Debarred by their own hardness and frowardness of heart from the holy solace of these ministrations, our little party held their perverse way to the Melodeon. The choir was singing as they entered, and the church was crowded as usual, for no minister in Boston gathered such a concourse as the mighty Theodore. A little movable pulpit, on which bloomed a vase of flowers, occupied the platform, and behind it, with clasped hands, musing, sat he who shall heave his noble thought in massive mountain-chains of strength and beauty never any more. Living, his presence was the magic spell that evoked and commanded Freedom. Oh, dying, was it less strong—less strong when he had died? Lo! he drew nigh the shores of Italy, and she rose, in the red storm of Magenta, from the bondage of ten centuries, free! He laid him down to sleep in the soil of her Florence, and pale and radiant from her long agony, all disenchanted of her doom, she stands above his dust, bastioned with hearts and swords, free! Free, and free forever, and secure of ever-broadening freedom, for the land can never rest in tyranny that holds within its bosom Parker’s grave!
There are thousands who remember those Sabbaths in his presence; but who shall paint them in hues that will not seem faint and unfaithful in the light of memory? What words shall revive his image as he stood behind the little pulpit—Socratic-featured, strong, earnest, reverend—the large volume of old Scripture open before him, the tinted flowers blooming by his side, the faces of thousands all mutely turned toward him, as once toward Luther, Savonarola, Abelard? What words shall tell of the firm eyes holding all those faces, the resolute features stirring, the orotund and fervent deep voice sounding, as he read from the sacred pages, lifting the verses into their fullest significance and life, and flooding the soul with all that is loftiest and sweetest in the old saints and prophets’ lore? Who shall bring back the hours when, as in that hour, the deep voice rose in the tender and gorgeous prayer, filled with the affluent sunshine, the flowers, the greenery, the wild-bird melodies, the living glory of the spring, all music-rich with reverential thought and feeling, all overflowed with gratitude and praise to the Giver, with faith, and piety, and aspiration, all throbbing with immortal longings, and raising the soul to the mystic’s vision of God, and kindling the heart with the hero’s hope of the ideal future of man? A streaming altar-flame, uprising rich with incense from hills and valleys lovely in the blue day and pomps of spring-time, thronged with the saints and saviors of all time, and echoing with the supplications and hosannas of mankind, might be the symbol of that prayer. But what symbol shall gather within it the strong and salient intellections of the following sermon—its massive breadth and scope of statement, its valiant dealing with the public sins and sinners of the time, its learning that swept all history, its knowledge that swept all life, the broad illumination of its eloquence, the prowess of its virtue, the sweetness of its piety? A torch of burning splendor upheld by Greatheart, and flashing on his brand and mail in the crash of combat with Apollyon—its blaze poured strong and definite upon the open midnight landscape of our mortal life, illumining the path of nobleness, lighting every danger, darting its ray upon the secret pitfall, and into the ambush of the foe, and streaming forward over all the perilous track to the gates of God—such might be the visioned symbol of a speech which yet no symbol can describe. Closed now in death that glorious eloquence, nor in a hundred years may such a bloom unfold again; but the continents shall remember how in an evil time burst forth its flower of flame, and its fragrance shall fill the world from age to age.
Every high heart has felt the sense of renewal and reconsecration which follows the words of a great pulpit orator; and with this sense strong within them, the little party left the church when the service was ended. On their way home, Wentworth stopped the others to announce that Emily was to dine at his father’s house, and return to Temple street late in the afternoon. A few moments passed in exchanging warm eulogiums on the sermon, and then Mrs. Eastman, Muriel, and Harrington left the other two and walked across the beautiful sunlit Common.
“Now, John,” said Muriel, gaily, “of course you have some criticism to make on Mr. Parker.”
“I declare no,” he responded; “I haven’t the conscience to criticise him. He makes one’s heart glow so with his manhood, that criticism must be dumb. I pass his theology, everything in fact, I might differ on, and rest only on his magnificent public service, and the inspiration of his example.”
“Still,” she returned, “you would differ, if you could.”
“To be sure,” he replied, smilingly. “If I could criticise, I would own to a divine dissatisfaction. For the sermon implied no theory that adequately accounts for the scheme of things, as my own theory does, at least to me. However, I won’t grumble. I have Emerson still for my refuge. All the modern thinkers cramp me in a cell, more or less spacious, but in Emerson, chiefly in his poems, I escape into the vast of space and stars, and breathe blithely like the self-existent soul I am.”
“Oh, heretic!” she gaily exclaimed. “But I agree with all you say, and especially about the poems. They are incomparably beyond all else the Muse has vouchsafed to our American bards.”
“Now, John,” said Mrs. Eastman, “I should really like to know what your theory of things is. Come, define your position.”
“My dear mother,” replied Harrington, laughing, “will it do to give it voice? The tell-tale birds might hear me, and carry the news to the orthodox, and then I should have a grand auto-da-fe, with all the great wits and little wits dancing around me in my expiring agonies.”