The Collected Works of Theodore Parker. Volume 7. Discourses of Social Science

Learned in twenty languages and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Theodore Parker, the son of a farmer, used his education in theology to become a champion of social reform and abolitionism. When Emerson made his heart-stopping Divinity School Address attacking formal religion, Parker (a Unitarian pastor himself) bravely supported him, believing that Christianity was "innate in the soul." Scorned by Orthodox Unitarians, exhausted from his heavy schedule of activism, and suffering from consumption, Parker fought to regain his health in Italy, eventually dying there.