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It was a quiet talk with God, as if long intercourse and much love had made it natural and easy for the son to seek the Father - confessing faults, asking help, and submitting all things to the All-wise and tender -as freely as children bring their little sorrows, hopes, and fears to their mother's knee."

It was "natural": that was the key-note of Theodore Parker's life and work. With all the wealth of his marvellous learning, he was not an originator. His knowledge tended to fortify and explain his own inner life rather than to furnish material for an enduring system of philosophy. Parker's great service was to furnish a life in which religion was fervidly dominant and vitally real. He was a man who thought, indeed; but, more than that, he was a man who lived. His example was almost as powerful as his word to render religion natural. His work was sorely needed at that time. Such work will be sorely needed again. But just in proportion as a man is so vividly necessary to his own day must his greatest worth be limited to that day. The brightness of his career is a lastingly luminous spot; but, after all, it is a spot, not a universal illumination. This does not mean that we of this later time cannot read his words with profit, and from them receive new impetus

toward everything that is highest and best. We can do so: men will always do so-in some degree. The record of his life will strengthen the purpose and fitness of other men to repeat his work when the need again appears; but his work was not such as to make forever impossible the appearance of that new need. Some day the exigencies of the religious life will demand that some one else shall stand up and say, "The old is done away: all things are become new." But the prophet who in that day shall be anointed to his mighty task will find his work cheerier, his heart braver, his spirit kept more sweet, because yesterday Theodore Parker lived so well, battled so strongly, and conquered so gloriously for the humanizing of religion.

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Phillips Brooks and the Unity of the Spirit

PHILLIPS BROOKS AND THE UNITY

OF THE SPIRIT.

I shall

THE profound feeling in regard to the character and unique influence of Phillips Brooks has found expression in a great variety of public utterances. The accounts and descriptions of his life and work are so admirable and abundant, and derived from such a variety of sources, that I may confine myself to-day to a single aspect of his career. I shall not attempt even the merest outline of a biographical review. not undertake to analyze his character or thought. He was, undoubtedly, the greatest American preacher of his generation. Beecher and Moody may have aroused more immediate popular interest; but the great literature that has grown up about Phillips Brooks, the unprecedented circulation of his printed sermons, as well as the immediate response of the thronging congregations that hung upon his words, give ample testimony to his wide-spread influence and fame. The secret of his power was in his vital sympathy, his large humanity. We do not think of him to-day as a theologian or as a church dignitary. We think of him as the embodiment of all that

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