The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-03-21
UNITARIAN MEETING.

Tie sermon lecture by Rev. T. B. For
| bush at Council hall last night OH the life
and teachings of Theodore Parker. was a
rare intellectual and inspirational uplift
! Mr.. Forbush was a successor of Mr.. Parker
in a West Roxbury pulpit, and enjoyed a
/ personal acquaintance with him. Many
! who were children at school twenty years
! ago remember the story in one of the read
! ing books about a boys awakened con
| science when he lifted his hand to kill a
! harmless reptile that he met in his path.
! The boy in the act of striking. thought he
! heard voice saying do not kill it." On
running home to ask his motker who
| spoke, she said ''some say it was con
| science, but | call it the voice of God It
! seems that the boy Parker was the crigi-
! nal of the school book hero. Mr. Forbush
/ told the story in a very touching way as a
well authenticated incident of Parker's
boyhood.
Parkers father was farmer near Lex
ington. Mass. and Theodore worked on
the farm and studied at odd hours. At IA
he asked for a day off. No one knew
where he went till he came back. Where
have you been?' asked his mother when
he returned at night. ITO Cambridge.
and passed the freshman examination for
Harvard" was the reply. Cambridge
was sixteen miles distant and he had
walked both ways and passed the eXami-
nation, all in one day.
1t is said he read Latin at 10 and Greek
at y years of age While AT Harvard he
studied all the known languages and per
haps sighed that there were no more
tongues to conquer.
The first book he bought, the beginning
of that magnificent library afterwards be
queathed to Harvard college, was Latin
dictionary.
While at Harvard he was frequently
consulted by the professors on points of
nice scholarship.
But as preacher Mr.. Parder was pre-
eminent. He read the German philosophy
and criticism and put the kernel of it in
strong Yankee phrase gladly heard by the
common people But some of the uncom-
mon people, the ministers and deacons,
even in his own denomination, did not
hear him so gladly.
They thought that since he set himself
against the doctrine of an infallibly in
spired bible. that therefore he must be an
enemy to religion.
As preacher Mr.. Forbush regards Theo-
dore Parker as the greatest of the century.
Not that he was the most learned or the
most cultivated; not that he had the
strongest logic or the most elegant diction,
bnt he had more than an ordinary amount
of those graces and powers and fused them
into one element Of serength by an intense
moral sentiment Theodore Parker knew
no fear Yet he was as gentle as a woman.
When the soldiers thrust their bayonets at
him in Fanniel hall and ordered him TO
stop speaking, he needed not till the time
to close. when he said: Gentlemen | will
walk home alone and you will not harm a
hair of my head" From 1915 till his death
he took very active part in the anti-slav
cry agitation He was much interested in
making Kansas a free state. None, in
fact. labored more heroically for that end
than he Though arrested by the aHthori- /
tiles for resisting or aiding resistance to a
United States marshal, he was never tried. |
The authorities did not want to give TheO- /
dore Parker such good chance to be .
heard.
The three fundamental principles of /
Parker's philosophy are: First, the per
lection of God; second, the growing per-
lection of man; third, the naturalness of /
religion. Far from being an atheist, he .
was theist through and through. 1t I
might be said he was a mystic, transcen-
dental theist He did not say Il believe in
God:'' he said Il know God. -
When the news of his death in far off
Florence, where he had fled in vain for
health, reached Boston, strong men wept,
and even those who differed from him
for one of New England 5 bright
est stars had set. Had set; Mr.. Parker
himself seemed to know better. For
when the mists of the dark river We're
gathering about him he said, ''There are
5wo Theodore Parkers now; one is dying
mere, worn and wasted, the other I have
planted in America, where it will live and
abor still for freedom of human hand and
bought throughout the land "
Rev Powell, of Topeka, will give the
sermon this evening. Mr.. FOrbush Will
peak again on Saturday evening.