592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



slavery in the State and the older orthodoxy in the Church seemed 

 absolutely and forever triumphant. The death of Moses within 

 sight of the promised land seems the only parallel to the death 

 of Parker less than six months before the election of Abraham 

 Lincoln and the publication of Essays and Reviews.* 



But here it must be noted that Parker's effort was powerfully 

 aided by the conscientious utterances of some of his foremost 

 opponents. Nothing during the American struggle against the 

 slave system did more to wean religious and God-fearing men and 

 women from the old interpretation of Scripture than the use of 

 it to justify slavery. Typical among examples of this use were 

 the arguments of Hopkins, Bishop of Vermont, a man whose noble 

 character and beautiful culture gave him very wide influence in 

 all branches of the American Protestant Church. While avow- 

 ing his personal dislike to slavery, he demonstrated that the Bible 

 sanctioned it. Other theologians, Catholic and Protestant, took 

 the same ground, and then came that tremendous rejoinder which 

 echoed from heart to heart throughout the Northern States : " The 

 Bible sanctions slavery ? So much the worse for the Bible." 

 Then was fulfilled that old saying of Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg : 

 " Press not the breasts of Holy Writ too hard, lest they yield blood 

 rather than milk." 



Yet throughout Christendom a change in the mode of inter- 

 preting Scripture, though absolutely necessary if its proper au- 

 thority was to be maintained, still seemed almost hopeless. Even 

 after the foremost scholars had taken ground in favor of it, and 

 the most conservative of these whose opinions were entitled to 

 weight had made concessions showing the old ground to be un- 

 tenable, there was fanatical opposition to any change. The Sylla- 

 bus of Errors, issued by Pius IX in 1864, as well as certain other 

 documents issued from the Vatican, had increased the difficulties 

 of this needed transition ; and, while the more able-minded Roman 

 Catholic scholars skillfully explained away the obstacles thus 

 created, others published works insisting upon the most extreme 

 views as to the verbal inspiration of the sacred books. In the 

 Church of England various influential men took the same view. 

 Dr. Baylee, Principal of St. Aidan's College, declared that in Scrip- 

 ture " every scientific statement is infallibly accurate ; all its his- 

 tories and narrations of every kind are without any inaccuracy. 



* For the appellation " religious Titan " applied to Theodore Parker, see a letter of 

 Jowett, Master of Balliol, to Frances Power Cobbe, in her autobiography, vol. i, p. 357, and 

 for Reville's statement, ibid., p. 9 ; for a pathetic account of Parker's last hours at Flor- 

 ence, ibid., i, pp. 10, 11. For the statement regarding Parker's audiences and his power 

 over them, the present writer trusts to his own memory. There is a curious reference to 

 Bishop Hopkins's ideas on slavery in Archbishop Tait's Life and Letters. 



