Nineteenth century

Theodore Parker

1810–1860

Minister of the moral universe

The arc of the moral universe is his sermon image from 1853, long before it was polished into a certainty. He was a Transcendentalist who hid people fleeing slavery. King kept the arc and knew whose it had been.

In the canon

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine…Of Justice and the Conscience

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