It can not be said that Theodore Parker's parents set him apart for the ministry: he set himself apart and got his education in spite of them. At fifteen, he once created a small seismic disturbance by announcing to the family at supper, "I entered Harvard College today."
This educational move was scouted and flouted, and the fact pointed to that there was not enough money in the ginger-jar to keep him at Cambridge a week. And then the boy explained that he was going to borrow books and do his studying at home. He had passed the examinations and been duly admitted to the freshman class.
Let the fact stand that Theodore Parker kept up his studies for four years, and would have been entitled to his degree had he not been a non-resident. In Eighteen Hundred Forty, when Parker was thirty years of age, Harvard voted him the honorary degree of A.M. This was well, but if a little delay had occurred Parker would not have been so honored, and as it was, it was suggested by several worthy persons that the degree should be taken away without anesthetics. Both Parker and Emerson seriously offended their Alma Mater and were practically repudiated.
When eighteen years old Theodore Parker was a fairly prosperous pedagogue, and at twenty had saved up enough money to go to Harvard Divinity School.
Here he was very studious, and his skill in Greek and Latin made the professors in dead languages feel to see that their laurels were in place. Everybody prophesied that the Parker boy would be a great man— possibly a college professor! Theodore was passing through the realistic age when every detail must be carefully put in the picture. He was painstaking as to tenses, conscientious as to the ablative, and had scruples concerning the King James version of Deuteronomy. About the same time he fell in love—very much in love. Some one has said that an Irishman in love is like Vesuvius in a state of eruption. A theological student in love is like a boy with the hives. Theodore thought that all Cambridge was interested in his private affairs, so he wrote to this one and that advising them of the engagement, but cautioning secrecy, the object of secrecy in such cases being that the immediate parties themselves may tell everybody. He asked his father's consent, intimating that it made no difference whether it was forthcoming or not—the die was cast. He asked the consent of the girl's parents, and they having a grudge against the Parkers assented. Having removed all obstacles, the happy couple waited four years, and were safely married. Lydia Cabot's character can all be summed up in the word "good." She went through Europe, and remembered nothing but the wooden bears in Switzerland, of which she made a modest collection. When her husband preached, her solicitude was that his cravat might not become disarranged, for once when he was discussing the condition of sinners after death, his necktie gravitated around under his ear, and his wife nearly died of mortification. When he began to lose his hair she consulted everybody as to cures for baldness, and brought up the theme once at prayer-meeting, making her appeal to the Throne of Grace. This led Parker to say that the calamity of being bald was not in the loss of hair; it was that your friends suddenly revealed that they had recipes concealed on their person. Before his marriage Parker had positive ideas on the bringing up of children, and intimated what he proposed to do. But Fate decreed that he should be childless, that all religious independents might call him father. There is only one thing better than for a strong man to marry an absolutely dull woman. She teaches him by antithesis: he learns by contrast, and her stupidity is ever a foil for his brilliancy. He soon grows to a point where he does not mentally defer to her in the slightest degree, but goes his solitary way, making good that maxim of Kipling, "He travels the fastest who travels alone." He learns to love the ideal. The mediocre quality of Parker's wife was, no doubt, a prime factor in bringing out the self-reliant qualities in his own nature.
Parker's first pastorate was the Unitarian church at West Roxbury, ten miles from Boston, and an easy drive from Concord and Lexington. This was in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six, a year memorable to lovers of Emerson, because it was during that year that the "Essay on Nature" was issued. It was put forth anonymously, and published at the author's expense. Doctor Francis Bowen, Dean of Harvard Divinity School, had denounced the essay as "pantheistic and dangerous." He also discovered the authorship, and expressed his deep sorrow and regret that a Harvard man should so far forget the traditions as to put forth such a work. Theodore Parker came to the defense of Emerson, and this seems to have been Parker's first radical expression.
Emerson was seven years older than Parker, but Parker had the ear of the public; whereas at this time Emerson was living in forced retirement, having been compelled to resign his pastorate in Boston on account of heretical utterances.
Theodore Parker was very fortunate in his environment. It will hardly do to say that he was the product of his surroundings, because there were a good many thousand people living within the radius of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley and William Ellery Channing, who were absolutely unaware of the presence of these men. The most popular church in Concord today is the Roman Catholic. Theodore Parker fitted his environment and added his aura to the transcendental gleam. He was the lodestone that attracted the Brook-Farmers to West Roxbury. It is easy to say that if these Utopians had not selected West Roxbury as the seat of the new regime, they would have performed their transcendental tricks elsewhere; but the fact remains, they did not.
Parker was on the ground first; Ripley used to come over and exchange pulpits with him. Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, George William Curtis and Henry Thoreau once walked out from Boston to hear him preach.
All these people exercised a decided influence on Theodore Parker; and when "The Dial" was published, Parker was one of the first contributors.