Theophilus Parsons, Jr. was a prominent Swedenborgian pastor whose writings in the
New Jerusalem Magazine inspired many a New England Transcendentalist, among them
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Parsons was a professor at Harvard Law School and, from 1824 to 1826, edited the
U.S. Literary Gazette. His father was an influential Massachusetts jurist, a founder of the Boston Athenaeum, and a fellow of Harvard.