NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 591 



quietly accept and appropriate the main results of the higher 

 criticism. Certainly she has never had a better opportunity to 

 play at the game of " beggar my neighbor " and to drive the older 

 Protestant orthodoxy into bankruptcy. 



In America the same struggle between the old ideas and the 

 new went on. In the middle years of the century the first ade- 

 quate effort in behalf of the newer conception of the sacred books 

 was made by Theodore Parker at Boston. A thinker profound 

 and of the widest range a scholar indefatigable and of the deep- 

 est sympathies with humanity a man called by one of the most 

 eminent scholars in the English Church "a religious Titan," and 

 by a distinguished French theologian " a prophet," he had strug- 

 gled on from the divinity school until at that time he was the 

 foremost biblical scholar and preacher to the largest regular con- 

 gregation on the American continent. The great hall in Boston 

 could seat four thousand people, and at his regular discourses 

 every part of it was filled. In addition to his usual pastoral work 

 he exercised a vast influence as a platform speaker, especially in 

 opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories of the 

 United States, and as a lecturer on a wide range of vital topics. 

 During each year at that period he was heard discussing the most 

 important religious and political questions in all the greater north- 

 ern cities ; but his most lasting work was in throwing light upon 

 our sacred Scriptures, and in this he was one of the forerunners 

 of the movement now going on, not only in the United States but 

 throughout Christendom. Even before he was fairly out of col- 

 lege his translation of De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testa- 

 ment made an impression on many thoughtful men ; his sermon 

 in 1841 on The Transient and Permanent in Christianity marked 

 the beginning of his great individual career ; his speeches, his 

 Lectures, and especially his Discourse on Matters Pertaining to 

 Religion, greatly extended his influence. His was a deeply devo- 

 tional nature, and his public prayers exercised by their touching 

 beauty a very strong religious influence upon his audiences. He 

 had his reward. Beautiful and noble as were his life and his life 

 work, he was widely abhorred. On one occasion of public wor- 

 ship, in one of the more orthodox churches, news having been 

 received that he was dangerously ill, a prayer was openly made 

 by one of the zealous brethren present that this arch-enemy might 

 be removed from earth. He was even driven out from the Uni- 

 tarian body. But he was none the less steadfast and bold, and 

 the great mass of men and women who thronged his audience 

 room at Boston and his lecture rooms in other cities spread his 

 ideas. His fate was pathetic. Full of faith and hope, but broken 

 prematurely by his labors, he retired to Italy, and there died at 

 the darkest period in the history of the United States, when 



