Excerpt from Theism, Atheism and the Popular Theology
Theodore Parker once said: "The religion I preach will be the religion of enlightened men for the next thousand years." The central principle of this "Absolute Religion," as he termed it, was a lofty and fervent Theism. To Parker the human faculties were fully adequate to find such spiritual truth and guidance as they might need. The knowledge thus imparted was "intuitive" in the sense that God, Duty and Immortality are perceived at first hand, and not mediated by sense-perceptions, individual and racial experiences or external revelations. Belief in God, as absolute wisdom, goodness and love enthroned in the universe, he held to be independent of external demonstration. Revealed in feeling, tempered by reason and controlled by conscience, it is the central nerve of personal and social religion. From it flows all power, pity, peace. In proportion as this inward witness is rejected, and recourse had to external authority, symbolic rites, artificial substitutes or historic mediators the religious life becomes unreal and ineffective. It does not abide in the light of God"s own countenance but gropes in the shadows cast by some great soul who knew God at first-hand, rejoiced in His presence, received His inspirations, and did not need to seek Him through physical contact in the consecrated wafer, or the testimony of a written Scripture, or to adore Him in the eidolon of a human Saviour. Theodore Parker was the prophet of this pure Theism, this absolute religion of humanity possible to all kinds and conditions of men, and good for all times.
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