PARKER, THEODORE (1810-186o), American preacher and social reformer, was born at Lexington, Mass., on Aug. 181o, the grandson of Capt. John Parker, leader of the minute men in the skirmish at Lexington. From his mother he learned the religion of love and good works; from his father the use of good books ; and his formal training he secured in the district school and one term at Lexington academy. At 17 he became a schoolmaster, and in his loth year he entered himself at Harvard, working on his father's farm as usual while he followed his studies, and going over to Cambridge for the examinations only. For the theological course he resided at the college, graduating in 1836. At the close of his college career he began his translation (published in 1843) of Wilhelm M. L. De Wette's Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament. He found himself extremely antagonistic to the popular theology of the period. He was ordained in West Roxbury, however, in 1837, and preached there until 1846. His rationalistic views were slow in assuming form; but on May 19, 1841, he preached at Boston a sermon on "the transient and permanent in Christianity," which presented in embryo the main principles and ideas of his final theological posi tion. The Boston Unitarian clergy denounced him, arid declared that the "young man must be silenced." Nevertheless, he deliv ered in the Masonic hall, in the winter of 1841-42, the lectures published as the Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion (1842). Beginning in 1845 he preached to the Twenty-Eighth Congregational society of Boston. He took up the question of the emancipation of the slaves, and fearlessly advocated in Boston and elsewhere, from the platform and through correspon dence and the press, the cause of the negroes. He assisted ac
tively in the escape of fugitive slaves, and aided John Brown (q.v.). But his days were numbered. In Jan. 1859 he suffered a violent haemorrhage of the lungs, and vainly sought relief by retreating first to the West Indies and then to Europe. He died in Florence on May io, 186o. A preacher rather than a thinker, a reformer rather than a philosopher, he spoke straight to men's intelligence and conscience and the goodness of their hearts.
Among his principal works are : Ten Sermons of Religion (1852) and Theism, Atheism and the Popular Theology (1853). A col lected edition of his works was published in England by Frances P. Cobbe (1863-7o), and another—the Centenary edition—in Bos ton, Mass., by the American Unitarian Association (1907–I I) ; a volume of Theodore Parker's Prayers, edited by Rufus Leighton and Matilda Goddard, was published in 1861, and a volume of Parker's West Roxbury Sermons, with a biographical sketch by F. B. Sanborn, in 1892. A German translation of part of his works was made by Ziethen (Leipzig, BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The best biographies are John Weiss's Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker (1864) ; 0. B. Frothingham's Theodore Parker: A Biography (Boston, 1874) ; and J. W. Chadwick's Theodore Parker, Preacher and Reformer (Boston, 'goo), the last containing a good bibliography. See also G. W. Cooke, ed., Theodore Parker, The American Scholar (Boston, 1907) ; E. D. Meade, Emerson and Theodore Parker (Boston, 191o) ; and The Parker Library," Bos ton Pub. Library Bull., ser. 4, vol. v., p. 361-67 (Boston, 1923).