Parker's sermons. He was too hard at work in
combating the evangelical theology to recognize its altered phases.
Forging lightning-rods against the tempest, he did not see that the
height of the storm had passed by.
These are legitimate criticisms to make on Theodore Parker, for he was
large enough to merit them. It is only the loftiest trees of which it
occurs to us to remark that they do not touch the sky, and a man must
comprise a great deal before we complain of him for not comprising
everything. But though the closest scrutiny may sometimes find cases
where he failed to see the most subtile and precious truth, it will
never discover one where, seeing, he failed to proclaim it, or,
proclaiming, failed to give it force and power. He lived his life much
as he walked the streets of Boston,--not quite gracefully, nor yet
statelily, but with quick, strong, solid step, with sagacious eyes
wide open, and thrusting his broad shoulders a little forward, as if
butting away the throng of evil deeds around him, and scattering whole
atmospheres of unwholesome cloud. Wherever he went, there went a
glance of sleepless vigilance, an unforgetting memory, a tongue that
never faltered, and an arm that never quailed. Not primarily an
administrative nor yet a military mind, he yet exerted a positive
control over the whole community around him, by sheer mental and moral
strength. He mowed down harvests of evil as in his youth he mowed the
grass, and all his hours of study were but whetting the scythe.
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