they
have been abundant enough; and in its recent "liberal" developments of
Unitarianism and latitudinarianism generally, minds of this order have
played and still are playing leading and constructive parts. Emerson
himself is an admirable example. Theodore Parker is another--here are
a couple of characteristic passages from Parker's correspondence.[34]

[34] John Weiss: Life of Theodore Parker, i. 152, 32.

"Orthodox scholars say: 'In the heathen classics you find no
consciousness of sin.' It is very true--God be thanked for it. They
were conscious of wrath, of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust, sloth,
cowardice, and other actual vices, and struggled and got rid of the
deformities, but they were not conscious of 'enmity against God,' and
didn't sit down and whine and groan against non-existent evil. I have
done wrong things enough in my life, and do them now; I miss the mark,
draw bow, and try again. But I am not conscious of hating God, or man,
or right, or love, and I know there is much 'health in me', and in my
body, even now, there dwelleth many a good thing, spite of consumption
and Saint Paul." In another letter Parker writes: "I have swum in
clear sweet waters all my days; and if sometimes they were a little
cold, and the stream ran adverse and something rough, it was never too
strong to be breasted and swum through. From the days of earliest
boyhood, when I went stumbling through the grass, ... up to the
gray-bearded manhood of this time, there is none but has left me honey
in the hive of memory that I now feed on for present delight. When I
recall the years ... I am filled with a sense of sweetness and wonder
that such little things can make a mortal so exceedingly rich. But I
must confess that the chiefest of all my delights is still the
religious."

Another good expression of the "once-born" type of consciousness,
developing straight and natural, with no element of morbid compunction
or crisis, is contained in the answer of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, the
eminent Unitarian preacher and writer, to one of Dr. Starbuck's
circulars. I quote a part of it:--

"I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which come
into many biographies, as if almost essential to the formation of the
hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any man has an advantage,
not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a family where the
religion is simple and rational; who is trained in the theory o