U.U. Enforcer wrote "I skipped J. Sparks' grave since he is best known for a sermon someone else did at his ordination." Funny thing what historians do to a man's reputation, they give prominence to some people and obscurity to others, and Jared Sparks should know this, he was a historian. Let us see what Britannica Online has to tell us about the good Doctor Sparks.
American publisher and editor of the North American Review, biographer, and president of Harvard College.
Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, Sparks served as minister of the First Independent Church (Unitarian) from 1819 to 1823. From then until 1830, under his ownership and editorship, the North American Review became the arbiter of literature in New England. He was appointed the first professor of secular history at Harvard and served as president of the college from 1849 to 1853.
He was the author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Gouverneur Morris. He edited The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, 12 vol. (1829€“30) and 25 volumes of The Library of American Biography (1834€“48). Sparks believed that patriotism obliged him, when editing source materials, to omit passages likely to cause international ill will, and he sometimes embellished what the Founding Fathers had actually written. The exacting scholarly standards of a later age rendered much of his work obsolete.
He was born May 10, 1789, Willington, Conn., U.S. He died March 14, 1866, Cambridge, Mass.
Those exacting standards of a later day! The idea that history writing serves a political purpose, and that historian is advised not to upset to many established opinions is still standard operating procedure. Historians who point out the flaws in the official story are labeled revisionists, and "controversial."
But in his own time Jared Sparks was the model of the public intellectual. The Dial was founded by the Transcendentalist Club to overcome the power of The North American Review.
While he was at the Baltimore Church, he was also chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives. Before he was ordained he was a published and well regarded author of Unitarian theological writings. Thomas Jefferson apparently appreciated his Unitarian Miscellany as the following letter from Jefferson attests.
To The Reverend Jared Sparks
MONTICELLO, NOVEMBER 4, 1820.
SIR, -- YOUR favor of September 18th is just received, with the book accompanying it. Its delay was owing to that of the box of books from Mr. Guegan, in which it was packed. Being just setting out on a journey I have time only to look over the summary of contents. In this I see nothing in which I am likely to differ materially from you. I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by Himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to the principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations as corruptions of His religion, having no foundation in what came from Him. The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere relapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible. The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly, gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. Thinking men of all nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one only God, and embraced it with the pure-morals which Jesus inculcated. If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over fanaticism, and the genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by His pseudo priests, will again be restored to their original purity. This reformation will advance with the other improvements of the human mind, but too late for me to witness it. Accept my thanks for your book, in which I shall read with pleasure your developments of the subject, and with them the assurance of my high respect.
Leave a comment