great man,
he could have had the abundant popularity of a clever one. Let us see
how he outlines the Seer of Stockholm for an inquiring correspondent:--

"Swedenborg has had the fate to be worshipped as a half-god, on the one
side; and on the other, to be despised and laughed at. It seems to me
that he was a man of genius, of wide learning, of deep and genuine piety
But he had an abnormal, queer sort of mind, dreamy, dozy, clairvoyant,
Andrew-Jackson-Davisy; and besides, he loved opium and strong coffee,
and wrote under the influence of those drugs. A wise man may get many
nice bits out of him, and be the healthier for such eating; but if he
swallows Swedenborg whole, as the fashion is with his followers,--why,
it lays hard in the stomach, and the man has a nightmare on him all his
natural life, and talks about 'the Word,' and 'the Spirit,'
'correspondences,' 'receivers.' Yet the Swedenborgians have a calm and
religious beauty in their lives which is much to be admired."

The deeply affectionate nature of Theodore Parker glows warmly through
the Correspondence and Journal. His friends were necessities, and were
loved with a devotion by no means characteristic of Americans. He could
give his life to ideas, but his heart must be given to persons, young
and old. Turning from his task of opposition and conflict, he would
yearn for the society of little children, whose household loves might
dull the noise and violence and passion through which he daily walked.
"The great joy of my life," he writes, "cannot be _intellectual action_,
neither _practical work_. Though I joy in both, it is the affections
which open the spring of mortal delight. But the object of my
affections, dearest of all, is not at hand. How strange that I should
have no children, and only get a little sad sort of happiness, not of
the affectional quality! I am only _an old maid in life_, after all my
bettying about in literature and philanthropy." And in a letter to Dr.
Francis there comes an exclamation of which the arrangement is very
pathetic in its significance,--"I have no child, and the worst
reputation of any minister in all America!"

We are in no position to estimate with any exactness either the
adaptation of Theodore Parker to our national well-being or his positive
aid to the mental and moral progress of New-England society. Violent
denunciations in the interest of the various sects and policies that he
attacked will for the present be levelle