes through various changes resembling death and yet survives; that the dissolution of the body is no evidence of the destruction of the soul; that there is no kind of evidence that the soul is destroyed when the body is dissolved, and therefore, according to the above principle, its existence continues when the body dies.

This enumeration, it is supposed, embraces all that may properly be called intuitive truths, according to the test indicated at the commencement. Some writers have placed other propositions among the intuitive truths, but it is believed that a

rigid analysis will show that they are only specific instances included under some one or other of these more general principles. Several of those enumerated as intuitive truths in this article, have never before been thus presented in any work which the writer has examined.

These principles, it will be seen, are the foundations of all our knowledge. There is no proposition that can be announced, the belief of which can not be traced back to one or the other of these maxims as the basis on which it rests. And the grand hope for the future development of truth and exposure of error, is connected with a full development of these principles, together with expert methods of developing errors, as contradictory to them.

"PRAY, sir, did you come here in a hat or a turban?" was the grave inquiry of Charles Lamb, addressed to a young man, who had annoyed him and his guests of an evening by some rather free and impertinent remarks on religion. We in our simplicity might think that the same question would not be inappropriate to Theodore Parker, although he styles himself "minister of the second church in Roxbury," and we have never heard that the church in question professed to be other than a Christian church. The name of Mr. Parker we can hardly suppose to be unknown to any of our readers. Most of them, we presume, are more or less acquainted with the opinions of which he is at

* A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion. By Theodore Parker, Minister of the Second Church in Roxbury, Mass. Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown. 1842.

once the representative and champion. He is known to many as the author of a sermon preached at South Boston, May 19, 1841, entitled "A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity," which attracted much attention at the time, and gave rise to a somewhat spirited discussion in the Boston newspapers. The views advanced in the sermon were given more fully to the public during the winter following, in a series of lectures delivered in Boston, and, as we are informed, to a large, intelligent, and highly interested audience. These lectures are embodied in the volume of which the title is given below.

The reason why his volume and the opinions which it advances have not been made more extensively the subject of criticism, may be the strangeness of these opinions. To a common man, even if intelligent or learned, they seem more like the

dogmas of a French or Hindoo deist, or mayhap the more refined religionism of a Persian Soofee, than the Christian theology of a Christian teacher and such a reader is likely to dismiss them with the mingled emotion of pity and amazement with which we regard the victim of of any of the countless species of monomania. These opinions are not strange, however, in the sense of being uncommon. We think that we can readily show, that there are sufficient reasons, why they should receive a grave and considerate at tention in our journal. We shall not stop to give these reasons, but shall enter at once upon our work, which we trust will justily itself to our readers.

The volume is entitled "A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion." The design of it, as we are told in the preface, is "to recall men from the transient shows of time to the permanent substance of religion; from a worship of creeds and empty belief, to a worship in spirit and in life." It consists of an introduction and five books, each of which treats of a distinct head under the following titles. 1. Of Religion in general, or a discourse of the Religious Sentiment and its manifestations. 2. The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to God, or a discourse on Inspiration. 3. The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to Jesus of Nazareth, or a discourse of Christianity. 4. The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the greatest of books, or a discourse of the Bible. 5. The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the greatest of human institutions, or a discourse of the Church.

The Five Points of this Parkerian system, which by courtesy, and under protest, we must call Christian, inasmuch as its author wears a hat rather than a turban,-are as follows.

1. Man is by nature a religious being. The religious sentiment is

as natural to him as the sense of sight or of hearing. By it he can not but communicate with the spiritual world, as by these with the natural. This sentiment as pervert. ed or more or less mingled with baser elements, has given birth to all the historical religions, Christianity among the rest. Its legiti mate and purified product is abso lute religion, which is love to man, and love to God.

2. Of inspiration. Every man may be inspired. All men are, who give room and play to the religious sentiment. Just in proportion to its influence do they hold clear views of truth, and exercise warm and pure religious feeling. Other things being equal, one man is more inspired than another, as is the quantity of his being and the quantity of his obedience. The inspired needs no miracles, nor the testimony of man or angel or God, to prove his inspiration.

He carries the voucher in his own breast to himself, and he calls up the same in the breast of his neighbor.

3. Of Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth differs from other men, only in this, that in the sense already described he was a man of the most religious sentiment, or a little the most of an inspired man whom the world has ever seen. His life in the main, was consistent, beautiful and holy. His precepts were wise and good, though the substance of them had been uttered before, yet never in a form so free from gross admixtures, or so vari ously and delightfully applied to practical uses. As a teacher and model of absolute religion, he is unrivalled. The story of Jesus however, as we find it in the New Tes tament, is incredible and absurd. It is a mixture of the legendary, the mythical and the true,-a confused record of the various verbal reports of what he was and did, that natu rally arose out of the admiration and love which he rightfully awakened,

and were engrafted also on the fanatical expectation of a Messiah so current among the Jews of that time. 4. The Bible is the greatest of books, as it has in it more of absolute religion than any other book. But the common notion of it as divine, miraculous or infallible, is false and foolish. A portion of it is inspired in the sense already defined, but in different degrees. Other portions, intermingled with these, are absurd, legendary, and incredible.

5. The true idea of the church is Christ, the model man and teacher, and men and women listening to his instructions, and observing his life. That which is called the church, has answered important purposes, but if the question were to be raised, which is the greater, the good or the evil which it has done, it would be difficult to answer. The true church is yet to arise.

We have given to our readers, this condensed summary of the contents of the volume, in order to furnish them with a bird's-eye view of the entire system of its author, so that they may understand the relation of each single principle to the whole of the well compacted scheme. We are well aware that were this to be their first or only view of it, they would say at once, "It is only a naked and vulgar Deism. Better leave it to itself, to rot by its own fermenting, than scatter the poison and prolong its life." Not such would be their conclusion were they to see it in the volume itself, as it there appears not in the nakedness of its anatomy, but in the seducing beauty and grace with which it puts on the mien and gathers about itself the robes of an angel of light. Here will they find the gravest objections against historical Christianity and the Bible, which the honest or dishonest infidel has ever started, put forth in their gravest form; much truth, which theologians have denied or despised, stated with eloquence and power; and error, which too

many have prudently feared to face, no longer on the defense, but storming their citadel, and flushed with all the ardor of expected success. They will find here philosophy propounding her hardest problems, and essaying to solve them not by the cold analysis of the sensual school, with its meagre results of death, but in the glowing and life-like methods of the spiritual, with its elevating conclusions. Here also is learning, of which the great fault is that it has read too much, and been overborne by that authority which it professes to brave. The style too is clear, so clear that it seems to give perspicuity to opinions that are vague and shifting as the cloud that piles itself at noonday. It is pointed and vigorous, and rises to heights of no mean eloquence. We have no desire to flatter Mr. P., certainly we do not fear him. We think that it is neither in fear or flattery that we say, that his volume is not a book to be despised. It is true, it is nothing more or less than Deism, and no man would more readily own it than its author. He is too well acquainted with the history of words and of opinions not to know, and too freespoken not to confess, that according to his principles Deism is quite as good a name as Christianity in the vulgar acceptation of the term. But if the book is Deism, it is not the naked and low Deism of the French and English school. It would scorn to own an affinity with the sensual and low-lived railings of the pot-house, however readily the affinity might be claimed on that side. The imputation of such a relationship would be resented by the highly cultivated audience who listened with an interest so entranced to the eloquence of the author. Nor would it be acknowledged by not a few who bend over its pages, as bound by the spell of an enchanter.

We know not how readily this volume was sold. We do not care to ask whether there are more or

fewer who go to the length of our author in his conclusions. But we do know that these opinions are the infidelity of the age; that in substance or in form, secretly or openly, they are the creed of, we will not conjecture how many, among those who promise to become the gifted men of the day. We also know that its leaven pervades much of what may be called the better part of our literature, and if we do not greatly err, is not unfelt or unseen in the church-even in that which calls itself orthodox.

We think therefore that it requires attention, quite as much as those inflated specimens of quackery which appear too often under the name of bishops' charges, apostolic letters, &c. Indeed, as an antagonist it is far more desirable and respectable than the system which indites these things. It has an air of wholeheartedness and radicalism which we like. Though not without a cant and pretension peculiar to it self, it has none of the monkish sanctimony and whine. It goes upon the principle of settling questions by argument and not by authority. It acknowledges some wisdom in the present, and does not oblige us to open all the musty cloisters of the past. If we must deal with either, we certainly prefer Protestantism run mad to Oxfordism in the same calamity.

We do not propose to give a full or critical analysis of this volume of five hundred pages. To consider all its arguments, to review all its statements of fact, to rebut its conclusions, as well as to follow its learned references, and recriticise its criticisms upon all the systems of religion and philosophy which the world has ever seen, would require a volume as large as Mr. Parker's. We shall attempt only to consider his leading positions and arguments.

The first book, "of religion in general," is designed to give us the

leading principles of the author's entire system of religious philosophy. It is what it purports to be,

66

a discourse of the religious sentiment and its manifestations," or in other words, an examination of that part of man's nature which makes him capable of religion, and a critique of the forms of true and false religion, which it has in fact assumed. In this discussion, the aims of the author are distinctly made known, and his conclusions are clearly anticipated. We are soon informed that the religious element is almighty and independent; that it is seen in every form of religion, while it has been poorly represented by the best; and that man's only and his sufficient resource is, to fall back on his own nature and let it lead him on to the noble issues of absolute religion.

Of course, we expect that this religious sentiment shall be accurately defined, that its nature shall be described by a strong and un erring hand-that its relations to all revealed religions, as supreme and above them all, shall be most triumphantly demonstrated. For such a definition we look through its one hundred and fifty pages, and we look in vain. We are led on from chap ter to chapter, and we find it not. In the first we find the proposition that there is in man the religious element, briefly argued and in the main argued eloquently and well.

Having shown that there is in man a sentiment which connects him with God, our author in the second chapter seeks to show how with that sentiment is given the idea of a God, which is always true, and from it is developed the conception of God which is always imperfect, and therefore false. This distinction he considers most important. The crit ical reader will see in it the whole doctrine in a nut-shell. If it is so, that whenever man thinks about God in the way of conception, reasoning, or discourse to himself or

another, he is and must be in error, then indeed it is shown at once, that every revealed religion is and must be imperfect, and worthless too, except as it enables man to fall back upon the idea within his own soul. But more of this anon. Next Mr. P. discourses of the extent and power of this sentiment. He shows that it is universal, indestructible, and the strongest and deepest element in human nature. In all this there is much truth and eloquence. In the fourth chapter, he discourses of the idea of religion as connected with science and life. In the fifth, he sets before us the three great historical forms of religion, which are, Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism. Here we find much ingenuity, and more power of description, and still more fanciful philosophizing. He concludes this chapter as follows, pp. 110, 111:

"

In passing judgment on these different religious states, we are never to forget that there is no monopoly of religion by any nation or any age. Religion itself is one and the same. He that worships truly, by whatever form, worships the only God. He hears the prayer, whether called Brahma, Jehovah, Pan, or Lord; or called by no name at all. Each people has its prophets and its saints; and many a swarthy Indian, who bows down to wood and stone; many a grim-faced Calmuck, who worshiped the great God of Storms; many a Grecian peasant, who did homage to Phoebus Apollo, when the sun rose or went down; yes, many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west and sit down in the king dom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus,-while men, who called daily on the only living God, who paid their tribute and bowed at the name of Christ, shall be cast out, because they did no more. Men are to be judged by what is given, not what is withheld."

In chapter sixth, he discourses of "certain doctrines connected with religion, I. Of the primitive state of mankind; II. Of the immortality of the soul," and here he argues in the same strain as in the previous chapter. In chapter seventh, he speaks of the influence of Vol. II.

48

the religious sentiment on life, under the heads of Superstition, Fanaticism, and Solid Piety. From this we make the following extract, that our readers may see the mixture of falsehood and truth, of weakness and strength, with which the volume is filled :

"But why go back to Patriarchs, at Aulis or Moriah; do we not live in New England and the nineteenth century? Have the footsteps of superstition been effaced from our land? Our books of

theology are full thereof; our churches and houses not empty of it. When a man fears God more than he loves him, when he will forsake reason, conscience, love, the still small voice of God in the heart, for any of the legion voices of authority, tradition, expediency, which come of ignorance, selfishness, and sin; whenever he hopes by a poor prayer, or a listless attendance at church, or an austere observance of Sabbath and fast days, a compliance with forms; when he hopes by professing with his tongue the doctrine he can not believe in his heart, to atone for wicked actions, wrong thoughts, unholy feelings, a six days' life of meanness, deception, rottenness and sin, then is he superstitious. If he were superstitious who in days of ignorance, but made his son's body to pass through the fire to his God, what shall be said of them in of light, who systematically degrade the fairest gifts of man, God's dearest benefaction-who make life darkness, death despair, the world a desert, man a worm, nothing but a worm, and God an ugly fiend, who made the mass of men for utter wretchedness, death and eternal hell!" "But the milder forms of fanaticism we can not escape. They meet us in the theological war of extermination in which sect now wars with sect, pulpit with pulpit, man with man. in its milder form, let him open a popuone would seek specimens of superstition lar commentary on the Bible, or read much of that weakish matter which circulates in what men call as if in mockery, good pious books. If he would find fa naticism in its modern and more pharisaic shape, let him open the religious' newspapers, or read theological polemics.'

an age

If

The conclusion of Solid Piety would doubtless surprise those of our readers who have judged of the author by report, or by the summary which we have given of his creed. Were it a translation from some ancient stoic, or new Platonist,