rest are written, once lived among us and is now dead, we are led to believe, partly in consequence of the principles of faith by which we receive the Bible as the Word of God, however much in some of its parts it may fail to coincide with our instincts, which were Mr. Parker's ultimate test of truth.

If we were not, in the strongest sense of the word, believers, we could assign reasons for doubting, with Mr. Parker's principles adopted from Strauss, whether Mr. Parker be not a myth. We could prove that he never could have gained existenceneither as a miracle nor as a natural product. A miracle, according to Mr. Parker, is impossible in the nature of things. This is a corner-stone in his system. His doctrine is this: :"God never violates the else constant mode of operation of the universe;" so that "a theological miracle is as impossible as a round triangle." ("Experience," p. 36.) We need not say that this is mere dogmatizing and begging the question; the bare assertion of the opposite is equally valid. But a miracle being impossible, Mr. Parker, if he existed, was not of miraculous origin; and now, did he exist by ordinary generation? On this point we need that very proof the alleged absence of which, in connection with the Bible, is the ground of Mr. Parker's unbelief.

The evidence for the miraculous conception of Christ, for example, Mr. Parker tells us is "good for nothing, because we have not the Affidavit of the Mother, the only competent human witness; nor even the Declaration of the Son." (p. 36.) "The Affidavit of the Mother"! For want of this, the miraculous conception of Christ must be counted "good for nothing." Such is the logic of infidelity. Its tender mercies in the treatment of testimony are cruel. Suppose that the Mother of Jesus had personally appeared before Scribe BenEzra, a Notary-Public in Judea, and had made "affidavit" of the miraculous conception. The idea of Mary's doing this is absurd; but if it were done, how could it help Mr. Parker? Would he believe a reputed or attested copy of the "affidavit”? Would he not demand a sight of the original? How could he be gratified? Positively, there would be no way now of verifying that affidavit; we must rely on the testimony of witnesses living at the time of the event, and we must treat their writings

as we treat those of Julius Cæsar and Livy. Such witnesses we have in the New Testament, to say nothing of prophecy.

Has any one of us ever seen the "affidavit" of the mother of Mr. Parker touching his birth? Has such "affidavit " ever been made? Relatives and neighbors may have enjoyed the help which this document would have afforded to their faith, but that does not help us, nor the coming generations, to whom the birth of Mr. Parker will be of such immeasurable importance, if his principles are to prevail among men. But the testimony of relatives and neighbors on this point would be, at the very best, as loose as that of Prophets and Evangelists; we should, therefore, be obliged to consult our "instincts the probability that such a man as he describes himself to be did really exist. Moreover, Mr. Parker himself nowhere tells us, except in a cursory way, that he was born! Where have we the solemn "Declaration of the Son" of Mrs. Parker that he was born? He begins the narrative of his life with these words: "In my boyhood," &c. Now this is vague. Great consequences may ensue. Suppose that, hereafter, some of his followers should insist that such as he could not have descended from earthly parents by ordinary generation; the means of

as to

contradicting this are as weak and insufficient as he alleges the testimony of the Evangelists to be respecting the miraculous conception and birth of Him whom he denominates "the fairhaired youth of Galilee."

Is it possible that Mr. Parker, by omitting to tell us whether he was born like other members of the human family, intended to leave room, in future years, for a claim that he was of preternatural origin? By all testimony concerning him, and judging from his autobiography, larger self-conceit never dwelt in one of human kind. As he lay on his death-bed, we are told by his personal friends that he looked on his bust and said: "That head should have accomplished more!" "The great, obvious Social Forces in America," he says, (pp. 92, 93,) "may be thus summed up: 1. There is the organized Trading Power ; 2. The organized Political Power; 3. The organized Ecclesiastical Power; 4. The organized Literary Power." After briefly characterizing them severally, in contemptuous terms, he continues, "I must" [he uses the word must in a preterite sense,

meaning, it behooved me to] "examine these four great Social Powers and show what was good in them and what ill. When I came to a distinct consciousness of my own first principle, and my consequent relation to what was about me, spite of the good they contained, I found myself greatly at variance with all the four. They had one principle, and I another." These lines read like letters from some whose diseased imaginations run in the direction of magistracy, or primacy, or royalty. His friends, however, believe him to have been always sane.

We shall not be astonished at any further claim which his eulogists and followers may put forth when the lapse of years has veiled his early history. Would that he had settled the question whether he was actually born! With the history of Mohammedanism before us, to say nothing of shoals of antichrists, we tremble to think what histories of controversy may ensue upon this accidental or intentional omission. But after all, the reading of his autobiography has made us question whether even an explicit statement by himself as to his birth would be decisive, and whether, in fact, any kind of testimony is decisive on any subject whatever; and so we are led to question whether Mr. Parker himself be not a myth.

The Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society at the Music Hall might, with kindness and Christian meekness, now endeavor to help our faith, mingling with their asseverations a little surprise at our incredulity. They might begin their reply to us thus: "That which was from the beginning of our enterprise as a Congregational Society, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of Mr. Parker, declare we unto you." But, gentle friends, while we thank you for your patience with our incredulity, consider what a fable Mr. Parker has labored to prove the miraculous conception of Christ to be, even though asserted by that apostle John whose supposed words you here so aptly borrow. You know,- for Mr. Parker spent his life in assuring you, and when he was "up to " his "shoulders in the grave," to use his language concerning himself, he reiterates it, and, wasting away at Santa Cruz, he admonishes you with his letters, that the Bible is not to be

-

received according to its professions, and the general interpretation of the evangelical sects, that is, of the Christian world. The Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, therefore, is not to be believed implicitly, when they testify concerning Mr. Parker, if our "instincts" are averse to the belief that such a man as he existed, any more than the Old Testament and the Evangelists are to be implicitly believed by Mr. Parker and his friends when their narratives are repugnant to Mr. Parker's "instincts" and those of his friends.

Applying Mr. Parker's alleged infallible test of truth to his remarkable book, "Experience as a Minister," we can prove that he never wrote it, and for the reason that he never could have believed, felt, and said the things there detailed.

According to Mr. Parker, whatever God, and Christ, and the Sacred Writers say, is not necessarily true because they say it, unless it coincides with our human instincts. That which goes counter to Mr. Parker's instincts, he maintains cannot be true. Let us hear him:

"I took no principle for true simply because it was in the Bible; what therein seemed false or wrong I rejected as freely as if I had found it in the Sacred Books of the Buddhists or Mormons." (p. 60.)

"I found certain great primal Intuitions of Human Nature which depend on no logical process of demonstration, but are rather facts of consciousness given by the instinctive action of human nature itself." “Here, then, was the foundation of religion, laid in Human Nature itself." "Then I proceeded to develop the contents of these instinctive intuitions." "First, from the History of mankind- savage, barbarous, civilized, enlightened;"-"the Sacred Books of various nations, poets, philosophers such as deal with sleep-walking, dreams, visions, prophecies, second-sight, oracles, ecstasies, witchcraft, magic, wonders, the appearance of devils, ghosts, and the like." "In the beginning I resolved to preach the natural laws of man as they are writ in his constitution, no less and no more." (pp. 42-45.) "At the Cambridge Divinity School, Prof. Henry Ware, Jr., told the young men, if there appeared to them any contradiction between the Reason of Man and the Letter of the Bible, they must follow the written word'; · for you can never be so certain of the correctness of what takes place in your own mind, as of what is written in the Bible.' In an ordination sermon, he told the young minister 'not

to preach himself but Christ, and not to appeal to Human Nature for proofs of doctrines, but to the Authority of Revelation.'" (p. 55.)

This pure and beautiful truth from this remarkable man, Mr. Parker mentions only to repudiate. He makes human nature in particular, and nature in general, the divinely inspired oracles. He has a low opinion of Deity as described in all sacred books, including the Old Testament, and parts of the New. He classes the God of the Old Testament with heathen deities. He says, "Zeus is licentious, Hermes will steal, and Jehovah is narrow." Yes, such words have been professedly written by man!

On his principles, then, we may aver that Mr. Parker never believed, felt, or said the things which his friends have published for him as from his pen. The reason is, it offends the instincts of the whole Christian world, when we are required to believe that a creature of God ever used language in speaking of his Maker, and his professed Messiah, and of his Revelation, so brusque and flippant. The blood curdles, the heart is ready to suspend its action, as the Christian world reads some of his writings, especially the little book published as his "Experience." If some things in the Bible are, according to Mr. Parker's system, impossible, for the reason that they offend the moral sense, we, the world of Christian believers, also having a moral sense, deny that Mr. Parker, or any other creature of God, could utter the audacious things which some have given to the world as his "Experience," written by himself.

The alternative is, if Mr. Parker is right, the whole Christian world, with the exception of Mr. Parker and his friends, have no moral sense, no instincts, no reason, no human nature. Should we give ourselves up implicitly to the instructions of this book, we must come to this conclusion. But Mr. Parker's principles are in the way of believing, on testimony, anything whatever; any man's instincts are to him Revelation; that which one strenuously desires is, for that reason, true. There is, therefore, strictly speaking, no such thing as unbelief; and there are no unbelievers, except it be men who either have no "instincts," or who have perverted them, which, one might think, is the case with all men who reject the principles of this Mr. Parker. That a fellow-creature should have been capa