PARKER, TUEODORE, an American clergyman and scholar, was born at Lexington, Massachusetts, Aug. 24, 1810. His grandfather was capt. of a militia company at the battle of Lexington, his father a farmer and mechanic, and his own boyhood was spent at the district school, on the farm, and in the workshop. At the age of 17 lie taught a school, and earned money to enter Harvard college in 1830. During his collegiate course, he supported himself by teaching private classes and schools, and studied meta physics, theology. Anglo-Saxon, Syriac, Arabic, Danish, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, and modern Greek. Entering the divinity class, at the end of his collegiate course, he commenced to preach in 1836, was an editor of the Scriptural Interpreter, and settled as Un=itarian minister at West Roxbury in 1837. The naturalistic or rationalistic views which separated him from the more conservative portion of the Unitarians, first attracted wide notice, in consequence of an ordination sermon, in 1841, on The Transient and Permanent in Christianity. The contest which arose on the anti-supernaturalism of this discourse, led him to further develop his theological views in five lectures, delivered in Boston, and published (1841) under the title of A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion, which followed by Sea-awns/or the Times. Failing health induced him to
make an extended tour in Europe. In 1845 be returned to Boston, preached to large audiences at the Melodeon, and wrote for the Dial, Christian. Register, Christian Examiner, and Massachusetts Quarterly. He became also a popular lecturer, and was active and earnest in opposition to slavery, the Mexican war, and the fugitive slave law, for resist ing which, by more than words, lie was indicted. In the midst of his work, he was attacked, in 1859, with bleeding from the lungs, and made a voyage to Mexico, where he wrote his Experience as a Minister, whence lie sailed to Italy, where lie died at Flor ence, May 10, 1860. His works, consisting chiefly of miscellanies, lectures, and sermons, have been collected and published in America and England, in which his peculiar views in theology and politics are sustained with great force of logic and felicity of illustration. His learning was equal to his energy and philanthropy, and his influence was also great. His library of 13,000 volumes he bequeathed to the Boston free library. See Parker's Life and Correspondence, by Weiss (1864).