ABSTRACT
Theodore Parker was described by one of his biographers as "the best working-plan of an American yet produced” and by a fellow minister as “a conscience since Luther unsurpassed." With his sensitive conscience visited by such memories—a child of '76 living in the evil days of the Fugitive Slave Law, a devout freethinker borne on the crest of transcendental thought— Theodore Parker became the embodiment and epitome of the New England renaissance. The conception of human perfectibility, as it filtered down to him through different strata of thought, Romantic and idealistic, found a high sanction in his transcendentalism; but his practical nature demanded that it be established if possible on a scientific foundation. A transcendental individualist, he went for the nullification of an immoral statute in the name of the Higher Law. The spirituality of Channing was enriched in Parker by the ardency of his loving nature.
