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America that we could not find in the English books , and a great deal that explains and turns to account what we did nnd in them . We allude to a pamphlet by Theodore Parker , republishetl ^ by Mr Chapman from the American edition . That distinguished thinker and writer had ministered for fonrteen years to a congrecration in Boston- Hard work shattered his health . He sought repose ^ abstinence from all clerical work having been imposed upon him . From Santa Cruz , " amid the gorgeous vegetation of the tropics , " under " their fiery sides , so brilliant all day , and star-ht with such exceeding beauty all the night , " he wrote to his . New En gland congregation a letter , detailing his " experience as minister with some account of his early life , and education for the ministry . " This letter , printed in America , and repubhshed here , is before us . Much of its contents are personal : that part we put and it is not
aside The great bulk of the matter is theological , within our present province to expatiate upon our disagreement with his religious views , or an examination of the steps which led him to them . But Mr . Parker / truly apprehending the meaning of his office , has taken a large part in the great workvm the cause of humanity , progress , and political honesty , in which New England is foremost , the leaven of the States . And he has much to say to his readers on the history of the public policy of his country , on the anti-slavery fight , on the various movements against drunkenness , and , to speak generally , the moral , social and political wrongs of the Transatlantic Republic . A citation of some of his statements and sentiments may help to a clearer view of inner American affairs , and may give some collateral guidance for the solution of our own difficult problems—the same on both * ides the <> cean . :
Mr Parker can tell the truth . We believe that he does tell the truth I Leaving aside the testimony yielded by his previous life and works , of his honesty and faithfulness , internal evidence from this pamphlet itself furnishes these two conclusions . He has fought his way from one creed to another . Independently of bur own estimate of the intrinsic value of either , charity must allow that he , having built tip his own faith in one department of opinion , at great social sacrifice , is likely to be equally uncompromising and honest in the formation of . his views on other subjects , Again ; he speaks very
plainly to his Nevsr England flock . He rebukes their own sins . He is more copious , more severe on Boston sins than on Southern sins He recurs ofterier to the drunkenness , prostitution , and dollar-worship of the Northern cities than to the Slavery and concubin age of the Southern Slave States . And when he assails slavery , it is not-so much the " institution , " as the apathetic indifference to , or the open support of it by the North that he reprobates . Speaking plainly and severely , therefore , to his own followers , the probability is that he is honest . For he is obviously no cynic by nature , but
rather likely to err on the suave side . _ » _ When Mr . Parker entered on his public duties , Mr . Garrison , m the Anti ^ Slavery cause , " was beginning his noble work , but in a style so humble that after much search the police of Boston discovered there was nothing dangerOus in it , for 'his only visible auxiliary in it was a , negro boy . '" Dr . Channing , " after long preaching the dignity of man as an abstraction , and piety as a purely inward life , with rare and winsome eloquence , and ever-progressive humanity , be ^ an to apply his sublime doctrines to actual life in the individual , the state , and the church . " Horace Mann was beginning his movement for the improvement of public education , " Pierpont , singlehanded , was fighting a grand and twofold battle , —against ; drunkenness in the street , and for righteousness in the pulpit , —against fearful ecclesiatical odds , maintaining a minister ' s right and . duty to oppose nctu . nl' wickedness , however poplar and destructive . And Emerson had begun to hold up before men ' s eyes eternal and
immutable morality . . . Incorporated and hoary wrong was up in arms , bociety commenced to deal after its wont with the prophets of truth . " Dr . Channing could not draw a long breath in Boston . ' Orthodox ministers and schoolmasters united in attacking Horace Mann ' s scheme . Anti-slavery men wove cut in the streets . Garrison was refuin
mobbed by men in handsome coats ; and found ge a gaol . A committee of anti-slavery ladies was hooted and driven into the streets . Mr . Parker " counts it a piece of good fortune , that he was ayoung man when these things wore taking place , when great questions were discussed , and the public had not yet taken sides . " He came to Europe , and learned much that he afterwards made good use of . " It is onjy , " ho Bays , in the low pavts of London , P , aris , and Naples , that on American learns what the ancients mount by the ' People , ' the ' Populace / and-sees what barbarism may exist in the midst of wealth , culture , refinement , and manly virtue . There I could learn what warning and what guidance the Qlcl World had to offer to the New / ' It is somewhat startling- to us , and very instructive , to find an Amerioan eye , from its focus , taking in Naplos and London together , and finding any one point of resemblance . Mr Parker enumerates and estimates the four great social forces
for good or evil in the States . The organized trading power " controls all things , amenable only to the nil-mighty dollar . " The organized political power " mnkes the statutes , bqt is commonly controlled by the trading power , and has nil of * ts faults often intensified j . yot it seems amenable to the instincts of the people , who , on great occasions , sometimes interfere nnd change the traders' rule . " The organized ecclesiastical . power " is more able than either-of the others j and though often despised , in n few ' years can control them both . In this generation , no American politician can affront it . " The organized literary power , ?• ¦ the endowed colleges , the periodical press , with its triple multitude of journals , —commercial , pohtjtonl , theological , —and seotarian tracts , 1 ms no original ideas , but diffuses the opinion of the other powers whom it represents , whoso will it
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serves , and whose kaleidoscope it is . It is some little consolation to us to know , heavily as we feel , fiscally , the burden of an aristocracy of birth , that , in a social aspect , the respect for the peers ,, although it degenerates into vulgarity , still acts as some counterpoise to tho sordidness of " the organized trading power , " to which in the States there is n set-off . j i . -A * i -, The problem put by Mr . Parker- ^—and we need not say it is not solved by him is how best to use this fourfold organized power , against drunkenness , prostitution , undue severity of criminal codes , wealthworship , and social despotism . The " poor Irish' he would educate , and deliver from ' their two worst foes , the Popish priest and the
American demagogue . " Mr . Parker says , "I learned early in life , that the criminal is often the victim of society rather than its foe , and that our penal law belongs to the dark ages of brute force , and aims only to protect society by vengeance on the felon . " " There are three great periods in each great movement of mankind ,- —that of sentiment , ideas , and action . " Mr ; Parker , when a young man , thought matters were ripe for the last . Mr . Parker , the reformer of mature age , sadly yet sanguinely confesses that he and his fellowworkers must still" seek toarouse the sentiment of justice and mercy , and to diffuse the ideas which belong to the five-fold reformatjon "from " povertydrunkenness , ignorance , prostitution , crime . "
, We might multiply equally interesting extrapts , equally suggestive of application to our own case . The best service we . can render our , readers is to warmly recommend the pamphlet to their attention , for the reasons we have so fully stated . The following sentences are significant . They increase our sense of the writer's truthfulness ; for it costs a scholarly man a great deal to disparage his own class , —one which has asinuch esprit de corps , not to say assumption , as any monopolizing guild . : " ' In the last forty years , I think no NewEngland college , collective faculty of pupils , lias shown sympathy with any of the great
forward movements of mankind , which are indicated by some national outbreak , like the French Revolutions of 1830 or 1848 . : . The scholars' culture has palsied their natural instincts of humanity , and gives them instead neither the personal convictions of free moral reflection , nor the traditional commands of Church authority , but only the maxims of vulgar thrift , — - ' Get the most and give the least - buy cheap and sell djear . ' Exceptional iiieri , like Charming , Pierpont , Emerson ,, Ripley , Mann , Rantoul , Phillips , Sumner , and a few others , only confirm the general rule , that the educated is also a selfish class , morally not in advance of the mass of hien . "
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136 TJie Leader andSaturdayi Analyst . [ Feb . 11 , 1860 .
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* Boma hitherto ! nodttod Works of Jtogcr Bacon , ( JPr . Mo , ort JBaoon Opora Qx « P < l « m inedita ) Vol . , 1 . X . Qpwi Tortiwn , JCI . Opus Minus . IJI . Oouipcmltum ! Mlosojphi ( P . EtUtQdi by J . S , BxiRWBR , M . A . Published unuor the direction of the Muster . of tho Rolla .
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ROGER BACON . * I T is pleasant to read a book which has at the same time the freshness of a first edition and the savour of antiquity , and this pleasure is proportionately increased when that which is before , us is , not a mere literary fossil , valuable only for its age and the light it throws on a past era of social life , but a part of the bone and sinew of our present knowledge —< -of our past and our future liberty . There is certainly no man living now—probably no one ever did live , who has read all the extant works of Roger Bacon . The thingis not possible , for most of them exist only in manuscript , and these scattered about among the libraries , of Europe . Only one of his works has , until the present day , found ah editor , and that one we have in . a curtailed and mutilated form ; . and yet , with the exceptiox > of Francis Bacon alone , England owes more of her present high position in experimental and physical science , and of her liberty of thought itself , to the impulse given to philosophy by the oppressed Franciscan than to any other name in her annals . The earlier Bacon turned men ' s minds to the truths of " natural knowledge " at a time when they were enslaved by scholastic theology , or sunk in the ignorance of unrefined sensualism . The latter Bacon , at a time when men ' s hearts were sickened , and their reason stunned by the clangour of theological strife till they were well nigh prepared to doubt the being of all truth , again directed human thought , and , by a new method , fixed it , as it seems , for ever in the direction of those subjects over which it has hitherto made the greatest conquests . ' It is difficult for us , who live among associations so widely different , to understand what were the' influences that could induce such a man as Roger Bacon to enter into the monastic state ; and oi all the religious orders that to which he attached himself seems , on retrospect , to have been the least congenial to the great thinker . The key to the mystery , perhaps , is that the Franciscan order had but recently begun its course in England , nnd that its avowed end . was to counteract the sloth and evil habits of the beneficed clergy and monks of the old orders . Its work lay especially among the poor and the neglected , and perhaps the philosopher saw , what was most certainly true then as now , that the w orkman would receive knowledge gladly , or , at the least , bo but its passive enemy , while those who were enjoying endowments given for the spread of knowledge would be its bitter persecutors . There exists much evidence tending to prove that the workmen in the towns of mediaeval England were really a far better instructed class than moat of the clergy of the same period . They who built our cathedrals and our village churches , will ever bo held in affectionate remembranco , They wlfo disgraced them by crimes , such us even , the Reformers in the fierceness of' their wrath could hardly exaggerate , had better , for their own sakes , be forgotten . From a hundred places in Bacon ' s writings it is evident how
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 11, 1860, page 136, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2333/page/12/
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