OUR
LIBERAL
MOVEMENT
IN
THEOLOGY
JOSEPH
HENRY
ALLEN
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WILLIAM T. HARRIS.
1
galan
PRIVATE
LIBRARY.
No. 2908
1-PHILOSOPHY.
2-THEOLOGY.
3—JURISPRUDENCE.
-POLITICS.
5-SOCIAL SCIENCE.
4
PHILOLOGY.
7-MATHEMATICS
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10-MEDICINE.
11-USEFUL ARTS.
12-FINE ARTS.
13-POETRY.
1F PROSE FICTION.
15-LITERARY MISCEL.
16-GEOG. TRAVELS.
17—CIVIL HISTORY.
] KIOGRAPHY.
19- POLYGRAPHS.
20—CYCLOPEDIAS.
21-PERIODICALS.
!

L
OUR
LIBERAL Mov
IN THEOLOGY
CHIEFLY AS SHOWN IN RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
HISTORY OF UNITARIANISM IN
NEW ENGLAND
BEING
A CLOSING COURSE OF LECTURES GIVEN IN THE
HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL
BY
JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN
Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in Harvard University
HONORARY MEMBER OF THE (UNITARIAN) SUPREME CONSISTORY OF TRANSYL-
VANIA. AUTHOR OF "HEBREW MEN AND TIMES," "FRAGMENTS OF
CHRISTIAN HISTORY," &c.
BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1882
Copyright, 1882,
BY JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN,
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
JOHN WILSON and Son, Cambridge.
キュー
​CONTENTS.
I. ANTECEDENTS
II. NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM
III. CHANNING.
IV. FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY
V. THEODORE PARKER
VI. A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY
VII. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY
VIII. THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM
•
•
APPENDIX: MEMORIAL ADDRESS BY DR. HEDGE:
HENRY W. BELLOWS
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
1
22
43
64
90
114
145
176
203
211
Quy
ryclu
Schary.
Born Himaly
6-11-1935
PREFATORY NOTE.
THE following correspondence sufficiently explains
the circumstances which have led to the publi-
cation of this volume:
DIVINITY SCHOOL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
CAMBRIDGE, May 10, 1882.
DEAR SIR, -We, the undersigned, wishing to possess the
Lectures on the "Liberal Movement in Theology,” recently
delivered before the Divinity School of Harvard University,
in a more permanent form, express our earnest desire for the
publication of the same.
Very truly yours,
H. PRICE COLLIER,
JOHN A. TUNIS,
CHARLES F. RUSSELL,
Committee for the School.
CAMBRIDGE, May 14, 1882.
MY DEAR FRIENDS, Your very kind letter gives me the
opportunity, which I am delighted to embrace, of leaving with
you a memento of the four years I have passed, most agreeably,
in connection with this School.
Trusting that you may all have the privilege of doing your
share in that noble and most interesting work, of which I have
attempted to trace some of the antecedents and conditions, I
am, with the sincerest regard,
Your friend,
J. H. ALLEN.
-
iv
PREFATORY NOTE.
These circumstances will explain, if they do not
justify, a more personal tone in these Lectures than
would belong to a purely historical or critical review.
In fact, the value of the volume, if it has any, turns
mainly on its being, in good part, made up of remi-
niscences and personal testimony. It is, besides, in
some sense the final link in a series, of which "He-
brew Men and Times" makes the first, and the third,
under the title "The Middle Age," is now in press.
I will only add, that some passages may perhaps
be recognized as having appeared here and there in
print. In particular, most of the article on Unita-
rianism in a pamphlet entitled "Three Phases of
Modern Theology" has been included here; and the
Lecture on "The Gospel of Liberalism" is substan-
tially the same with the Address to the Alumni of
this School delivered in 1880.
By the kindness of Dr. Hedge I am permitted to
add in the form of an Appendix, with some revision
and addition by his hand, his recent Memorial Ad-
dress on Bellows and Emerson.
HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL,
CAMBRIDGE, June 10, 1882.
OUR
LIBERAL MOVEMENT IN THEOLOGY.
I.
ANTECEDENTS.
THE
HERE are two ways of looking at any form of
religious thought that appears in history. One
is, to see it as a fixed type of opinion; the other is,
to see it as a phase in the development of religious
truth. One sees it in the distinct outline it has taken
in creed or symbol, as set forth by its recognized
interpreters; the other sees it as one stage of a move-
ment that began long before there was any record of
it, and will continue so long as men think at all
seriously on religious things.
The former way has been much more common.
It
corresponds with the absolute temper in which relig-
ious opinion has generally been held, and with that
aim at absolute truth, and the faultless statement of
it, which men have thought their highest duty. What
is naturally fluent, and by the very laws of thought
must change continually as the bearings of all our
knowledge change, men have continually endeavored to
fix in rigid forms that could not be altered or lost.
2
ANTECEDENTS.
So we find the history of religious thought chiefly
made up of the recital of creeds, with the story of the
controversies that have grown out of them, or else
have been reconciled in them. It is even taken for
granted that every religious movement must perforce
express itself in such a creed. To this day the ques-
tion is asked, "What do Unitarians believe?"—just
as if that question were at all relevant, as touching
the movement which the various phases of Unitarian
opinion represent. Unitarians themselves, in entire
good faith, are trying to this day to find some state-
ment or form of declaration broad enough to include
them all, and precise enough to mean something
when it has cancelled all they differ in; while in
equal good faith they assure the world that no one is
to be held responsible for that or any other statement
that can be made.
case.
Now it is not quite satisfactory to say, as many do,
that Unitarians simply guard, with more than com-
mon jealousy, their right as Protestants to private
judgment: in other words, that they are not only
"Unitarian" Christians, but also "Liberal" Chris-
tians. This has never been felt fairly to meet the
Inquirers think they have a right to expect
more; believers feel they have a right to assume
more. And many attempts have been made to state
the Unitarian position with authority. But when
we come to examine these attempts we are apt to be
struck with two things: first, that they have a certain
apologetic tone, as if the main point were not to say
frankly just what the writer himself thinks, but rather
to show that Unitarians are pretty good Christians
TA
UNITARIANISM: WHAT IS IT?
3
after all,-in short, to come as near the popular creed
as may be without quite hitting it: and secondly,
that they are mostly made up of details, or brief
formulas of religious phraseology, or points of Bible-
interpretation, — notoriously wide apart from the
opinions of many who rate themselves as Unitarians,
and who stand in general esteem as well as anybody
among them.
I have spoken of one way of looking at the matter,
-that which we may call the sectarian or dogmatic
way. The other is what, for distinction, we may call
the scientific way: that, namely, which we take as
students of the laws of thought, or of religious de-
velopment in a broad sense. In other words, it is
the history of a Movement we are to study, not the
attitude of a Sect.
Not that Unitarianism has generally been true in
thought to what it is in fact. It is much easier to
figure itself as a sect than as a movement away from
all sects,—from a dogmatic towards a purely scientific
conception of religious truth. But this latter view is
that which we shall have to take, if we would do any
justice to its history.
In particular it is necessary, to explain the many
inconsistencies in that history. I do not say, to
apologize for them. I have not the least intention of
saying a word in apology. I may perhaps have to
speak of a good many things as a critic, but certainly
not as an apologist. In a very near and special
sense Unitarianism is my birthright, which it would
be dishonorable as well as painful to disown. As to
that, I am entirely content with the position in which
4
ANTECEDENTS.
Providence has placed us; and I do not think we
need to look far along the line of our history to find
abundant matter of pride—if we choose to indulge
it-in our antecedents and our record. That, among
the rest, it will be my business to show if I can.
The historical view which I propose to take is
necessary, then, for justice to the Unitarian movement,
whether as regards its opponents or its friends. On
one hand, you would get from the written statements
of Unitarians a notion that, however it may be with
their opinions, their method differs from the Orthodox
only by a hair's breadth, being just a little more pre-
cise, rigid, and scrupulous in its exposition of partic-
ular passages and texts, while avoiding mystery and
bringing poetry down to the level of plain sense.
On the other hand, a broad popular judgment,
which it cannot conciliate or escape, holds Unitarian-
ism responsible for a radical drift, thinly covered by
conservative phrases, or hidden from itself, perhaps,
by the mist of pious feeling. It is very important
for our own honesty and self-respect that we should
know how much of this is true. Unitarianism has
educated, it has also enlisted, a great variety of opin-
ion: is there any real unity behind this diversity?
It claims to be one form of religious doctrine; namely,
the Unity of the Godhead: but does its name after all
mean anything more than "unity of spirit" among
its adherents, — if, indeed, so much as that? And
these are questions to which it seems impossible to
give any other answer than an historical answer.
They must be met by the record, not of opinion, but
of fact.
*To
•
LO
WHAT IS ITS TASK?
Moreover, in no one thing has the independence
claimed by Unitarians been more freely asserted than
in their criticism of themselves and of one another.
This, in fact, is one standing charge of weakness in
them. Still, in matters of this sort, honesty is a good
deal more important than strength, especially than a
false show of strength. It is rather to their credit
that there is little factitious unity among them.
Their efforts after unity have been not much in the
way of suppression and exclusion; mostly by way of
merging outspoken differences in a common sentiment
or a common work. Their very title some of them
have disowned in the name of a broader Christianity
or a broader humanity. This breadth, this vagueness,
has been inevitable, under the condition of things
they stood in. But it is mere justice to acknowledge
the fact of it, with whatever credit it may deserve; at
least to recognize its value in attempting the special
problem that had to be met.
For that problem will appear more radical and
difficult in proportion as we feel the fundamental
change we undergo in passing from a dogmatic to a
scientific method in religious things.
I will not anticipate here what will appear more
plainly as we get farther on; except to say that, far
from accepting the methods of physical science, it is
deliverance from them we seek, in establishing those
of what we may rightly call religious science. The
question of method is far deeper than that of any
application or result of a given method; and a change
of theological method means a great revolution of
religious thought. That such a revolution—distantly
5
6
ANTECEDENTS.
heralded by the controversies of the Reformation-
is in full sweep in the religious world, I must take
for granted, not seek to prove. I have only to say
further, by way of preface, that Unitarianism could
hold no more honorable historical position than as
consciously aiding in that larger movement, and do
no more honorable task than to help, ever so little,
towards that higher intellectual and spiritual life
which it betokens.
The name Unitarian, it is perhaps needless to say,
has been given by general consent to that style of
theology which is unable to see, or refuses to see,
a distinction of persons in the Godhead, whatever
that may be interpreted to mean.
In this sense,
Mahometans are called, and very justly called, a
Unitarian sect, or rather a vast group of Unitarian
sects. They have even been called a Christian sect,
since they hold Jesus to have been one of the six
great prophets, along with Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, and Mahomet. And, in fact, their indignant
and intolerant proclamation of the divine unity was
aimed at the fantastic corruptions of Eastern Chris-
tianity quite as much as at the multitude of Arabian
idols.
But that is simply a term of intellectual definition.
As we understand the word, it defines those who
belong within the broad circle of Christendom, and
not to any of the outlying circles. Those who hold
it generally insist very positively-even if somewhat
dryly, and with a lack of Orthodox reverence and
fervor on the absolute supremacy, nay, the absolute
perfection of Jesus as a divinely appointed teacher
M
7
and guide; and those who do not state it quite so
dogmatically nevertheless hold that the gospel pro-
claimed by Jesus contains the key and the inspiration
of that vast religious and moral force known as
Christianity, and is in fact the solution, from the
highest point of view, of the knottiest problems that
touch human character and conduct. So that the
bleak monotheism of Mahometanism does not come
into the account, any more than the philosophical
monotheism of Plato and Cicero, in a fair historical
view of what the name Unitarian implies.
Again, not only the earliest Christian belief — that
of the first disciples and of the New Testament was
really (as we think) unitarian; but, after the doctrine
of Christ's divinity became dominant, there were
many sects called heretical, which held various forms
of unitarianism, or near approaches to it, Sabellian,
Arian, Nestorian, and the rest, which there is no
need to consider here, since they were soon overborne
by the immense sweep of the current of church be-
lief, or else suppressed by the heavy hand of church
authority. Except for mere antiquarian curiosity, we
have to do only with those forms of it which have
arisen in modern times, that is, since the contro-
versies of the Reformation.
THE LIMITS OF UNITARIANISM.
It happens, too, that that form of it which arose
during the Reformation period has had very little
effect on later opinion; at least on that current of
opinion which sets towards us. There were Unita-
rians of the school of Socinus, learned, critical, honest,
devout; but a more scrupulous orthodoxy succeeded
in turning their name into a byword of reproach.
8
ANTECEDENTS.
The name Socinian has been often cast against mod-
ern Unitarians; and has always been disclaimed by
them, as belonging to a phase of rationalism which
they had nothing to do with, while they were quite
free.to profess honor and respect to the founders of
that school. Again, there has been a distinct Uni-
tarian tradition eastward in Europe, forming a current
(it would seem) quite independent of western opinion,
whose names of honor are the Polish brethren, and
the careful scholars of Transylvania, only lately known
to us by personal communication. With these, too,
our inquiry has nothing practically to do.
Still further, to narrow our field within easy com-
pass, quite a number of religious bodies exist which
are really unitarian in belief, though they do not
take this as their recognized name, and stand outside
this particular movement. Thus the Swedenborgians
acknowledge only one Lord, and him only in the
person of Christ. The Universalists are generally
unitarian in theology; but with a powerful denomi-
national organization of their own, and starting, in
their doctrinal history, with a view of the atonement,
and of its universal efficacy, which parts them still
more widely from Unitarians than from the Orthodox
sects. The "Christian" sect is unitarian; but on the
basis of a rigid scripturalism, and with antecedents
that separate it completely in spirit from what is
historically known as such. And among the forms.
in which Orthodoxy is held by liberal and cultivated
minds, there are some which can hardly be distin-
guished, in any fair analysis, from a very common
phase of the Unitarian belief.
$
UNITARIANISM IN ENGLAND.
9
Now I am not dealing with the matter philosophi-
cally or dogmatically, but only historically; and so
it is necessary to set aside all these outlying forms,
though some of them are extremely interesting and
important. I have to do only with that distinct
series of antecedents which has determined the exist-
ence of Unitarianism as we know it, and has shaped
the character of its belief. And these antecedents do
not carry us, at present, beyond England and America.
And besides, as Unitarianism has had quite a differ-
ent history in these two countries, I shall refer, very
briefly only, to a point or two of the history of
opinion in England before coming to that which
really concerns ourselves.
M
The names of Milton, Locke, and Newton are
frequently cited as the three great early glories of
English unitarianism. Let us stop a moment and see
what those great names stand for.
Milton's unitarianism was first clearly brought to
light in his work on Christian Doctrine, of which the
manuscript was found in 1825. It shows that the
reflection of his later years, turned upon the great
mass of sacred learning he had gathered in his labo-
rious life, led him, on grounds of simple interpretation
of the Bible, to an opinion-a certain qualified
Arianism strange and daring then, though as dif-
ferent from what would be called scientific criticism
now as from the high Calvinistic orthodoxy of his
younger days.
The names of Locke and Newton show that the
unitarian opinion-held by them in a very grave and
reverent temper, widely removed from radical dissent
•
10
ANTECEDENTS.
made part of that great movement of reason and
science which dates from their day. No names were
or perhaps are held in so high honor by the average
English mind as those two. Their influence was
immense in their own day and after, and is a strong
force even now. Newton's name is even reverently
cited by Englishmen as that of the greatest intellect
ever created, and probably, all things considered, the
greatest man. Locke, more than any one else, guided
the broad movement of English speculation, as it has
swept on down to our own time. He did not give his
name to any school in theology professedly unitarian,
though his own opinion lay that way. But his de-
fence of "The Reasonableness of Christianity" brought
religion directly to the bar of reason and argument,
away from the tribunal of church authority and
dogmatism. The great rationalistic theologians of
the English Church followed his lead, at their head
Samuel Clarke, whose orthodoxy was as liberal and
easy as that of the devouter school of Unitarians now,
In short, he has as distinctly the repute of being an
Arian as Milton has, that is, owning a Christ above
all ages and before all worlds, which is also a favorite
form of the elder unitarian speculation.
But it was not so much in the Church as outside
the Church that the rationalistic movement in theol-
ogy was strongest. There sprang up early in the last
century a remarkable controversy, which has come
down with something of an ill name to our own time,
I mean the attack on the popular theology made by
the English Deists. They were not, any of them,
very able men, or very eminent scholars, by the stand-
M
+
11
ard of the present day, or even of their own. But
they made a great noise in the theological world, and
it will sometimes happen that some zealous preachers
even now go out of their way to kick the dead body
of their opinions, and to dye their obscure reputation
with a little deeper shade of prejudice.
And they had indirectly a very powerful effect.
They compelled the church theology to stand on its
defence with the weapons of free and open debate, —
an immense advantage every way. Moreover, by a
reaction from the excessive hardness and dryness of
this reasoning process, and the encouragement it gave
to the worldly temper of the established Church, there
came up into history that great heat and flame of
Methodism, which has been in some ways the most
remarkable and powerful force in Protestantism for
the last hundred and forty years. With the immense
power and skill of its organization, with the fervors
of its piety, with its active missionary zeal, with its
wonderful hold upon the rudest classes of all, and
the hardest to reach through religious sympathy,
Methodism was one of the indirect results of the
rationalizing spirit that had issued in the deistical
controversy, though by way of antagonism and re-
coil.
THE DEISTICAL CONTROVERSY.
But I am not giving a history of religion generally,
or of that controversy in particular; and so I will
only add, that when Christianity was driven by it to
appeal to the bar of learning, it chanced that the one
eminent scholar who did most to refute the asser-
tions of the Deists, and to satisfy the English mind
on the ground of history, was the eminent Unitarian
12
ANTECEDENTS.
1
scholar, Lardner, whose great work in defence of
historical Christianity is a standard to this day. I
do not say how far his argument satisfies the scientific
thinkers and historical students of our time, who
have shifted their ground a good deal from that of a
hundred years ago. I only say that, when modern
Unitarianism came to take shape, and began to be
known under its own name, it was as a defence of
Christianity on the grounds of reason against the at-
tacks of reason. That gave it a precise, dry, accurate,
and rationalizing temper from the start, from which
it has never been quite free, the very antipodes of
Methodism in temper and doctrine, so far as such a
thing could be within the recognized boundaries of
Christian belief.
Thus the Unitarian movement which we date from
was born of reason, and appealed to reason from its
birth. One other thing, and I have done with this
historical phase of it. Reason in those days meant
not merely argument against superstition, or enthu-
siasm, or false theology: it also meant assertion of
the rights of man. It was a time of revolution.
Jefferson was a unitarian of those days, of the more
daring and rationalistic school that sympathized with
French opinion, yet in his way a serious and even a
devout thinker. His assertions of human right, the
"glittering generalities" which he put in the Declara-
tion of Independence, were of the gospel of humanity
of that day; and by none was that gospel taken up
with more ardor than by the English Unitarians,
reasoners and independent thinkers as they were.
The most brilliant disciples of that new gospel
i
13
were the group of enthusiastic young poets, full then of
socialistic and humanitarian dreams,- Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Southey: Coleridge even figured once
as a Unitarian preacher. This great revolutionary
drift part reason, part sentiment-called out the
wrath and alarm of the saviours of society in those
days, Edmund Burke at their head, whose great gen-
ius bent from its path to insult and reject a petition
for justice presented in the name of the feeble sect of
Unitarians. His splendid harangues on the philos-
ophy of politics could admit nothing but eloquent
scorn for anything that challenged, however humbly,
the imperial majesty of Church and State.
THE ENGLISH UNITARIANS.
A religious movement, like a political revolution,
takes its character from what has gone before it, and
must be studied in its antecedents quite as much as
in its events and symptoms. For that reason it was
necessary to show how modern Unitarianism in
however small and unnoticed a way was an out-
growth of the general development of thought in the
last century in England. In reality, it probably
existed as much inside as outside the established
Church, in that great body of "latitude-men," or lat-
itudinarians of a scientific, free-thinking, and some-.
what worldly habit of mind, who were at once the
intellectual glory and the spiritual discredit of that
Church. I do not see why Paley, the most eminent
churchman of one hundred years ago, was not as
much a unitarian, to all intents and purposes, as
Price or Lardner.
M
But we are dealing with the body specifically
known as such; and that was necessarily a dissenting
14
ANTECEDENTS.
}
body. How it was historically connected with that
large and most honorable body of Nonconformists,
whose dissent was one of the noblest acts of deliber-
ate self-sacrifice on record, and how in particular it
claims to this day Presbyterian traditions and in-
heritance, it would take more historical detail than I
have time for, to explain. Just at present we have
to do only with one or two characteristics which
those antecedents left as a peculiar stamp upon it.
The two points thus most strongly marked in its
history are: first, that it was a movement of Reason
in sympathy with the scientific spirit; and second,
that it was a movement of Right, in sympathy with
the revolutionary spirit. These two characteristics it
will be necessary to keep in mind; because, however
disguised, they have marked its history ever since,
and because they explain the two sorts of controversy
that have always been going on more or less in the
Unitarian ranks. The two happened to be represented,
at the time I am speaking of (nearly a hundred years
ago), by the two very distinguished names of Priestley
and Price. The first, a gentle, brave, able man, with
high repute as a chemist at that day, was driven off
by a mob in Birmingham, about 1790, and spent the
last years of his life in Pennsylvania. Price, of a more
speculative and radical temper, was especially honored
with the hostility of Edmund Burke, in the zeal of
his repugnance, horror, and hate against the French
Revolution.
With such forerunners and defenders as these,
Unitarianism soon took the character by which it has
been best known, as a system of morality and piety
15
founded on the authority of a divine revelation in the
New Testament. This revelation was accepted in all
sincerity for its practical uses; and the only test of
its efficacy or truth was held to be its practical effect
on the life. At the same time, it was interpreted as
nearly by principles of pure reason as could be, with-
out forfeiting its distinctive character as revelation.
This, it did not enter into the religious mind of that
generation to deny. The Deists of England and the
French philosophers - including such disciples of
theirs as Thomas Paine-it repudiated as distinctly
and almost as indignantly as did the more orthodox
sects.
RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.
•
The real character of the Unitarian body was a
quiet, unostentatious, domestic, and very genuine
piety; a wholesome, sound, perhaps rather common-
place morality; with very little of what would be
called emotion, enthusiasm, or the more ardent phases
of the religious life. Coleridge says that when he
was a Unitarian he used to preach sermons on politi-
cal economy, and rather implies that that was the
fashion of the day. But, in point of fact, there was
a solid religious background of Unitarian thinking.
Its acceptance of the Christian revelation was quite
positive and explicit, though as far as possible from
anything speculative or mystical. Revelation, to
Unitarians, was a foundation divinely laid, and be-
yond question of man's reason, on which the human
structure of common-sense and morality was to be
built. Reason should go as far as reason could with-
out disturbing that foundation. And all that is
peculiar in the Unitarian system of belief, or style of
16
ANTECEDENTS.
.
reasoning, follows naturally and easily enough from
that one thing.
To begin with: all speculative inquiries about the
existence of God, the immortal life of the soul, and
the foundation of duty were superseded by the very
simple and downright theory of revelation accepted
by the Unitarians. The miraculous narrative of the
Bible being once taken as proved, all the rest followed
as matter of course. The miracles themselves, ac-
cepted as facts, proved the existence of a God who
acted upon human affairs personally and directly, and
from motives which could easily be inferred and ex-
plained to the common mind. The resurrection of
Jesus-that and that alone, verified as a fact of his-
tory was the sufficient, the only, the unanswerable
proof of man's immortality; the more valid, because
Jesus was not God but a man. The positive declara-
tions of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on
the Mount were the real foundation of authority and
sanction of moral duty. The definite warnings and
predictions of the Parables, of some of the Epistles,
and of the Book of Revelation, were the real and only
ground of anticipating any divine judgment of right
and wrong. Even the details of history were held,
in the early Unitarian schools of exposition, to be
precisely and accurately predicted by the Hebrew
prophets and in the visions of St. John the Divine.
Priestley, as complete a rationalist in temper as ever
was, goes to work as sincerely as any Adventist, to
make the poetry of the Apocalypse correspond with
the events of modern history.
I have been thus explicit on this point, because it
INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER.
17
was held with great positiveness, and is that from
which modern Unitarianism dates, however far its
criticism or its speculation may have wandered since.
Taking it, too, for a point of departure, it will be easier
to follow the changes which have come about in the
course of time; and easier to measure he justice of
the charges which have generally been made upon the
system. As to that moderate or qualified supernat-
uralism, there was as much unanimity and heartiness
of belief in it among the early Unitarians as can be
found among any believers in any foundation of any
creed. The real characteristics of the movement came
out in the structure which was built upon it.
In the first place, it was characteristic of that
movement to put as reasonable an interpretation on
the language of the Bible as it would bear; and so it
really broke ground in the direction of a rationalism
which it honestly disowned. As a matter of course,
it took the reasonable explanation of such dogmas as
the trinity, the deity of Christ, the atonement, and
so on. It refused to accept any mysteries on these
matters: "Where mystery begins religion ends," it
was wont to say. It was always ready and glad to
get scientific explanations of Genesis, long before it
suspected that Genesis might not be inspired truth.
It pointed out with great satisfaction that the famous
text of the "three witnesses" was undoubtedly spu-
rious; and made something out of the freedom given
by various readings of other famous proof-texts. The
earliest critical edition of the New Testament of very
high authority-Griesbach's-was first published, I
believe, in England or here, at least first circulated
4
2
18
ANTECEDENTS:
and studied with any zeal, by Unitarian scholars.
Some of these were relieved to find that the first two
chapters of Matthew do not stand on quite such firm
ground as the rest, and that the narrative in Luke
says nothing distinctly of a miraculous birth of Jesus ;
and that so, without at all denying the truth of the
gospel, they might well believe (as doubtless the first
Christians did) that he was the son of Joseph as well
as of Mary. Some found the account of the Tempta-
tion easier to believe by supposing that the tempter
was a Pharisee, or some emissary of the Jews, who
wished, as it were, to feel beforehand the pulse of the
new movement, or to break its force. Some found
the Transfiguration best explained as an allegory or
a dream.
These and other like interpretations led to the
charge of playing fast and loose with the sacred nar-
rative, and of explaining things by explaining them
away. But the attempt was made in entire good faith,
by men who held quite seriously to what they received
as the central fact of a real revelation, and who hon-
estly supposed they were doing good service by com-
mending it all the better to reasonable minds. They
did not see that to other minds, more positive and
ardent, there are no degrees of difficulty more or less,
when once they are on the supernatural plane: take
it as miracle or take it as poetry, to such minds it is
the exercise of the understanding itself that is offen-
sive on such matters. The half-way rationalism of
the Unitarians did the good work of training several
generations in a natural, sweet, reverent, and whole-
some piety; but it never has succeeded in making its
ETHICAL CHARACTER.
19
own form of belief acceptable to the popular religious
mind.
In the second place, it was characteristic of that
movement that the interpretation it put upon doctrine
was always a moral interpretation. Dogmatism was
never allowed to dictate terms to conscience. A nat-
ural explanation was eagerly sought for the Fall of
man, which was explained away into hereditary ten-
dency, corruption of example, or infirmity of will.
Election, predestination, perseverance, free grace, jus-
tification, were all reduced from the plane of dogma
to that of metaphysics, and from this again to that of
common-sense. Nothing was suffered to interfere with
the consciousness of moral liberty, as the only ground
of moral judgment of right and wrong. The atone-
ment of human guilt by the sacrifice of an innocent
being was sheer horror and blasphemy in such a view.
Eternal punishment, for any sin that could be com-
mitted by a short-lived mortal, was something to be
thought of with amazement and awe. The language of
some passages seemed quite plain, it might be per-
ilous to deny it outright; but, if true, it must at any
rate mean that moral guilt affects the soul itself so
deeply that it can never quite recover, certainly not
that that horror is arbitrarily inflicted by an inexorable
God. And, as this rationalizing temper gained a lit-
tle courage, it came to occupy pretty distinctly the
ground of restoration in the dim future, and to bear
it out with an anxious interpretation of the threaten-
ing texts.
G
Thus Christianity, or the doctrines of revealed re-
ligion, came to be interpreted as a system of divine
20
ANTECEDENTS.
TRUTH adapted to reason and common-sense, while
resting on a foundation strictly miraculous and super-
natural; and as a system of human DUTY, or morality,
resting on the same sanction, but wholly disengaged
from metaphysical dogma. The actual duties of life
were gravely, sincerely, and piously accepted, its
religious duties as well as its moral duties, whatever
the enemies of the system may have supposed. I do
not believe that the recognized offices of piety and
worship, as well as those of honesty and charity,
were ever more tenderly, seriously, and faithfully per-
formed, than by the adherents of a system so unjustly
represented as one of mere negation. The fervor, the
passion, the stir of emotion, the warm enthusiasm that
make religion a mighty power in the soul, to move
whole multitudes at once, these. made no part of
the Unitarian conception or experience of it. And a
lack of genuine sympathy with the more popular forms
of Christianity —most likely, of an adequate under-
standing of them was doubtless a great weakness.
in that system, as well as the source of suspicion and
popular dislike.
This weakness on the emotional side was the
greater pity, because under a proud and powerful
Establishment, like that of England, a dissenting sect
is at best in a somewhat narrowed and depressed
condition; and, for its self-respect as well as its vital
power, it can ill spare the strength which only reli-
gious zeal or intellectual enthusiasm can give. We,
whose early growth was sheltered by a modest
Establishment of our own, may well honor that fear-
less honesty, that sincerity of conviction, that denomi-
UNITARIANISM IN ENGLAND.
21
national loyalty, which have been the life of English
Unitarianism. It has, besides, its calendar of names
which it delights to honor. And, in particular, we
cannot overestimate its gain, in these later years,
from the great literary and philosophical eminence,
the superb ethical ideal, and the high plane of reli-
gious thought, of its best known intellectual leader,
James Martineau.
But I have not set out to criticise this earlier
Unitarian movement, only to state fairly what it was.
It seems to me that the view now given of it—its
antecedents and its characteristics
may help show
how and why it came to be what it was, and make our
judgment of it more intelligent and just. Without
going into detail, I think we have now seen sufficiently
what the doctrine really was, when first it found a
recognized name and place. We know something of
its strong points and its weak points; and are pre-
pared to understand the phases it has worn during the
three periods of its history in this country, lasting
something over sixty years.
:
t
1
II.
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
THE
HE term Unitarian has been known in this
country as the name of a religious body since
the year 1815. This period, again, may be divided
into three, which, for convenience, we may call the
time of its Growth, including its controversy with
the Orthodox sects; the time of Criticism, or of in-
ternal controversy among the parties in its own body;
and the time of Construction, that is, of scientific
criticism on one hand, and of denominational organ-
ization on the other.
G
Each of these periods, again, is best known by the
name of some representative man: the first by that
of Dr. Channing; the second by that of Theodore
Parker; and the third by that of Dr. Hedge, if we
take it on the speculative side, or by that of Dr.
Bellows, if we take it on the emotional, denomi-
national, or constructive side. It so happens, how-
ever, that neither of these names, except the last,
belongs very closely to the denomination as such.
Dr. Channing never desired to be known as a Uni-
tarian, and had a strong distrust of all denominational
òr sectarian names. Theodore Parker, while always
asserting his right to rank with the Unitarian body,
was for almost all the time of his public life in sharp
¿
23
and personal controversy with the great majority of
its members. Dr. Hedge, probably the ablest, deep-
est, and most widely cultivated intellect that the
denomination has embraced, is essentially a philo
sophical student and thinker; and, while he has
given as much impulse as any man to its thought,
and direction to its higher culture, he cannot be said
to have done anything towards shaping those definite
opinions by which a religious body is more popularly
known. And it is not so much for opinion as for in-
spiration and organizing force that the Unitarian body
is indebted to Dr. Bellows, whose splendid enthusiasm,
generous range of sympathy, and magnificent work-
ing force may almost be said to have saved the de-
nomination alive for whatever tasks may lie before
it in the future.
THREE PERIODS.
The three dates which we may assign as the be-
ginning of these periods are the years 1815, 1836,
and 1860. No dates like these can be quite accurate
as marking limits in the history of opinion. The
thoughts of one generation melt into those of another
like the tints of the sky after sunset. Still, each of
them registers a definite fact, which may serve as well
as another to start from. The first, as I said, marks
the year when the Unitarian body in this country be-
gan to be known by this name, which till then had
not been acknowledged or bestowed. The year 1836
may be taken, as well as any, as the birth-year of the
Transcendentalism which had so much to do in shap-
ing the form of liberal opinion we have known since;
at least, for its emergence in the field of theology, for
it was in that year that "the first gun of a long battle "
24
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
was discharged, in a review by Mr. George Ripley of
Martineau's "Rationale of Religious Inquiry," pre-
senting views which were at once keenly and publicly
attacked by Mr. Andrews Norton. The year 1860,
again, dates not only the death of Theodore Parker,
which brought to a close the sharpest personal con-
troversy within the Unitarian ranks, but the moment
of time when the great moral debate of our era was
brought victoriously into the field of politics, and
events began visibly to lead to the merging of all
lesser controversies in the one absorbing struggle for
the nation's life. Since then, new bearings have been
taken, other issues appear, and other methods are be-
coming familiar in the field of speculative thought.
·
I shall hope to make these periods and parties more
distinct in the course of the sketch which I propose
to draw of the denominational life during these sixty-
seven years. For it is a sketch that I propose, not a
history. I shall have very little to say of events, as
such; only of persons, with the opinions they repre-
sent, and the circumstances that defined their position
in the religious world, whether of thought or action.
Again, I have not to do with the course of opinion
in general, or the broader lines of the religious life,
as would be proper if my aim were purely historical;
but with a limited period, a narrow locality mostly,
and a single group of persons, or series of groups, all
belonging within the same general range of ideas. If
this is what is meant by speaking sometimes of Uni-
tarianism as a "family affair" and a " Boston notion,"
I shall for the present admit the charge, at least not
question it. Unitarianism is, in fact, to a great ex-
UNITARIAN ENTERPRISE.
25
tent a local growth: it has had but little of a temper
of propagandism, and a rather scanty denominational
history. I have sometimes thought that its real
comfort and pride in former days, to speak it honestly,
were in its narrow range, its family likeness, its ab-
sence of sectarian activity or ambition. There is
next to nothing to tell of enterprise and adventure;
or rather, while there have been noble individual
examples, there has been comparatively little of con-
certed, well-planned denominational action.
The denomination— that is, the men composing it
- have never been stingy; none less so. It would
be within bounds to say that their gifts for religious,
charitable, and other public objects (especially edu-
cational), outside their very liberal scale of church
expenses, could be reckoned by a good many millions
of dollars in these last fifty years. By far the largest
part of this has been put quietly out of sight in col-
leges, in theological instruction or publications, in
home missions and works of charity, in remote
churches, and so on, and has never made a figure in
denominational reports. In fact, there has been a
great shyness, a very unnecessary modesty and reti-
cence, if not a positive dislike, among some of the
most generous Unitarians, of anything that looked
like sectarian glory: Mr. Amos Lawrence, for exam-
ple, one of the most intelligent and liberal of mer-
chants, gave, it is said, to orthodox institutions twice
over what he did within the lines of his own de-
nominational connection. This peculiarity, if not
eccentricity of character, has to be taken into ac-
count, in summing up the position of Unitarianism
26
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
2
in America, and in making any estimate of it as a
working force.
There is another point as to which one should speak
with some reserve, which yet is really necessary to
be taken into account in our review. It is implied in
what I have already said of the Unitarian body being
represented by a group of men quite independent of
one another as thinkers, but standing personally in
very near relations together. I should desire in this
view to bring you, if I could, one step nearer to this
group, nearer to a personal interest in the men who
made it, and to a personal acquaintance with them.
This is the more necessary, because Unitarian opinion
has always been an individual thing. No one ever
claimed to speak as responsible for the thoughts of
other men, or as holding them responsible for his.
Nothing, in fact, except a personal acquaintance which
goes behind the spoken or published word, entitles
one to speak with any confidence of the position of
individuals in a group of men so entirely independent
of one another, -independent, I mean, as to opinion;
independent, except it be in the way of a common
sympathy and culture, and a mutual good-will and
respect.
This I may do with the more confidence here,
because the lifetime of the denomination itself is
easily embraced in the memory of many of its older
members, and is not many years longer than my own.
As a child I was brought up in the midst of all its
influences, within hearing of all its earlier controver-
sies, and with a child's natural interest and pride in
the names which were considered then to do it honor;
27
while my earlier university and professional life was
just when the controversies of the second period be-
gan to take shape and force, bringing me into relations
more or less close with most of the men who gave its
particular stamp and coloring to the movement which
I am trying to interpret.
I will recall here- not going outside the lines of
that personal acquaintance just referred to a few
of these representative names. There was the ven-
erable Aaron Bancroft, father of the historian, and
pioneer of liberal theology in central Massachusetts;
Dr. Channing, who for more than thirty years was
more closely identified than any other with the de-
nominational thought and life; the Henry Wares,
father and son, who were both in a very special sense
associated with the foundation and earlier history of
this School; George Putnam, their kinsman by mar-
riage, long the most brilliant and admired preacher of
the Boston circle, whose clear argumentative state-
ment commanded the respect of trained lawyers,-
whose large sense matched the worldly wisdom of mer-
chant and financier, the eloquent orator of homely
morality and the religion of every-day life, which his
touch transfigured to poetry and splendor; Orville
Dewey, in whom thought is more intimately blended
with emotion than in any other I can recall, — whom
I have heard Dr. Putnam call the greatest preacher
that probably ever had been or would be, who
seemed to make the pulpit a confessional, whose
large and brooding intellect set itself to interpret the
deeper experience of the Christian life,—whose mind
was generously open, till long past eighty, to the lat-
SOME UNITARIAN PREACHERS.
A
Sİ
28
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
est methods or discoveries in the pursuit of truth;
President Walker, whose shrewd wisdom, generous
tolerance, wide philosophic culture, and dignity of
character were not more remarkable than the cordial
and kindly sympathy he always had for younger
men; those three most eminent theological scholars
of their day, Norton, Palfrey, and Noyes, whose best
work was given to theological education here; John
Pierpont, tender religious poet and high-tempered
pulpit warrior, proud, irascible, always eagerly press-
ing home some sharp point of his generous and hot
conviction; Ephraim Peabody, the beloved minister
of King's Chapel, whose face was a benediction, — in
whom gravity, sweetness, and a cautious wisdom.
were blended in a combination as rare as it was
lovely; Theodore Parker, the generous, dauntless, in-
corrigible apostle of free thought, the heroic leader in
social and political reform, pioneer of the many who
in these latter years have forsaken the ancient ways;
Ezra Stiles Gannett, the eloquent and noble colleague
of Channing, most fervent and devoted of men, whose
conscience, morbidly acute, was burdened with every
grief and sin of the city where he did his work, —
whose burning speech almost inspired the cool temper
of Boston Unitarianism with his own missionary zeal,
-
of whom it may well be said that ten such men
would have carried Unitarianism like a prairie fire
from border to border of our country; Thomas Starr
King, that bright electric light of liberal theology,
whose flame went out, alas! on the Pacific coast
eighteen years ago, whose memory is wonderfully
fresh and near to any who knew him, as the most
SOME UNITARIAN LAYMEN.
29
genial of friends, the most cheerful and instructive of
companions, the most lucid, swift, and radiant intel-
ligence that it has ever been our joy to know.
To these I should add a few names of eminent lay-
men best known to the general public, and variously
representing the Unitarian fellowship and idea: John
Quincy Adams, notably the one most thoroughbred
statesman that our country has produced, put in office
by Washington in early manhood, an eloquent lecturer
in this University, experienced in diplomacy at sev-
eral European courts, and after his presidency the
veteran champion of the national honor in the House
of Representatives; his cousin Judge Cranch, the
noble, upright, sweet-hearted, and devout Chief-Jus-
tice of the District of Columbia for more than forty
years; President Quincy, last of the grand old Boston
Federalists, who died at the age of ninety-three, the
most honored citizen of New England; Chief-Justice
Shaw, one of the most learned of American jurists,
and solidest in judgment on the bench, which he
dignified for nearly thirty years; Edward Everett,
the most cultivated intellect, probably, that has ever
taken part in our national counsels; Charles Sumner,
chivalrous and fearless champion of the Higher Law
in the darkest crisis of our history; Governor Andrew,
who more than any other man carried the heart of
New England with him through the war; Ralph
Waldo Emerson, too, in early life a Unitarian
preacher, now everywhere recognized as first in the
highest department of our native literature, so lately
gone that it is as if he were still among us. serene,
eloquent, beloved, in the sphere he made and bright-
30
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
&
ened by his radiance; these, with Bryant and Long-
fellow, and a host of other names that have adorned
the literature of our country, belong to the history of
New England Unitarianism, and ought not to be
spared from the briefest record that attempts to trace
its character.
When each of the names here noted recalls a dis-
tinct personal reminiscence, and most of them a per-
sonal relation more or less intimate and dear, you
will not wonder that I find it difficult to say, out of
hand, just what the Unitarian opinion is on any
given matter, or what it is that Unitarians believe
in general; or that I am a little impatient that they
should ever be judged by their theology, which was
so small a fraction of either their religion or their
life!
Such men as most of those here named could not
be- I may say, could not afford to be-dogmatists,
enthusiasts, sectarians, propagandists of their own
opinions. As for us others, it is simply a privilege
and honor to count as the most obscure and undis-
tinguished in such a company. Unitarians have not
been united by fidelity to any creed, but by sharing,
each in his own way, a common spirit and life. For
myself, I have spoken to more than a hundred and
fifty of their congregations, and have met groups or
families of their communion in numerous other places
in this country and abroad, everywhere and always
finding myself equally at home. And thus the phrase
"common spirit and life" has a very distinct meaning
to my mind, quite different from what it would be if
I only copied it out of a book.
IT WAS NOT A SECT.
31
I have said that the Unitarian body in this country,
either in its origin or in its history, was not a Sect in
the common understanding of that term. It has had
no creed, no platform, no policy, as a sect; and it is
only of late, and rather feebly, that it has made any
effort to propagate itself aggressively within the lines
of other sects and creeds.
When I speak of sects in this connection, I do not
mean so much those bodies which had a recognized
historical existence before the settlement of this
country, and made part of its original religious or
even political organization, such as the Congrega-
tionalists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and
(as in this list I think I ought to include) the Metho-
dists. These are simply forms of church government
or organization, and may consist with any laxity of
opinion. Thus the main body of American Unitari-
ans are Congregational; those in England are or were
Presbyterian; the first church in Boston to declare
itself unitarian was Episcopal, and remains so in its
forms of worship; and preachers have continued in
the Methodist connection with avowed unitarian
opinions, with the full understanding and by the
strong urgency of their brethren.
All these, if I understand the matter rightly, dealt
originally with the whole population as such, in the
places where they were respectively established, and
were not special or outside organizations, made up of
those of a peculiar way of thinking. Among these
last, or sects proper, I should especially rank the
large, vigorous, strong, and aggressive bodies of the
Baptists and Universalists, which are founded each
32
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
upon an idea. Their organization, their policy, their
definite and aggressive creed, but in particular their
secession from other religious bodies in the name of
that creed, are what makes them Sects, as distinct
from the more general term religious body, church,
or communion. Now the Unitarians do not belong
to the former class, because their opinions distinctly
exclude them. They do not belong to the latter class,
because they have no distinct creed or policy of their
own. Yet again, as claiming a church polity, or
communion, and a recognized fellowship of their
own, they are quite as far removed from the ranks,
or rather from the scattered individualisms, of "free
inquirers" or "free religionists," with whom they
would hold it the most glaring misunderstanding
to be confounded.
I have tried to say what the Unitarian body is not.
The question next comes, What is it?
To this the answer has been made, that it is like
one of those unincorporated districts of land which
are sometimes left out when the boundaries of towns
and villages have been marked out all round them.1
The soil may be as good, the farms may yield as large
an increase, the families may be as contented, pros-
perous, and happy; but they do not belong to any
known political organization.
That comparison will go a little way: it expresses
the fact of independence, but it does not express the
fact of unity. It leaves the look of the matter as if
Unitarian churches were only chance and random
gatherings, nuclei as it were of religious organization
¹ The comparison was made, very felicitously, by Dr. Putnam.
ITS CONGREGATIONALISTIC ANTECEDENTS.
33
and effort, in that large vague half of the community
which is sometimes lumped together as " unchurched."
Now this means too little, and it means too much.
It means too much, because it turns our thought
upon that wide chaos of opinion, incoherent and un-
formed, which, as "independent" or as "unchurched,"
already occupies full half our field of vision when we
look that way, and which is constantly enlarged by
the shelling off or the undermining of elements which
are not well compacted among our twenty or more
religious bodies. It means too little, because it over-
looks the one thing which gives a consistency and
unity to this particular body, and makes it possible
to gather its statistics, and in some degree to direct
its corporate action.
That one thing is the first thing of all which should
be made clear, if we would know either the history,
the character, or the present attitude of Unitarian-
ism. It is that, historically, it is the liberal wing of
the great Congregational body which founded the first
colonies in New England, and gave the law to Church
and State for more than two hundred years.
Of a
list of three hundred and sixty-six Unitarian churches,
one hundred and twenty or more (including a large
majority of those in Massachusetts) were original
local parishes formed under the first ecclesiastical
polity of the Puritan Congregationalists. Of these,
again, thirty-eight were founded before the year 1700,
including that first organized by the refugees in Ley-
den in 1602, eighteen years before the colony landed
on Plymouth Rock; and eighty more-that is, one
1
1 See "Year Book of the Unitarian Congregational Churches.”
3
34.
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
hundred and eighteen in all, or more than one third
of the entire number were established before the
war of the Revolution. Thus the church history of
Unitarianism in this country runs back five years
beyond the time of the colony at Jamestown, and
more than two hundred years before the name Uni-
tarian was either given to or accepted by one of its
congregations. I do not say the expression of uni-
tarian opinion; but the corporate history and the
ecclesiastical traditions belong to the Congregational
body at large, and not to that of a separate and pe-
culiar sect. That is to say, again, that Unitarianism
has received its full share of the original inheritance
of that great Puritan body which made the English
Commonwealth and the Pilgrim Colonies of America.
I
say this not at all to enter a claim which some
persons might be unwilling to allow, but simply to
state the historical fact of the case. This one fact
more than any other explains the nature and the
seeming inconsistency of the Unitarian record. That
is, while Unitarians have been mostly known for their
liberal opinion, for their defence of free inquiry, and
for their tolerance of out-and-out scientific or phi-
losophical radicalism, at the same time the temper
of the body at large has been mainly conservative.
The large majority of Unitarians, truth to say, have
been extremely annoyed and scandalized by the re-
sults to which younger, more restless, more bold and
positive minds have been led; while these, again,
have been full of angry wonder and reproach that
any limits at all should be set to that free speculation
and inquiry to which they felt themselves invited.
·
35
The misunderstanding was inevitable. By their
history and antecedents Unitarians make as ancient
and conservative a religious body as any in this
country. They adopted, however, very early, liberal
principles of interpretation; and these, after the un-
pleasant shock of "radicalism" has been got well
over, will no doubt result in a serious, scholarly,
scientific, as well as independent criticism, noway
hostile to the organic religious life.
ITS EARLY CHURCH HISTORY.
The real origin, then, of the Unitarian body in this
country was, that a large proportion of the Congrega-
tional body in eastern Massachusetts, including all
the leading churches in Boston but one, had come,
from sixty to eighty years ago, gradually to adopt
liberal opinions-at first Arminian (or free-will) as
opposed to Calvinistic, and afterwards Unitarian as
opposed to Trinitarian.¹ Just how and why this
division of opinion had come about, it is not easy to
say. It corresponds nearly enough with the natural
division we always find among people of the same
general way of thinking, some rigid and strict, some
loose or liberal. In particular, it seemed to grow
from the influence, and to follow the widening circle
of culture, that went out from Harvard College,-
:
1 I think this was the case in every country town of large
population in eastern Massachusetts except three, Charlestown,
Andover, and Ipswich, which were kept from following the drift
of liberal opinion by the personal weight and influence of their
preachers at least this is true of the able and rigid Dr. Morse of
Charlestown. But this drift of liberal opinion reached back only
about forty miles, the great country towns of Worcester and Lan-
caster marking its western limit; while in the controversy that
followed, the population east of that line came to be about equally
divided.
\
36
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
then as now a chief centre of secular learning in this
country. The men who were most moved by this
influence, or who were in advance of it, were often
called by a phrase borrowed, I believe, from Robert
Boyle- the "Latitude-men about Cambridge." The
free-thinking of the Revolutionary period may have
had something to do, but I should think not much,
with this latitude of opinion.
The circumstance which more than any other
brought it into public notice and recognition was the
appointment of Henry Ware to the post of professor
of Divinity in Harvard College, in 1805. This was
strongly protested against at the time by the more
orthodox party, as bad faith to the founder of that
professorship, the eminent and generous London
puritan, Thomas Hollis; and it is deplored to this
day, with indignant grief, by that party, who do not
abandon their hope of seeing the University brought
back to the faith of the fathers.
G
This personal episode helps to explain a good deal
of the sharp tone in the controversy that followed.
Still there was no breach in the Congregational ranks
for ten years after, nor a very open one for some years
later still. The forward steps that led to forming a
Unitarian party were in the way of literary and
scholarly criticism. It happened that a very brilliant
group of young men-cultivated, ardent, eloquent-
graduated from the University in those days, of whom
Edward Everett became best known to history; but
Joseph Stevens Buckminster-a preacher in Boston
for some five years, until his death in 1812 — had far
the strongest influence, by the singular grace of his
·
37
oratory, his wonderful social charm, his eager and
diligent enthusiasm as a scholar. Forty years after
his death, I have heard it told, there were Boston
merchants who could not speak of him without tears.
This bright circle of personal force and culture was
organized in the then famous "Anthology Club,"
which started one of the first literary and critical
journals of the country, the "Monthly Anthology,"
lineal predecessor of the "Christian Disciple,"
"Christian Examiner," and "Unitarian Review,"
which was really the harbinger and mouthpiece of
early Unitarian theology.
I shall not trouble you with any account of the
controversy which followed. It is admirably told by
Mr. William Gannett in his father's Biography, and
need not be told again. The details of battles and
skirmishes of opinion are apt to be a very dull part
of the history of any time, except where some strong
personal interest comes in. I wish, however, to il-
lustrate from another point of view the nature of the
change which was going on; and this I shall find it
easiest to do by a single example.
ITS LITERARY ANTECEDENTS.
As you know, by ecclesiastical law the Congrega-
tional Order made part of the original constitution of
New England. Each town must maintain a church
or parish organization, and every voter must be a
church-member. This old constitution of things was
not wholly done away in Massachusetts till 1833,
when the Voluntary system was fully adopted. Till
then, every citizen's tax-bill included a religious tax;
and, till 1820, that tax must be paid for the support
of a Congregational Church.
38
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
For example, my father was settled in 1816 as
minister of a country town. The settlement was for
life, and the salary was directly voted and paid by
the Town from the same fund that made the town
roads, supported the town schools, and paid for the
petty town police of constable, fence-viewer, and
local surveyor. Quite within my own recollection,
his ordinary household expenses were paid by drafts
on the town treasurer, exactly as they would be by
cheques upon a bank. One rigid old-school puritan,
Asaph Rice, had opposed and dissented from my
father's settlement on the ground of his liberal theol-
ogy; and probably the majority would have been
quite as well satisfied with a more orthodox preacher ;
but that did not prevent them all, Asaph Rice in-
cluded, from being good friends and contented parish-
ioners. Nor did the same thing prevent, for a while
at least, the common professional courtesies in neigh-
boring towns, from orthodox and liberal alike. Sect-
arian lines, since so sharply marked and so jealously
guarded, were only beginning to be known. The
charming simplicity of this arrangement only began
to be disturbed in 1827 by the formation in the vil-
lage of a little Baptist church, which was a great grief
to my father, since the first steps in it were taken by
near personal friends of his, who were conscientious
enough to tax themselves at the start the extra cost
of it, after paying their share to the support of the
legal Parish. This, of course, they felt to be a great
injustice,—as in fact it was; and in six years more
that hardship was removed by the law of complete
ecclesiastical freedom, under which we are now living.
:
39
Now a legal establishment can never be a sect,
properly speaking. It has got to meet not only the
average mind, but a great variety of minds. It must
include a wide latitude of opinion, and admit consid-
erable freedom of debate. It may be fairly doubted
whether the conditions of a general, manly, healthy,
liberal, charitable growth of religious thought are
ever so well met as in the breadth, the decency, the
broad tolerance of a religious establishment, when
sustained with general consent by a serious and in-
telligent population. Very great religious earnestness
it does not admit, at least it does not favor. The
"great awakening" under Jonathan Edwards was a
solitary phenomenon (which in fact banished him from
his Northampton parish), and the "revival" under
Whitefield was by a force from abroad. Both, it may
fairly be assumed, led to a reaction in the direction
of liberalism, which they helped full as much as they
opposed. The sober common-sense view of religion,
which makes it in the broadest way religion for the
people, is nourished nowhere so well, I think, as in
an establishment like that of a century ago in New
England, which sheltered the growth of manly liberal
unsectarian thought, which nurtured a generous and
growing scholarship, and which has left its mark on
nothing more deep and distinct than on the entire
Unitarian movement in this country, so far as it can
be traced to that source.
THE OLD PARISH SYSTEM.
In conclusion, I will speak very briefly of that
movement at the period when it still retained most
distinctly the features of its origin, and was repre-
sented by that group of strong and excellent men
40
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
24
whom I have spoken of before. This period may be
taken, roughly, as from forty to fifty years ago.
The general theory of Christianity as accepted at
this stage, which is sometimes called "old-school
Unitarianism," was (as President Walker was in the
habit of describing it) especially adapted to the mind,
shaped as it were to the demand, not of speculative
theologians, but of serious and educated laymen.
Such representative names as those of Judge White,
Judge Story, and Judge Shaw at once occur, when
we recall that period. These men clung to Christi-
anity with the tenacious hold of an honest reverence
and a strong conviction; with a trained masculine
understanding, also, which tolérated no affront to
reason or good morals. Paley and Lardner had es-
tablished the historical foundations: the structure to
be built upon them was that of rational piety, per-
sonal morality, and civic virtue. This was the manly,
dignified, and sober type of "Boston Unitarianism,"
a name never to be named without gratitude and
honor.
Lawyer-like, too, it was impatient, perhaps intol-
erant, of any questioning of the foundations. The
Bible, these men held, was a minister's credentials.
Make what abatement in the popular notion of it you
may and must: then take it, or else leave it, for what
it claims to be, a revelation of absolute authority
to declare the law of life, or to instruct the mind on
the highest conceivable truth. To their strong and
sober sense, Christianity, without a supernatural rev-
elation of truth, without miracles, without the divine
authority of Jesus, was a weak delusion, if not a
CHARACTER OF EARLY UNITARIANISM.
41
wicked and hypocritical pretence. The subtilties of
theologians, the refinements of criticism, were not for
their style of mind. Christianity was holy and ven-
erable to them, because it meant that virtue which
regulates the life and saves the State. In the words.
which I copy from the clear firm autograph of Presi-
dent Quincy, the accurate and perfect expression
of this mental temper,-"Human happiness has no
perfect security but freedom; freedom none but virtue;
virtue none but knowledge: and neither freedom, vir-
tue, nor knowledge has any vigor or immortal hope,
except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in
the sanctions of the Christian religion."
G
I wish to express, with all the emphasis of which
I am capable, my veneration and gratitude for these
noble men, and for the type of rational, manly, and
tender piety which they have left us. I will not in-
sult their memory by a single word of apology; by
arguing whether they, or those who have endeavored
to follow their lead, are to be vouchsafed the honor
of the Christian name.
Small honor to that name, if
they disclaim it or are deprived of it!
There are two sorts of people who do them and the
movement they represent a great injustice: those in
other sects or at a distance, who fancy something in
it cold, haughty, and exclusive; and the liberals of a
younger day, who think with a certain lofty disdain
of its strict and austere conservatism. But to those
of my own generation the life that was in its veins
gave the very mother's milk on which we were nur-
tured; and it is impossible to think of it without a
certain filial tenderness. Nay, such is the force of
42
NEW ENGLAND UNITARIANISM.
reverent habit, I am apt to think that Christianity,
in all its ages of evolution, and in all its numberless
forms, has never taken a type at once so free from
ecclesiastical pressure, and in itself so manly, sweet,
and noble. A faith which expressed itself in the
ideal thought of Channing, the Consolations and
Hymns of Greenwood, the tender wisdom of Ephraim
Peabody; a personal piety whose profession and aim
were the "Formation of the Christian Character;" a
charity which created the Fraternity of Churches,
and has made itself felt for fifty years in the tone
and pattern of every good work done in that com-
munity, these may very well challenge comparison
with anything its critics have to show; and may
very well make those of us who think we have out-
grown it pause to consider whether, for a generation
or two at any rate, we are likely to find anything so
good to take its place.
-
יו
:
•
III.
CHANNING.
IT
T was the great felicity of Unitarianism in this
country to be represented for twenty-five years
by the pure and eminent name of William Ellery
Channing. If anything could possibly disarm the
hostility of sectarian prejudice, if anything could
possibly enlist the affectionate pride and loyalty of
the body of which he was the acknowledged head,
it would be the elevated plane of thought, the fer-
vent yet passionless eloquence, the sweet and tender
piety, the transparent purity of conscience braced in
later life to an intrepid vigor, the single-minded de-
votion to the highest order of truth, of this great
religious leader.
I use these words with careful deliberation. I
have not myself always felt in fact, as I appreciate
now in deliberate review, his real intellectual emi-
nence. The bolder temper, the deeper learning, the
scientific habit, the intenser political passion, the
restless speculation, of the period that has passed
since his death, all serve to hide from us the grandeur
of the work he did, and its indispensable service in
educating the very best qualities of mind and soul,
on which we have to rely for the work most needed
in the future.
•
44
CHANNING.
For his own personality was not aggressive and
commanding, as that of most other men of equal
eminence. It was by persuasion and not impression
-by pressure (as Dr. Bellows once finely said of
him) and not by blows that he made his deep mark
on his own generation and on ours. Each single
quality of an intellectual leader, taken by itself,
might seem to be wanting in him. In all his writ-
ings it would be hard to find a daring thought or a
brilliant phrase. His own small communion has
produced or included much more learned scholars,
men of much deeper and broader speculative grasp,
preachers of far greater brilliancy, fervor, fancy, elo-
quence, and popular pulpit power, bolder and more
radical thinkers in the direction either of scientific
criticism or moral reform. Of the many eminent
names belonging, by nature or adoption, to the Uni-
tarian pulpit of New England, several have made
their mark in some one direction, and perhaps more,
sharper and deeper than Channing did, but none of
them near so broadly. None of them would be once
thought of — with the single exception of Theodore
Parker as having left the distinct impression of his
mind upon a religious or intellectual movement, to
which he had given tone and character; none of
them, with that exception, would be once thought of
as the recognized and unchallenged chief of such a
G
ajadaptat
-
movement.
That distinction is allowed, in our religious history,
unquestioned and ungrudged, to Channing alone.
And, as I said, I think it is justified by the most
critical and deliberate judgment of the case. But to
HIS EARLY LIFE.
make it appear just to those who were strangers to
the movement, in the absence of almost all those sa-
lient points which most easily catch the distant eye,
it is necessary to consider with some attention the
man himself, and the circumstances of his time.
The life of Dr. Channing extends just over sixty-
two years, from 1780 to 1842. His childhood was
spent at Newport, Rhode Island, where his mind re-
ceived a very serious bent from that eccentric, stern,
and godly old Calvinist, Dr. Hopkins, whose name
is best known from his famous tenet, that the true
test of fitness to be saved is willingness to be damned
for the glory of God. By that extraordinary tenet
the name "Hopkinsian" has been conserved in sec-
tarian tradition to this day. The boy Channing was
little of person, gentle and serious of temper; yet one
story is told, to his credit, of a time when that gentle
temper flamed out into wrath, and into something of
a school-boy fight, I believe, in defence of some
younger comrade.
No one who saw him in man-
hood would suspect that he had ever been capable
of wrath. That one flash of it was a symptom of
moral health.
-
45
His walks by the beach, and the fresh wind and
rolling surge of the Atlantic, did a good deal, he says,
to nurture a certain dreamy and devout sympathy
with nature: his spiritual horizon, all through his
life, kept always that level width. Excepting this,
and a native sensitiveness of organization almost
feminine, there was little to distinguish him at twenty
little, that is, of native genius or intellectual force
-from a goodly number of serious, generous, and
•
46
CHANNING.
cultivated young men who graduate year by year
from our American colleges. With him it was, with
them it is, a pure, high, consecrated aim.
His first larger experience of life was had in
Richmond, Virginia, where, I imagine, his position as
teacher helped to seclude him from any wide range
of social intercourse, as well as his own temper of
mind, and his moral repugnance to the state of society
there, which came out long afterwards in his hostility
to slavery. But, in particular, it was in the solitary
reflection of these years that he quite outgrew, and
firmly renounced, the narrow creed of his youth,
or what there was narrow in it, and found himself,
intelligently and consistently, in the ranks of liberal
thinkers.
M
I should say, however, that the process with him
was not one of criticism, hardly of investigation, but
an even, natural, and very devout religious growth.
Every step of it was taken, not merely with anxious
deliberation, but with a certain tender, solicitous, re-
morseful, conscientious, pleading piety and religious
discipline of soul, which make the record of those
years like the record of old saints and pietists. The
prospect was rather that of a morbid introspective
pietism, than of a manly, courageous, cheerful, and
healthy religious life, which it afterwards so largely
became.
To this somewhat hectic experience and temper of
that time we have to add a great loss of bodily health
and vigor from the exposures of his sea-voyage home.
Physically he was never a robust man, never, I should
suppose, well in health, after those years of his stay
↑
47
in Richmond. His stature was small, his frame at-
tenuated, his face thin. The clear wide brow, the
great, solemn, wistful eyes, the low, melodious, and
flowing speech, these were native gifts potent to
win through a strong and sweet persuasion; but they
were united in him with a physical frailty that might
seem to forbid the hope of any serious life-work, and
with a bodily frame that seemed but enough (to cite
again the words of Dr. Bellows) to anchor his soul to
the earth.
HIS PERSONAL TRAITS.
He was never quite an invalid, but he was always
a valetudinarian. In particular, he had a singular
sensitiveness to cold; and the recollection of many
of his friends will recall his presence, oftenest, at the
fireside corner of his warmly sheltered and softly fur-
nished room.
That soft and warm shelter he seemed
always to crave and need as much as a sick child.
What to a more vigorous man would be indolent
indulgence, with him was a necessity of life and the
condition of any working force. Circumstances gave
him, through all his working and declining years, this
necessary shelter, and screened him from the raw
wind of the world by the surroundings and the com-
forts of sufficient wealth. His virtue lay not in
manly struggle with difficulty and hardship, but in
the consecration of life-long leisure and ample oppor-
tunity to something very different from a selfish
luxury. He had as little of the storm and battle of
life as can fall to any serious man to encounter; but
was surrounded always by the respectful, affectionate,
vigilant, and almost too obsequious homage and love
of near friends. Ideally, his thought took in the
48
CHANNING.
•
widest sweep of duty and every sacred sympathy
and homely obligation that bind man to his kind:
personally, he was perplexed, shrinking, helpless, in
the presence of any one of the rougher tasks that
would bring him face to face with coarse suffering
and want. The sensitive, womanly temperament,
with the self-consideration that in an invalid becomes
the necessary instinct of self-defence, made some per-
sons quick and harsh to judge what seemed to cross
his own serious pleadings and maxims of self-denial;
but no person was ever brought very near to him,
who went for sympathy or counsel, or in simple
friendship, that did not bear the same testimony to
the infinite sweetness, elevation, serenity, the abso-
lute freedom from personal passion and desire, which
were the root of his extraordinary moral power.
For a very genuine and great moral power this
tenderly nurtured mind became, and is felt to this
day — warm, life-generating, springlike — among all
the more turbulent forces that play upon the world.
The process, too, by which it grew to this great spirit-
ual predominance and power was as gentle and patient
as the spring growth in which its buds began to
swell. Somewhere about the age of thirty his name
began to win upon the public ear as a preacher of
singular fervor and beauty of utterance, along with
the more brilliant reputation of Buckminster, then at
its height. It is not easy to describe, though it is
perhaps not very difficult to imagine, the manner and
gifts that won their way so surely. In his own place
in the Federal Street pulpit I heard him only once,
and saw him only once or twice besides, — barely
49
enough to verify the impression which others have
recorded. From the stilted and awkward height of
that old-fashioned lofty mahogany pulpit, with its tall
balustraded flights of stairs, his face beamed down,
it might be said without exaggeration, like the face
of an angel, and his voice floated down like a voice
from higher spheres. I cannot think of any other
preacher of those who can fairly be called popular, to
whom that distant altitude, so lifting him away from
his congregation, might be called even a positive
help, as it seemed to be with him.
AS A PREACHER.
Dr. Channing's voice, again, was of rare power and
attraction, — clear, melodious, flowing, slightly plain-
tive, so as curiously to catch and win upon the hear-
er's sympathy: its melody and pathos in the reading
of a hymn were alone a charm that might bring men
to the listening, like the attraction of sweet music.
Often, too, when the signs of physical frailty were
apparent, it might be said that his speech was watched
and waited for with that sort of hush, as if one were
waiting to catch his last earthly words. All the
strength that was in the man went out from him in
pure spiritual fervor and uplifting moral force. Any
speech that could be called eloquent, or any eloquence
that could be called popular, could not possibly have
depended less than his on what are commonly re-
garded as oratorical gifts; could not possibly have
consisted more than his in the qualities which make
a pure, disembodied, spiritual radiance.
It follows directly from this, that that power
could not have been felt, at least could not have
been developed, in a resisting medium. It was
4
50
CHANNING.
the great felicity of Dr. Channing's experience, that
early in life he found his place in a sphere which
offered no hindrance, but rather invited out and wel-
comed just those qualities in which he was afterwards
so distinguished. His people included what was very
best of the serious, devout, conscientious, liberal-
minded who made the finest type of early Unitarian-
ism. As a sculptor would wish to work in marble of
the purest waxen lustre, as a musician would wish to
compose for instruments of the finest tone, so there
were men and women in that company whom it
would be such a preacher's highest joy and privilege
to win towards the higher life. A spirit "is not finely
touched but to fine issues." The inspiring, sympa-
thetic touch may come first from the speaker, but it
must go back to him from the hearer, warm and
quick, before the speaker can become an orator,.-
which word means, not a declaimer, but one who
pleads with power and effect. Such effective plead-
ing, on the plane of high, pure, passionless, spiritual
truth, made the rare pulpit power of Dr. Channing;
and it was a power which largely grew from the har-
mony which he found, or made, in the atmosphere of
the place where his voice was heard.
It may be reckoned ten years of professional life
before his name began to be known publicly as a
leader in religious thought; and again fifteen more,
before it began to be heard in a wider sphere, as
it was for about ten years,
- in the discussion of the
gravest questions of morals and politics. So that his
professional life has three stages, — as preacher, as
theologian, and as reformer.
C
STAGES OF HIS WORK.
51
S
It is no part of my purpose to criticise or dicusss
the work of these three periods. That of the first,
in particular, would probably be found to be the treat-
ment of the ordinary pulpit topics, the nurture of
Christian piety, and the religious discipline of life,
distinguished from other men's rather by tone than
substance. The work of the later periods belongs in
large part to the general history of religious thought
or denominational annals, and to that of the broader
moral movements of the day, education, peace, tem-
perance, and antislavery. To turn rapidly the pages
of that noble half-century volume in which his dis-
cussions of those matters are gathered, along with
the earlier fruitage of his life, would give a fairer
view than any critical summing up of the range and
measure of his power. There is, however, a view to
be taken of his work which is quite necessary to un-
derstand the peculiar place it holds in our religious
development, and especially to show how it connects
itself with what went before and after in the par-
ticular movement of thought to which that work
belonged.
Of his gifts purely personal I have spoken, perhaps
enough, already. But there are two things, besides,
that are very characteristic of his mind, and that in
their combination seem best to define the nature of
the movement of which he was so eminent a leader.
The first was a very keen and almost morbid sense of
moral evil. This "conviction of sin" was quite as
genuine a fruit as any from the stern old Calvinistic
stock out of which his own faith grew. It differed
however in him, very widely, from the two forms in
52
CHANNING.
which it is most commonly found, and which are ap-
pealed to by religionists generally with most emphasis
and effect.
That sort of conversion, or religious crisis, of which
Augustine's is the most famous and Bunyan's the
most familiar type, could never have been the ex-
perience of Channing. It was when he was still a
child that he quite outgrew, on one side at least, his
liability to that great shock and catastrophe of relig-
ious fear. He had heard a sermon on the terrors of
the Lord, which to his childish mind seemed to wrap
life all around, and the bright world itself, in gloom
and dread: surely, he thought, if this is true, none of
us can ever smile again. But his father, who was a
serious man, seemed to feel none of this alarm, and
his cheerful unconcern, with his excellent appetite
at dinner, gave the boy at first a shock like jesting
at a funeral; but soon convinced him, once for all,
that the whole thing was unreal and untrue. The
grave sense of evil, the real "conviction of sin," was
not diminished; but, happily for that clear con-
science and sensitive organization, it never lay, to
his thought, against that lurid background of a uni-
verse of horror.
It was impossible, too, that his dreamy, meditative
boyhood, the simple purity of his country life, the
high and devout temper of thought so early trained,
should ever be made the groundwork of the keen self-
reproach, the passionate remorse, the agonized inward
struggle, which with so many men of saintly virtue
have been the narrow gateway of the higher life. It
must have been a calm ascent, and not a sharp con-
HIS SENSE OF MORAL EVIL.
53
flict against spiritual foes that beset the climbing.
That life was from the first a process, a culture, a
growth,—not a warfare, a fight, a victory. At least,
though every step in advance is in some sense a
conquest over something, the impression he kept of
it, and the lesson he would always enforce, was of a
method calm, even, and natural. I do not remember
that he hints anywhere at a knowledge or an un-
derstanding of spiritual conflict, such as one would
have to whom that conflict had been very real.
Whatever lack of intensity, of the deeper springs of
moral power, has been found in his life or writings
makes them so much the more genuine expression
of a religious nurture singularly passionless and calm,
and so the more characteristic of his special method
and power.
And, again, that conviction of sin was not intensi-
fied, as it is with many, by the spectacle of the grosser
wrongs or sufferings among men. His experience of
life was in the main placid, secluded, uneventful. It
is a wholesome contrast if we think of it in connec-
tion with the stern Calvinism inflicted on the gentle
and sensitive temper of the poet Cowper by John
Newton, whose earlier life had been spent as master
of a slave-ship. Of slavery, with some of its sor-
rows and wrongs, Channing did get a nearer view in
- Richmond; and these lay always close and heavy
upon his conscience. But even these-and, much
more, the inhumanities of street, factory, mine, hos-
pital, or prison-lay in his mind not so much as
vivid pictures of wrong inflicted and suffering en- '
dured, but rather as the shadow, intense and deep in
-
f
3
54
CHANNING.
quality but very dim in outline, which darkened his
broad and generous idealizings of human life.
He saw the particular fact, when his mind dwelt
upon it at all, in its broad relations. The right
thing was a spot of color, and the wrong thing a spot
of gloom, in a wide landscape, which he looked at
somewhat vaguely (as one might if a little near-
sighted), more with a poet's emotion than with an
artist's eye.
That keen and troubled sense of a deep
reality in what human life displays of evil was al-
ways with him, if nothing more, at least as a dim
background to relieve his far more vivid conception
of spiritual truth and right. But the action of his
imagination upon the facts and forms that made up
the picture was brooding and slow. So far as it af-
fected his appeals and efforts in behalf of goodness,
it was more in a vague, general way, to deepen the
tone, quicken the motive, and give distinct sense of
elevation to the religious life, than to intensify it by
the passion and the dread of sin. So that here, too,
a certain breadth and placidity, rather than vehe-
mence and depth, mark the quality of his power.
It is only against some opposing evil that any form
of goodness can be felt, as motive or as fact. It is
only as violation of the highest good our minds can
know, that we really feel the dread and power of
wrong. The Calvinistic scheme, which Channing
was taught in his youth, gave a very keen sense of
sin, in the soul or in the world, as enmity and rebel-
lion against the sovereignty of God. To us that
phrase has become a figure of speech, a symbol,
covering a relation of right and wrong which we can
"
55
see better, or think we can, under a different sort of
symbol.
The religious terror, almost we might even say the
religious awe, before God as sovereign and judge, has
greatly faded from the mind of a generation trained
to think of him as Father rather than Sovereign, as
Comforter rather than Judge. Some other opposite
must be conceived, over against the passions, tempta-
tions, and wrongs of life; or else our religious theory
slides towards a futile Optimism on the one hand, or
a gloomy Fatalism on the other. Our moral sense
craves some point of resistance and relief. The
majesty of Goodness may not be as "awful" to our
thought as it was to Milton's, who makes the King
of Darkness quail before it,—though only for a mo-
ment. But at least that majesty must be something
real, something that can be set in contrast over
against our human degradation, guilt, and pain. This
upward look, this necessary contrast, this sustaining
force, Channing found in his favorite doctrine of
the dignity of human nature. This topic more than
any other made the burden of his preaching, and the
central point, from which he reached out towards the
Right he upheld on one side, or the Wrong he at-
tacked on the other.
DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.
It is to be observed that this idealizing view of his,
this profound, lively, and sacred sense of the dignity
of human nature, is quite as much opposed to the
view which pessimists and cynics have made pain-
fully familiar in our day, as it is to the austere and
dreadful conviction of the divine judgments, which
marked the theology of a former time.
This new
56
CHANNING.
gospel of Humanity remote alike from religious
terror and irreligious contempt-made the very spe-
cial burden of Channing's message to his generation.
The dignity of human nature he elevated into a reli-
gious dogma, as with himself it was an inspiration
and a creed. How far it consisted with the facts of
human nature was no more his care, than how far
the facts of human life consist with the moral provi-
dence of God. "So much the worse for the facts."
At any rate, those facts were screened from his eye
—at least, greatly softened and dimmed in outline-
by the peculiar seclusion which sheltered while it
developed his religious life.
The growth was healthy, not morbid; vigorous, if
not robust, whether by virtue or in spite of that
still seclusion. What I have called the "gospel of
humanity," announced in the pure tone and with the
earnest conviction native to him, made, more than
any other word that has been spoken to this century,
the religious creed of the finest, broadest, deepest
minds. It retained from the first dispensation of
Christianity all its fervor, its purity, its sweetness;
it caught from modern life its instinct of justice, its
wider social sympathies, its warm and lively hope of
a coming victory of natural and inalienable right.
Above all, where the contrast shows strongest
against the earlier creed, it was a generous faith. It
was full of a noble confidence in man's nature and
destiny, full of a noble sympathy with what is best
in all forms of natural goodness, full of a noble aspir-
ation towards a better earthly future for man and the
redress of all evils in society, as well as the victories
(
*
57
of conscience in the soul And it was a form of
modern piety all the more strongly marked in him,
because relieved against that earnest and sincere, but
dreadful and implacable, belief from which the reli-
gious experience of his early years had set him free.
The thought has been made quite too familiar to
us, as part of the peculiar gospel of our time, to need
dwelling on here. But it may be worth while to
notice, very briefly, how from this central position
Dr. Channing met and did those tasks which have
made his name best known, and given it the widest
influence.
DISCOURSES OF DOCTRINE.
There are, first, three or four discourses of Doctrine,
-the same which made him the unchallenged and
even revered leader of his own religious body. The
event which more than any other gave them the cour-
age of their convictions and confidence in their future,
was when in Baltimore, in 1819, he took up one by
one, in calm and deliberate attack, the series of opin-
ions by which Orthodox is distinguished from Liberal
Christianity. It was not in the way of learned, criti-
cal, scholarly discussion: that he left to men other-
wise qualified and gifted. It was simply in the way
of eloquent, fervent, elevated appeal against the wrong
done to the character of God, the blight put upon the
life of man, by a scheme so full (as he regarded it) of
unreason, inhumanity, and gloom. The delivery of
this discourse was an event, because it publicly en-
listed the most eloquent, best known, and most hon-
ored minister of Boston on the one side as against the
other; because it did more than any other one thing
to crystallize the forces and convictions of the liberal
4
58
CHANNING.
party among New England Congregationalists, then
only beginning to be known as Unitarians.
To what might be called the speculative side of
this movement Channing did not make any very dis-
tinct contribution of thought. His sympathies were
large and liberal; his opinions in matters of theology
were simply the common thought of the more serious,
devout, conservative of those who had outgrown the
ancient creed. His intellectual method was a firm
but gentle dogmatism. Religious truth with him
was more a matter of contemplation than of study or
clear definition. Natural or critical science he knew
very little about. He was content with great vague-
ness of view, provided the religious want of his mind
was fairly met. Thus he hovered always on the edge
of an Arianism in which a soberer thinker would
hardly find rest or satisfaction; and was content to
say that we know too little about the ultimate nature
of matter to criticise the story of the Ascension. His
strong points were not these; but those wide and
generous views of the Fatherhood of God, the Brother-
hood of Man, the Dignity of Human Nature, the Free
Communion of the ideal Church, which made the
theme of discourse in several volumes of eloquent and
noble sermons, and constitute still the best body of
practical divinity that the Unitarian movement in
this country has produced.
It was in the midst of these labors, and in the
second period (as I have called it) of his public life,
that he sounded the first distinct note of that prac-
tical Christian philanthropy with which his name
has been most widely and honorably connected, in a
CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY.
59
sermon on that most sacred and beneficent mission
among the poor begun by his near friend, Joseph
Tuckerman. This has been the most characteristic,
the best organized, and by far the most successful.
co-operative work that the Unitarian body has ever
attempted by way of Church action. Perhaps Chan-
ning's word did as much as any man's to dignify and
endear it in the heart of its munificent supporters to
this day, a little less than fifty years.
From this the step was easy to those questions of
Temperance and Education which now began to show
themselves in new shapes; and from these again to
those which lay upon the border line of morals and
politics, namely, War and Slavery. The spirit and
the main line of argument with which he would
approach such topics as these may easily enough be
taken for granted, as soon as we know his general
cast of thought. Happily for him, the public temper
had not become so roused and jealous regarding any
of them as it has been since; and though there was
some regret, some remonstrance, some resentment
perhaps, yet there was not the angry hostility which
even the gentlest word on some of these matters
would have been sure to provoke a few years later.
But the subject which I have named last deserves
more special mention: partly because since Chan-
ning's day Slavery has gone through its terrible crisis
to its stormy end; and partly because without it, and
the part he bore in it, though we might have known
the beauty, fervor, and elevation of his character, yet
we should not have known its moral manliness, de-
termination, and strength.
60
CHANNING.
It was slowly, and in a sense reluctantly, that
one of his temper was drawn to take part in a dis-
cussion of such wide public issues, and to identify
himself-he, in his gentle seclusion, and well past
the prime of his years with a party whose methods
he strongly dissented from, whose uncompromising
creed he never adopted, and whose appeal to passion
he deeply dreaded and condemned. For some six or
eight years the antislavery movement had been under
way. Its principle of abstract justice, its resolution,
its intrepid courage he admired, and he had submitted
to some mild censure because he did not openly take
its ground.
P
The event that brought him to the front, and made
him afterwards the most intellectually eminent leader
of that movement, was the death of Lovejoy, shot in
defending his press at Alton, Illinois, in 1837. A
citizens' meeting was called at Faneuil Hall, to speak
the word and rally the courage of men alarmed at the
character of the struggle, and especially at what so
threatened the freedom of public debate. Public
opinion set very strongly then, and was as strong in
Boston as anywhere, against any discussion of the
right and wrong of slavery. The Attorney-General
of Massachusetts volunteered on the platform to at-
tack the movement in very bitter and offensive terms.
It was at this speech that Wendell Phillips, then with
all his brilliant oratorical gifts a young man compara-
tively unknown, sprang to the floor, where his speech
gleamed like flashes of lightning across the stormy
debate, and at one bound took his place at the very
head of platform actors, which he has held, unchal-
61
lenged, ever since. To those who were there (as I
have heard it described), it was an apparition more
splendid than any transformation scene upon the stage.
On the same occasion Dr. Channing, with a physical
hardihood he had perhaps never shown before, stood
side by side upon the platform with Garrison and
other antislavery leaders whose method he had con-
demned, but in whom he now saw the champions of
that freedom of speech which must be upheld, he
thought, by all good men.
This act identified him at once with the principles
of that party, though not with its method or doc-
trine. It enlisted a great amount of moral sympathy
and support to the movement; and it committed him
to the discussion, which he followed up in six or
eight of the most labored and vigorous efforts of his
life. A brief treatise on Slavery, dealing with it
purely on grounds of moral argument; a public letter
of sympathy to Mr. Birney, then the standard-bearer
of the Abolition party in politics; a letter to Mr. Clay
on the annexation of Texas, which the writer thought
cause enough to justify disunion; a letter on Mr.
Clay's political position; a tract on Emancipation;
and an argument on the duty of the Free States,-
this was the series of writings which made Channing,
in his later years, the best known exponent of the
growing hostility to slavery. Something of popu-
larity and something of comfort he doubtless for-
feited; but to one of his temper that was a very
small thing, and, sheltered as he was in a thousand
ways, could not have touched him very nearly. The
obloquy and the personal danger were for hardier
WRITINGS ON SLAVERY.
62
CHANNING.
fighters in the field. His glory was, that he was
content to share their reproach, and that with steady
fidelity he served an unpopular cause which he
thought right. At least, if his sensitive nature felt
keenly (as it did sometimes) the coldness and the
unpardoning prejudice of former friends, the world
at large was not allowed to know that he suffered;
and this, too, was more than made up by the honor
widely paid to his integrity and courage.
Years came upon him while his thought was still
fresh and clear, and his temper unclouded by infirm-
ity or pain. Some one asked him what he thought
the pleasantest time of life. "About sixty-two," he
answered, cheerily. A few weeks later, October 2,
1842, it was his great privilege to pass away, almost
painlessly, from an attack of autumn fever, the
sunset of his life as calm and radiant as its sunshine
had always been. His last public act was an address
in memory of West India Emancipation, at Lenox,
two months before his death. Its closing sentences
are as fine an example as any, both of his style of
religious eloquence, and of that fervent hopefulness
of spirit which never left him:
"I began this subject in hope, and in hope I end. I
have turned aside to speak of the great stain on our coun-
try, which makes us the by-word and scorn of the nations;
but I do not despair. Mighty powers are at work in the
world. Who can stay them? God's word has gone forth,
and it cannot return to him void. A new comprehension
of the Christian spirit, a new reverence for humanity, a
new feeling of brotherhood and all men's relation to the
common Father, this is among the signs of our times.
ADDRESS AT LENOX.
63
:
We see it do we not feel it? Before this, all oppressions
are to fall. Society, silently pervaded by this, is to change
its aspect of universal warfare for peace. The power of
selfishness, all-grasping and seemingly invincible, is to
yield to this divine energy. The song of angels, 'On
earth peace,' will not always sound as fiction.
"O come thou kingdom of heaven, for which we daily
pray! Come, friend and saviour of the race, who didst
shed thy blood on the cross, to reconcile man to man and
earth to heaven! Come, ye predicted ages of righteousness
and love, for which the faithful have so long yearned!
Come, Father almighty, and crown with thine omnipo-
tence the humble strivings of thy children to subvert op-
pression and wrong, to spread light and freedom, peace
and joy, the truth and spirit of thy Son, through the
whole earth!"
*
IV.
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
WH
-
WHAT we may call the second period in the
history of Unitarianism in this country ex-
tends from the year 1836, which showed the first open
breach between the historical and the spiritual inter-
pretation of Christianity, to 1860, when all minor
controversies were suspended in the hush of waiting
for the more terrible conflict just then about to
begin.
But a line may be drawn to define rather more
precisely the period of interior conflict, which made
these years so critical in the history of the Unitarian
movement. It happened that two controversies, which
made a great noise at the time, coincided almost ex-
actly with the date of Channing's death, the "Pier-
pont controversy" (which in form was at first simply
a personal dispute respecting the legal rights of a min-
ister, under the old law of settlement, as against his
parish), on the ground of Temperance and moral re-
form; and the "Parker controversy," on the ground
of Rationalism and theological reform. It happened,
again, that in 1857 some sort of reconciliation of the
two hostile methods in theology was attempted in the
way of scientific criticism, in the "Christian Exam-
iner," then the leading journal of liberal thought,
65
under the editorial direction of Dr. Hedge. So that,
as regards the interior history of Unitarianism here,
the controversial period may be taken as lasting about
fifteen years.
RETROSPECT.
This, however, is far from being the only, or even
the chief, significance of that term, as applied to the
period in view. What has been called "the great
controversy of States and people," the half-century
debate on the political rights and moral wrongs of
slavery in America, was just now at its height. The
annexation of Texas in 1845, the Mexican war which
quickly followed, the compromise of 1850, including
the fugitive slave law, the repeal of the Missouri
compromise in 1854, the Kansas struggle in 1856,
were the prelude to the appalling conflict into which
all passions and interests were drawn for the years
1860 to 1865. From a moral, slavery already became
a national question. It had gone frankly upon the
field of politics early in the period we are consider-
ing, and so belonged no more in particular to the
development of opinion in this or any other religious
body. It is quite accurate enough for our purpose,
then, to mark off these fifteen years from 1842 to
1857, as in a special sense the years of controversy
within the Unitarian body.
But I will go back for a moment, first, to the date
I began with,-about 1836, the time immediately be-
fore the outbreak of these questions. The theological
task of old Unitarianism was done, and it had got,
or seemed to have got, a good working faith. The
shocking and appalling excrescences of the old theol-
ogy it had removed once for all, for us, by a criticism.
5
66
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
not very searching or profound, perhaps, but at least
quite sufficient for its task. Things painful and in-
credible in the Biblical record it had either explained
away in good faith, or unsuspectingly ignored. The
critical movement had gone just so far, that our the-
ory of Christianity was thus absolutely divested of
everything that shocked the conscience or common-
sense; while its hold on habitual reverence, and faith
in its special sanction and authority were absolutely
unimpaired. The immense advantage to peace of
mind and strength of character was retained, which
consists in clinging to a visible symbol honestly be-
lieved to be divine, while any suspicion of weakness
in the intellectual foundation was left for future find-
ing out. For the present, there was the tranquil and
grateful sense of intellectual rest.
But the moment of intellectual rest is only a mo-
ment; then comes the next inevitable step of intel-
lectual advance. I say, inevitable. For what we
call rest, in living things, is like the dead-point of
an engine, a moment of balance, broken in a mo-
ment by the same play of the machine that brought
it on.
What we call motion is the effort which the
living creature makes to adjust itself to changes that
come about not by its choice or will, changes with-
in, from the law of its structure; changes without,
which it must meet or else perish. It is so with the
simplest vital motions; it is so, too, with those move-
ments of thought which affect the deepest springs of
character, belief, or hope, and which we call religious.
But here the effort to meet the inevitable change is
more than a vital instinct: it is often a struggle to
da
+
WARNINGS.
67
keep one's hold on a faith which he feels slipping
from his grasp; which, if he let it go, takes with it
very largely the best comfort and blessing of his
life.
I shall not pretend to do again what has been done
several times so well already, to trace the series
of those inevitable steps. But it may be observed
here, that the conservative instinct, which knows and
dreads the impending change, is in its own way far
more clearly prophetic than that brave spirit, loyal to
ideas, which goes blindfold, as it were, in the paths
of Providence. The forebodings of both coward and
patriot were far outdone by the terrors of the Wilder-
ness, and the horrors of Andersonville. For those
who scouted the forebodings and scoffed the utterers
of them, it is the chief honor now to have bravely
faced the terror when it came. Happily they could
not know that their sanguine hope must be proved
at so sore a cost.
•
So with the warnings of Orthodox foes or timid
friends in our theological domain; so with the san-
guine hope that hailed the first ray of broadening
light. We were warned that we stood on the perilous
edge; that a single step would take us beyond the
recognized boundaries of Christian faith. There were
two directions in which that step might be taken ;
and each, to those who took them, seemed vital and
necessary, not simply innocent and safe. The trans-
cendental free-thinker was sure that his new phi-
losophy gave him a better ground of Christian faith
than any external evidences; the liberal critic would
only relieve Christianity of a burden and an encum-
68
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
brance that still hindered its free course to victory.
Both were conscious alike of the vast interval which
separated their motive from that of the Deistical
movement, of evil memory to them both. So both
disdained the warning; both overstepped the limit
which each had acknowledged as the boundary of
Christianity and unbelief; and, in a certain way, both
have entered on a larger heritage.
The first shock to the received liberal theology of
the day, I should be inclined to say, was Professor
Noyes's argument on the Messianic interpretation of
the prophecies, in 1834; and the next, Professor
Norton's rejection, on grounds part speculative and
part critical, of the first two chapters of Matthew, in
1840. That is, these decisive first steps were taken
by deliberate, conscientious, conservative scholars,-
the best and soberest scholars we had to show. All
the rest, we may say, followed as matter of course.
But I well remember the mental distress felt by my
beloved and honored relative, Henry Ware, Jr., at
Mr. Emerson's superb address before the Divinity
School in 1838, and the pain with which he listened
to his daughter's reading of that tender, reverent,
thoughtful exposition of Dr. Furness touching the
apparition of angels at the open sepulchre. These
are waymarks and memories of the time when a new
departure was set unmistakably before the faithful
and grieved eyes of the good men who still abode in
the former ways.
As to the course that has been
taken since, I am sure that I speak in the name of a
good many who have followed it as far as anybody,
when I say that it has been with no iconoclastic zeal
}
TRANSCENDENTALISM: ITS BEGINNING.
·
69
and with no sense of triumph over a decaying super-
stition, but with deep reluctance and regret, and a
great sense of personal loss, that they have felt the
ancient supports give way which had sustained so
much integrity of life and vital piety, and have found
themselves, as it were, in the case of pioneers, with a
weary track to cross before they could look again for
so well-sheltered and fair a home.
It is necessary now to go back for a moment and
speak very briefly of those two intellectual move-
ments just alluded to, which brought us, by their
irresistible drift, into that period of controversy.
The first was what is called New England Trans-
cendentalism. Its history has been written in a very
graceful way by Mr. Frothingham, with warm appre-
ciation of the chief actors in it, and I shall make no
attempt to repeat it here.¹ A mere outline of facts
1 The circumstances which led to the formation of what came
afterwards to be known as the Transcendental Club were these.
After the public exercises of the Harvard University Centennial,
Sept. 8, 1836, it chanced that R. W. Emerson, George Ripley,
F. H. Hedge, and George Putnam met in conversation on the un-
satisfactory condition of Unitarian theology, and passed the after-
noon in conference in a room at "Willard's." The meeting was
adjourned to meet at Mr. Ripley's in Boston the following week;
and thence again, in the course of the same month, to Mr. Emerson's
in Concord. On this occasion there was a much larger gathering,
including A. B. Alcott, C. A. Bartol, G. P. Bradford, O. A. Brown,
son, W. H. Channing, J. F. Clarke, J. S. Dwight, Convers Francis,
Caleb Stetson, Margaret Fuller, and Miss E. P. Peabody. The club
thus formed, without rules or organization (sometimes called among
its members the "Hedge Club"), continued to meet at irregular
intervals, according to personal convenience, — Mr. Hedge living at
that time in Bangor, Maine, - for about ten years, or till the aban-
donment of the Brook Farm experiment, and the removal of Mr.
70
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
would tell next to nothing about it to those who did
not know it already; and a fair judgment of it would
be too long and difficult a task, even if I were other-
wise capable of it. The easiest way of describing it
is as the sentimental, mystical, and poetic side of the
liberal movement. It had its vagaries, its eccen-
tricities, its unintelligible speculation, its fantastic
poetry, its wonderful "Orphic Sayings," and its so-
cialistic experiment at Brook Farm; and all these
occasioned more or less bewilderment, scandal, or
amusement to outsiders. Even the noble and sweet
music of Emerson's discourse only made it palatable
to the ear, without commending it to the intolerant
common-sense of the day; while the great moral sweep
and energy of Carlyle, chief prophet of the new era,
so full of bracing vigor to the younger generation,
hardly began to be recognized under the clumsy hu-
mor and unpardonable caprices of his style.
Whatever else may be said of it, this at least may
be fairly claimed for Transcendentalism: that it dis-
solved away a good many hard boundaries of opin-
ion; it melted quite thoroughly the crust that was
beginning to form on the somewhat chilly current
of liberal theology. Rational criticism is indeed
necessary, in order that the current shall move at
all;
but rational criticism alone is shallow and ster-
ile. If independent thinking is to be united with
any fervor and flow of the religious life, it must find
religion somewhere as a primary sentiment in human
Ripley to New York. Theodore Parker had joined meanwhile, and
Mr. Putnam ceased to attend after the first meeting in Concord.
The publication of "The Dial" was begun in 1840.
71
nature, and not as a mere logical inference from cer-
tain facts of history. This is just what New England
Transcendentalism did. It was fortunate that it came
before the scientific development, and not after it.
It is the great felicity of free religious thought in this
country, in its later unfolding, that it had its birth
in a sentiment so poetic, so generous, so devout, so -
open to all the humanities as well as the widest
sympathies of philosophy and the higher literature,
as that.
TRANSCENDENTALISM: ITS DOGMA.
It is simple and easy justice to say this now, at
the end of forty years. But at that time, and for many
years later, Transcendentalism was not only a laugh-
ing-stock. It was also the great theological bugbear
of the serious and devout. As a system of opinion
(if such it could be called), it was simply this. The
fundamental ideas which make the basis of the re-
ligious life, — the idea of God, of duty, and of immor-
tality, — the transcendentalists asserted, are given out-
right in the nature and constitution of man, and do
not have to be learned from any book or confirmed
by any miracle.
In one way, this followed, easily
enough, from what Channing had taught of the dig-
nity and the divine elements of human nature. In
another way, it was connected with a certain effer-
vescence of interest and enthusiasm at the new ideas
that came floating in, when German poetry and phi-
losophy began to be familiar. It would be no doubt
interesting to follow this up on its literary side, since
it has deeply colored one large department of our
literature, best represented by Emerson and Lowell;
but at present we have to do only with its bearing
72
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
on theology, and, in fact, only with the negative side
of that.
For it follows, as soon as you state the principle
which lies at the base of the transcendental doctrine,
that you have cut away-like a balloon, as it were
not only from the ground of narrow common-sense,
but from the moorings of religious tradition. Trans-
cendentalism seemed to affect a sort of aristocratic
disdain of common ways of thinking, and to the sober-
minded appeared full of vagary and peril. God, it
said, is not a Being apart from the universe, but
everywhere, as the life of all things, and especially
in your own thought of the Infinite. That sounds
well; but, to the plain understanding of plain people,
"everywhere" is much the same as nowhere, and a
God who is merely infinite is much the same as no
God at all.
you
So much the worse for the understanding, replied
the transcendentalist: you must learn to discard that,
if would deal with these high matters, and trust
not reasoning, but only the absolute Reason, “with a
capital R." Reason will teach you that God is not
here or there, but everywhere; there is neither Past
nor Future with him, but only an eternal Now. Not
this or that thing is a miracle, but everything or else
nothing: at any rate (to borrow Parker's illustration),
the real miracle is not turning a few gallons of water
into wine at Cana, but turning hundreds of thousands
of barrels of water into wine every year in France
and Italy and along the Rhine. Duty is taught us by
the voice within: what do we need of the Ten Com-
mandments? We know by our own consciousness
·
73
that we are immortal: what need of any proof from
the Resurrection? All men are inspired more or less,
every man as much as his nature is capable of being:
we owe no particular respect to any sacred books, or
prophets, or apostles, or to Christ himself, except
where our Reason affirms the same truth to us. In
short, for all creed or doctrine or inspiration or testi-
mony offered from abroad, Transcendentalism substi-
tuted an off-hand dogmatism of its own, whose only
evidence was Sentiment, I feel that it is true; or
absolute Reason, I know that it is true.
All this was very exhilarating to those young
people, especially, who craved religious satisfaction,
yet found themselves dissatisfied with the ordinary
proofs, which probably they had never investigated
or tried to understand. But, as may well be be-
lieved, it sounded like blasphemous nonsense to the
serious, intelligent, and excellent people who had
been trained to a very conscientious acceptance of a
revealed religion. As long as it kept in the region
of poetry or sentiment or lofty assertion it could be
borne with, though it looked a little hazy and rather
suspicious. In fact, its serene optimism was already
making great havoc of men's plain, old-fashioned
theories of right and wrong. But the innocent-
sounding, idyllic sentiment became quite another
thing when it took shape in one of the most dog-
matic of thinkers, sturdiest of combatants, boldest
of assailants, most widely informed of students and
readers, and in his hands became a sharp weapon of
attack.
The war of words which had been long gathering
TRANSCENDENTALISM: ITS ISSUE.
74
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
broke out early in the year 1841, over a thin pam-
phlet called "The Transient and Permanent in Chris-
tianity," an ordination sermon by Theodore Parker,
preached in May of that year. There was nothing
in it new to intelligent readers then; nothing that
would not seem harmless enough now, or even com-
monplace, considering the turn discussions have taken
since nothing, that is, except the rare rhetorical
beauty, the fervor of sentiment, and the fearless
range of illustration, those literary qualities in
which Theodore Parker stood out at once far in ad-
vance of Channing or any of the writers of his school,
and created, it is not too much to say, a theological
style of his own. That style had great qualities, and
it had great faults. With a singular poetical sweet-
ness, wealth, and fervor, it was vigorous, straightfor-
ward, manly, never a word without definite purpose
and aim; at the same time too self-asserting, too
scornful of antagonists, utterly unmindful of the qual-
ification which sober argument demands, passionate
in conviction, unable to acknowledge truth or honesty
on the other side.
The "permanent" in Christianity was, of course,
its moral doctrine and its religious life; the "tran-
sient" was the form, the creed, the fable and myth
wrought about it. The assertions of the discourse
might be borne with, but its illustrations were a deep
offence. That Jesus as Son of God should be likened
to Hercules, and his miracles to those of that errant
spiritualist Apollonius of Tyana, was not easily to be
pardoned by those who considered themselves to hold
a positive system in Christianity. Nothing, in fact,
75
is so hard to reconcile with Theodore Parker's sa-
gacity, or else his good faith as a controversialist,
as his surprise at the scandal and dissent which fol-
lowed. Allowing for a little vacillation and great
general ignorance of modern criticism, the average
theologians whom he attacked honestly supposed
themselves to stand on ground strictly supernatural,
and to maintain that ground by fair historical argu-
ment. As a rule, they did not attempt to meet him
in fair debate, which, indeed, most of them were
quite incapable of doing. His incredible wealth of
reading and ready command of the weapons of debate,
to say nothing of his hot, aggressive style of attack,
would disarm a platoon of average assailants at a
breath. In one sense, it was a pity that the contro-
versy as it actually ensued was wordy, stormy, effu-
sive, sentimental, vituperative, angry, anything but
calm and scientific on either side. Men of equal
sincerity, equal goodness, equal intelligence, were
arrayed on both sides; and to this day it appears to
me that those took the better part who chose neither
side, but watched as patiently and modestly as they
might to see the scientific bearings of the question,
as they should emerge gradually from the noise and
smoke of the field.
THE PARKER CONTROVERSY.
Ma
The waste of hard feeling and the waste of hard
words seem a pity; but that was inevitable when the
debate became popular and personal, — and it had to
become popular and personal, to prepare that broader
way which has been opened since. The most radical
questions not merely about the doctrinal interpre-
tation of the Bible, but about the nature of inspira-
✓
76
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
4
tion, the possibility of miracles, the very foundation
of our belief in God, duty, or immortality came
directly into the open field. It was no longer a dis-
cussion among metaphysicians, theologians, critics,
and religionists; but men took sides on it as they
do in politics, from temperament or else personal
feeling.
Theodore Parker's name, accordingly, from that of
a retired student, a fervent, very practical,¹ and some-
what sentimental preacher, at once became that of a
party leader.
His personal qualities enlisted the
strongest feelings of attachment and hostility. His
personal hits were as much enjoyed on one side as
they were resented on the other. It was a great sol-
ace to him and his friends to corner his opponents in
some false position, where they would seem to deny
on one side the freedom of opinion they had just
been asserting on the other. It would have been
fatuity in them, on the contrary, if their own be-
lief or defence of Christianity as they held it meant
anything at all, to take a different stand from what
they did. It would have been far more to their dis-
credit if, at his one challenge, they had suddenly aban-
doned their old position, and, at a leap, passed from
an honest though narrow supernaturalism into the
thin air of Free Religion. It has never been quite
clear to me whether he really felt the surprise he
showed that they did not so stultify themselves, or
whether he merely wished to put them into an un-
comfortable place by pushing home their seeming
Knj
1 One of his sermons while at Spring Street was on the peculiar
duties, trials, and temptations of Milk-men.
77
inconsistency, and so compel them to review their
ground.
So far as the controversy was personal, its story
has been well told already, and need not be repeated.
The correspondence that grew out of it on his part is
sometimes sharply unjust, sometimes noble, generous,
and very touching. Whatever his faults as a contro-
versialist, with all that exasperating sarcasm of lip
and style, of which he professed himself quite inno-
cently unconscious, he was not only one of the
most genuine, but one of the most affectionate, gen-
erous, and warm-hearted of men. The controversy,
as he said, and probably felt, was none of his making
or choice. So far as it was merely theological, it has
greatly lost its interest now that Transcendentalism
is out of date, and all discussion of that matter goes
upon quite a different set of principles, and a scien-
tific method which was as foreign to the one side as
to the other. At bottom, his system was dogmatism
resting on sentiment; that of his opponents was dog-
matism (in a very mild form) resting on revelation.
Both have been taken up and absorbed in a far wider
intellectual method, or else are submitted to quite
other tests of scientific study. The great heretic and
iconoclast of thirty years ago has left a name held
almost equally in honor by those on both sides of the
old line.
TEMPER OF THE DISCUSSION.
G
For he was something more than an assailant and
a critic. He was a man of great warmth of affection;
of rare, fervent, and genuine religious feeling; of
broad popular sympathies; capable of great and pas-
sionate force of moral conviction. When some of
78
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
his friends, resenting the petty hindrances and jeal-
ousies that blocked his speech, passed the curt and
emphatic resolve, "That Theodore Parker shall have
a chance to be heard in Boston," and so opened for
him the way to a noble metropolitan audience, and
a hearing through the press such as was given to no
other man of his time, he went on in that open way,
not to a futile and petty bickering of theological dis-
pute, but to a work of vast moral sweep and power,
which made his the most potent and commanding
voice in that larger, more momentous, and fateful
controversy in which the main strength of his life
was spent.
But, to approach that controversy fairly, it is well
to go back to its antecedents in a calmer time. The
great debate of human rights and political justice,
from forty to twenty years ago, narrowed more and
more towards a life-and-death struggle with American
slavery. It is impossible for a later generation to
understand the sincere repugnance and horror with
which that conflict was seen to be approaching; or
how what looks now like cowardly compromise and
subterfuge seemed to many then their patriotic duty;
or how the very things that checked and delayed the
antislavery movement were what made the bloody
success of emancipation possible.
Historically speaking, it is not nearly so important
that all good men should take the view which ab-
stractly seems truest and best, as it is that they should
be honest in maintaining their own view, which with
the majority of them is very likely, regarded ab-
stractly, neither truest nor best. A party consisting
79
of all good men on one side, as against a party con-
sisting of all bad men on the other, would be not
only a monstrosity, but a great calamity to mankind.
That slow process of thirty years, by which a ma-
jority of American minds were educated to see the
wrong and danger of slavery, was none too slow, if
we think of the conflicting interests and the conflict-
ing forces that were to be plunged into the fight. Of
course, the excited combatants do not see it so. Hot
partisans on either side clamor to exterminate the
leaders of the other. The decision can be had only
when the passions on both sides have been worked
up to striking heat: then the task is taken from the
hands of Reason, and given over to the ordeal of
Battle.
CONSERVATIVE AND REFORMER.
·
C
While the debate is going on, two kinds of honest
minds are equally necessary, the bold, valiant, un-
compromising, single-hearted in devotion to an idea,
who are the honest Reformers; the calm, reasonable,
just, able to trim the balance, to watch the chances,
and prevent the infinite hazard and mischief of a
reckless move, who are the honest Conservatives.
But, besides these two, there is a third class, nobler
and more necessary than either. It consists of men
of large intellect and powerful understanding; of
knowledge broad and various; richly equipped by
education and training; allied by natural gifts and
culture to the classes that incline most strongly to
conservatism; yet compelled by clear intellectual
conviction as Milton was to cast in their lot,
when the critical moment comes, with the leaders of
a radical reform. Such men distinctly set aside their
*
-
80
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
own calmer and perhaps better judgment of the cir-
cumstances, in view of the one great overwhelming
necessity that is upon them to act. Voluntarily they
narrow the breadth of their understanding, as their
sacrifice to the one idea that just then must be upheld
at all hazards. If in the debate which follows they
appear narrow-minded, unjust to opponents, violent,
positive, self-asserting, it is against the generosity of
their nature and the instincts of their breeding. It
is, in short, their way of sacrifice to the higher law of
necessity and the duty of the hour.
Of such men, the nobler sort of leaders in the great
battle of right and wrong, the most eminent among
us were Charles Sumner and Theodore Parker. Of
all our highly cultivated men of letters, they, I think,
were the only ones who gave themselves heart and
soul to the antislavery movement as the one chief
thing; of all the antislavery leaders, they were the
only ones who kept up their broad scholarship, and
their interest in all topics, intellectual and moral,
that make for the welfare of mankind. And in the
period to which I especially refer, - coming down,
that is, to some three years before the war,-the place
of Theodore Parker was one that belonged to him
alone.
It is not, however, my intention to give here a
sketch of his character, or of the very able, intense,
and incessant labors which broke down his sturdy
physical strength, and laid him in the grave before
the age of fifty. His is quite too large and remark-
able a personality to be discussed in this incidental
way. My business now is with the controversy in
UNITARIAN CONSERVATISM.
་
81
its general drift, not as it belongs to the history
of the nation, but as it connected itself with the
tone of feeling and affected the fortunes of Unita-
rianism.
We note that here, as elsewhere, there were two
exactly opposite tendencies brought into close con-
tact. On the one hand, the Unitarian body, by po̟-~
sition and history, was mainly conservative: so far
as it included scholars, professional men, merchants,
politicians, almost necessarily so. Its theology might
be more free in some regards, but in average temper
it fully shared the conservatism of all religious bodies
then. It is but timidly and awkwardly, in this coun-
try at least, that a church deals with matters belong-
ing to the State or to society at large. And what
was a violent reproach then, in the mouth of those
who thought everything must give way before this
one great question of humanity, and cried out loudly
against the Church as the "refuge of oppression
because it did not lift up its voice as a trumpet
against negro slavery, is easily seen, in all ordinary
affairs of State, to be the only right, safe, and possible
thing.
"
A very great stress of personal conviction alone can
justify, in any man, the breaking of that safe rule
which declares that "within his beat" he may be
useful and perhaps strong; outside of it, he may eas-
ily do mischief, and will at any rate be weak. All
this is to say, in so many words, that the conservative
attitude of many churches, during most of the anti-
slavery debate, even if carried to a cowardly extreme,
was probably conscientious in the main, and was at
6
82
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
any rate inevitable. Right or wrong, that conserva-
tive attitude in State affairs was held by most Unita-
rian churches of any large name or influence; and it
made the hard rock against which more than one
generous heart, bolder if not truer than the rest, broke
itself in vain.
This fact stirred more deep feeling at the time, and
is to this day more blamed and wondered at, than
anything else in the attitude of Unitarianism. It is,
indeed, common to say that those who were not Abo-
litionists then deeply deplore their mistake now, and
wish they had been. But I do not think that this is
at all the case, certainly not with those who (like
Dr. Gannett) took that conservative ground from
strong and sincere conviction. Most of them, it is
true, were strongly committed to the national cause
in the war for the Union, and heartily sustained the
policy which at last gave the death-blow to slavery.
But those same men would have held it a horrible
crime to declare war for the abolition of slavery, or
to do anything, knowingly, to hasten such a war.
War is a political, not a moral act; and the motive
for it, they held, should be political, not moral. Ab-
stract justice, social right, belong to that kingdom
which is "not of this world," for which it is not
lawful to fight with the weapons of brute force. The
unlawfulness of war, the gospel of peace, had been
taken very much to heart by the earlier generation of
liberal Christian thinkers. The only case that would
justify war, in their view, the only case that would
seriously perplex the conscience of the more scrupu-
lous, was the case which really did happen, when
-
"
83
war was manifestly the one thing that could save the
nation's life, and when the nation itself was on the
right side in a fundamental question of humanity
and justice.
I do not think, therefore, that the more conserva-
tive of those days have ever repented their alarm and
protest at a course of action which seemed to them
sure to bring on a civil war, as, in fact, it did. But,
on the other hand, liberalism in theology was the
natural ally of liberty and justice in national affairs.
The authority of the Creed once shaken, Humanity
becomes the strongest sanction of belief and conduct.
Political justice becomes necessarily a part of the
free-thinker's religion, so long as he has any. It was
so with the liberal movement here. Political justice
had made part of its history in the Old World, and
had been eloquently expounded by a whole gen-
eration of the liberal preachers, Channing at their
head.
A GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
Thus a "gospel of humanity "— sanguine, hopeful,
devout had made a part of the liberal tradition.
In seeking to state it to ourselves, we think first of
Channing, his fervent assertion of the dignity of
human nature, the glow of his steady hope in the
spiritual and social destinies of mankind. And I
think we have seen in the older men of that school
- older than ourselves, but his disciples- a certain
glow of humanity which stayed with them through
life, which the chill of old age or long waiting had
little effect to quench, as those who have lived in the
tropic zone keep something of its warmth through the
long frosts of a northern winter. In a certain child-
-
84
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
like way it was strikingly so with my father, who
quite honestly felt that the years from seventy to
eighty were his happiest years. In a still more marked
way it was so with that brave saint of all the human-
ities, Samuel Joseph May, of whom they that loved
him may say that only to know him was a sort of
sunshine in one nook, at least, of the most unfriended
life.
It is worth while to recall the halo which invested
that phase of our mental life, that glow as of dawn
which hung round the horizon, so as to relieve against
it certain phases in which life has shown itself since.
Daylight is better than dawn for most uses, particu-
larly for seeing our way among things that bewilder
and delude; but it can never have "the glory of the
rising." That fair dawn was the opening of a stormy
day. The abstract principle, the fervid sentiment
that made.it, had to be tried as by fire. A season of
passionate conflict ensued before the season of calmer
reason, of reconciling science. That time of contro-
versy it has not been my purpose to narrate in its
events; only to indicate the spirit out of which it
grew, and the part had in it by those intellectual
leaders who have left their mark deepest upon that
time.
Among those leaders, however, I wish to recall very
briefly the memory of two marked men with whom I
was thrown into rather close relation quite early in
the period I have retraced; whose paths crossed not
far from then; who both took a very conspicuous
part in the movement we are looking back on; who
did their task with equal honesty and daring, with
,
85
temper not very unlike, but with a difference in aim
and result which went on widening to the end. Of
one of them I have spoken at some little length
already, and shall have occasion to speak again.
Theodore Parker's intellectual self-assertion-re-
markable in one who knew so well the history of
human opinion-might be plausibly associated with
the much solitary reading of his youth, without the
chance of conflict and comparison which college
gives; just as his great wealth of sympathy made one
who was honored by it feel as if drawing on the un-
claimed stores of it hoarded in the heart of a child-
less man, — which, to his frankly expressed grief, he
was. Never did a strong nature show a deeper crav-
ing for personal affection, and the exercise of that
power to guide which flows with it. Never did a
strong and passionate conviction hold itself more
patiently in abeyance in intercourse with a younger
mind, lest it should even hint an opinion that might
check its own free working. If not of the first order
of speculative ability, few could be better stored
than he with the positive results of speculation; yet
of all men in that field I should think that none could
have held his religious opinions more absolutely as
postulates admitting no debate, and wholly outside
of any process of argument which may have led to
them.
THEODORE PARKER.
These opinions were implied throughout in the
polemics that so swept him aside from the studi-
ous, constructive work he had marked out, - for
the ambition of his life was to be an historian of
religious opinion,- and with great human passion
•
86
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
made him so genuine an iconoclast. Yet there was
noticeable, in his later life, a desire to understand, and
a leaning of sympathy towards, some materialistic
forms of thought widely alien from his own: either
because other men's bigotry offended him, or that he
would free his soul from the last trace of theological
prejudice.
It was a temporary work, just then greatly needed,
that his generous and large nature took upon itself;
and his name, it may be, is best recalled as that of a
great personal force in the best life of our time rather
than as the intellectual leader and guide he doubtless
hoped to be. His temperament did not admit of
justice towards those who honestly differed, as good
men did, in theological opinion or public policy.
With the most generous human feeling, he could not
pardon the seeming want of it in other men; yet he
could bear patiently the argument or the rebuke that
tried to convince him he was in the wrong. For
high courage I hardly know where we should find
his match among men of intellect. It was a moment
in history to see him face, with taunt and defiance,
an angry crowd in Faneuil Hall, where the Boston
regiment mustered on its way to the war in Mexico.
And when he went to rest, in 1860, just before the
great political triumph of the cause he died for, we
missed the clearest and boldest voice of all that read
to unwilling ears the stern lesson of the time.
The hard, restless, implacably honest, and domi-
neering temper of Orestes Brownson had just been
greatly softened, at the time I first knew him, by a
sudden flow of religious feeling in channels which he
87
had thought dried up. A mere accident, as it were,
had turned him from a very positive disciple of the
French Eclectics to an equally positive and unsparing
critic of them in the name of a new teacher (Pierre
Leroux), whose phrases he presently took for the key
to a new rendering of the Christian revelation, — a
reading of it which, with a certain pious and grate-
ful fervor, he detailed in a letter to Dr. Channing on
"The Mediatorial Life of Jesus." Beginning his
expositions with a sweetness and pathos very marked
in so rugged a champion, it was then he uttered the
finest sentence of all he ever wrote, in which he spoke
of "that glorious inconsistency which does honor to
human nature, and makes men so much better than
their creeds."
ORESTES A. BROWNSON.
But it was not long before "the old man" in him
had its way in vigorous attacks on England and Pro-
testantism. With a curiously slender stock of erudi-
tion, he showed an equally extraordinary arrogance
and fertility in abstract argument. For example,
having toiled with much ado (as he told me) through
some fourteen pages of Kant's "Introduction,"
having got the idea of it to his own satisfaction,
he proceeded to write more than fifty pages of what,
I am told by those more competent to judge than I,
is really instructive exposition.
On the 20th of October, 1844, as he told me, he
"became a Christian," that is, a Catholic convert
by profession, with all which that name might imply;
so that, when I asked him, "But suppose the process
that made you a Catholic had been stopped short
at a certain point: suppose, for instance, that you
88
FIFTEEN YEARS OF CONTROVERSY.
•
--
had died on the 19th of October ?"—"I should have
gone to hell," he replied, instantly and grimly, — a
reply which left neither room for argument, nor, to
tell the truth, for interest in any further argument
he might have to offer, as soon as one distinctly saw
just what the brief was which he had taken in his
new appearance before the Court.
Absolute honesty of conviction, a complete cutting
adrift from whatever may have been his religious
moorings in early life, the weariness of a long war
with ideas and customs embedded in modern society,
and a religious need craving and imperious as in any
zealot of any period, with almost as passionate con-
tempt for the opinions of more knowing but weaker
men, these make it not very strange that a man so
strong and arrogant should tire of incessant self-con-
flict, and choose to enlist his splendid fighting qualities
under a flag which at least made him constructively
sure of something. But the lesson of his life for us
was all told above thirty years ago; and the strong,
stormful, rude, yet tender-hearted man passes away,
leaving hardly a ripple in our memory to remind us
what his influence had been.
I recall these names not idly, but to reinforce the
single thought with which I close. None of the
topics and none of the questions I have been dealing
with are topics or questions of speculative interest
merely. It is HUMAN interests, the character, life,
work, destinies of men, that come in play, and are
touched by them. And perhaps we see this plainest
when we remember that there are men who by genius
and endowment are leaders of other men, to whom
89
these spiritual things are of incomparably more mo-
ment than all personal and terrestrial things; men
who willingly-nay, inevitably-renounce and cut
adrift from everything else, that so they may save
their souls. Also, that whatever is honorable and
of good report in the world, and whatever makes the
world's life worth living, depends on its having and
cherishing that order of men, to whom Circumstance
is as nothing, and Thought is all.
MEN OF THOUGHT.
·
V.
THEODORE PARKER.
THE
HE names of Channing and Parker stand for
very different if not hostile types of religious
feeling and belief. But they are constantly mentioned
together as representative names. Right or wrong,
Unitarianism is everywhere held responsible for them
both. One as distinctly recalls the later as the other
does the earlier phase of the movement we are at-
tempting to trace. I have hinted already at the atti-
tude of the theologian. I should like, if I may, to
bring you into a little nearer acquaintance with the
man.
Theodore Parker's biography gives us glimpses of
a childhood and youth not greatly different from
that of many an energetic and studious country boy
in New England. Being the youngest of eleven
children, and five years younger than the tenth, it is
likely that he had more than his share of his parents'
companionship and care. How tenderly and piously
his conscience was instructed by his mother, he has
narrated himself in the story of the "little spotted
tortoise;" and he told me once how his father, when
he was eight years old, made him give his childish
analysis of Plutarch's Cicero, before allowing him to
read another of the Lives. In the charming story of
·
91
his early years, Mr. Weiss speaks of "the bloom in
the down of his young cheeks competing with the
fruit as he jogged down the road" to carry his father's
peaches to market; and we read how the sturdy
youth, trained to all busy and helpful ways, when he
left home to teach school or make a visit, would hire
a man "to take his place and work on the farm," till
he was twenty-one.
EARLY YEARS.
As a student here in Cambridge, and in the first
years of his ministry, he was not understood to differ
in opinion much, if at all, from those about him;
though I have heard him say that even as a child the
current supernaturalism was never a real belief to
him, as it was to most of us. The first public indica-
tion of any change was when he had been already
five years, or nearly, in the public work of his pro-
fession; and, when this proved to be the first step in
a radical controversy, he went out for a year's rest
or, rather, for busier study and observation - in
Europe. So that there was not haste, but rather
great deliberation, in his entering upon the work
that made him so speedily and widely known.
From his return in 1844 until the fatal attack
which forced him from his post in January, 1859,
was a term of almost exactly fifteen years, during
which he did his most effective and characteristic
work. Fifteen years are a term so short, that there
were those old enough to take a share in that work
from the first, and to go with him all the way, who
yet might feel at the end of it that their own task
was not much more than begun. His unusual bodily
vigor and capacity of labor might promise at least
92
THEODORE PARKER.
;
-
twice as long a term, and he probably expected to
work on till seventy without much abatement. That
he broke down as he did at forty-eight, means not
merely that he was vulnerable to the disease fatal to
so many of his kin. It means also an unsparing, even
prodigal, spending of his strength. It means, too,
that something of his strength was wasted needlessly.
Seeing a sounding-board above the pulpit in a Swiss
church during his last journey, he said, sadly, "If I
had had that in Music Hall, I should not be here
now!" But, to tell the truth, his voice was used un-
skilfully; throat and lungs were rasped by the effort
to speak too loud. This we may say now in pity and
regret, honoring the motive of it all the more. For
it was of a piece with the rest. His life was poured
into his work wholly and at once. Not only the
water was always moving, but the channel was always
full. Prudence would say, Economize the power; do
not spend the wealth of life so fast; more will be
done at last if done less prodigally at first. But a
motive higher than prudence-what in certain cases
we may call the Divine economy of life contrasted
with the human — will decide otherwise. An effort
of massed and concentrated strength is more than the
same amount husbanded and diffused. There is no
common measure between the force of a pressure and
the force of a blow. The true value of a life is often
in the intensity which is burning it away.
The first impression received by one who came in
contact with Mr. Parker in the prime of his years
was of a nature at once sturdy and kindly.
frame was solid, square-set, hardy, and robust.
His
On
INDUSTRY.
93
a long exhausting journey, on foot or otherwise,
after the spirit of his companions flagged, and their
strength was spent, late into the day or night, he
would go on (it was said) just as cheerily, strong in
step, high in spirit, with argument, anecdote, and fun
to keep up their failing courage by the way. On the
fàrm, in the handling of scythe or plough, there were
few day-laborers who could keep up with him. What
would be a severe day's task for any ordinary student
he would combine with whatever other work he had
to do. Thus, when he taught a country school and
supped at five, he would study from six till two. On
a lecturing tour he must take his satchel full of books,
to be devoured at odd times upon the road. As a
member of this School, I do not venture to say what
his industries were; but I have heard him tell with
relish of the great German theologian who lamented
to him that he himself was able to give no more than
eighteen hours a day to his books!
In finish of scholarship he doubtless lacked the
accuracy which a more critical training would have
given. But by patient accumulation he had stored
up a wealth of knowledge that was always a fresh
surprise; so that, to one who went to consult him on
almost any topic of remote investigation, it was al-
most as if he had just booked up expressly on the
very matter in hand. His mind was curiously in-
formed in special and out-of-the-way fields of knowl-
edge. Details of natural science, the history of law
cases (which he had read in great abundance during
a winter's leisure), the dry technicalities of the Civil
Code, the gossip and minutiae of contemporary history,
94
THEODORE PARKER.
.
the bleak abstractions of metaphysics, seemed to be
about equally familiar. Even when suffering severe
pain, and holding his head in both hands (as I have
seen him), he would lay hold on some topic of thought
or knowledge, with the fulness of learning and allu-
sion, and the formal exactness of method he was so
fond of, as if he were stating the outline of a treatise
or essay.
Still, it was not that singular wealth of erudition
you thought of first. What you found in him was
rather a powerful, rich, and greatly-gifted nature, to
which the gathering and disbursing of its ample
stores was only the generous play of its native
strength. Accordingly, the capacious understanding
was at least balanced by emotion and active energy.
That large nature clung to personal friendships closer
than to any abstractions of the brain. In the midst
of his various lore, that heart so opened in love to
natural things, that he thought even of an insect
tenderly, and knew-as was said of him, with per-
haps some friendly exaggeration every bird and
wild-flower in New England. Nay, he took the text
so literally, as to say that not a sparrow can fall to the
ground but for that sparrow's good. In riper years,
watching and nursing by a sick bed, or plans of active
charity among the poor, or guarding with loaded
weapons the liberty of a fugitive slave, or breasting
the storm and tumult of an unfriendly crowd in tem-
pestuous controversy, made to such a mind as natural
a play of its forces, as easy an assertion of itself, as
the gathering up of knowledge or the heat of strenu-
ous debate. The personality was more and stronger
95
than the intelligence. The thought was felt as well
as spoken. What, historically, was one phase of the
controversy that is always going on between obstinate
tradition and fresh conviction was, personally, the
blending of thought and emotion, a warm human
experience shaping itself into words. It is so that
a necessity is laid upon every strong and passionate
nature to speak what in its day and hour is given
it to speak.
TEMPER IN DISCUSSION.
Positive and imperious as that nature was, strong
and imperative as was the desire to stamp itself upon
the general mind, nay, unable, as he seemed, to
understand or allow for the force of motives in other
men who disagreed with him in matters of opinion
or conduct, he was in private intercourse alto-
gether courteous, unobtrusive of his own opinion,
generous to the view he most gravely opposed. In
argument he might seem uncompromising, intolerant,
scornful. Impatient of contradiction, confident in
assertion, sharp in denouncing the policy or the man
at war with his own view of right, the public could
not, very likely, suspect this more intimate and
human side of him. But to his friends the memory
of it is even stronger than of the other side. In
conversation or letter he was apt to speak his mind
in the same biting and sarcastic way as in public.
Anything cowardly or false, or what seemed so, he
could not easily pardon, and perhaps was too quick
to suspect. But when he knew that another person
was making up his mind honestly for himself,
studying any point of controversy, or debating a
question of public morals,—it might be observed
G
96
THEODORE PARKER.
that he was careful not to contradict, not to urge
his own opinion, not even to present it. A sense of
intellectual delicacy and honor would seem to hold
him from forestalling, by a word or hint, the freest
action of another's mind or conscience.
And so his incidental expressions of his own opin-
ion more particularly his public ones, which were
positive and intolerant- were often curiously at va-
riance with the kindness and courtesy he showed in
private to the opposite opinions. Freedom of per-
sonal criticism he always said that he valued and
wished to hear; and with exceeding patience and
kindness, even with a humility which might seem
strange to those who knew him less, he would re-
ceive the very plain and candid expression of it from
one who ventured to take him at his word. Friends
of his were pained and disturbed, more than once,
during the sharp word-battles of his last ten years,
at hasty and unjust judgment publicly spoken of per-
sons they held honorable and dear, and frankly told
him so.
It was so far a satisfaction and relief to
them, that he took all such words kindly; that he
always expressed gratitude for any criticism or cor-
rection; that in some instances he even yielded as
to a point of judgment or feeling, whether or not he
gave any public expression of it.1
1 Of this generosity in judgment, which has not generally been
recognized in him, my own correspondence with him has several
marked proofs. Almost the only exception was in a short letter of
his in censure of Dr. Gannett, which to my great regret was pub-
lished in his biography. As to this, Dr. Gannett says, in a note to
me, "I do not know to what information Mr. Parker refers; but, I
suppose, to a story which he must have believed, and which I re-
J
97
But, again, opinion in him was never wide apart
from passion. In private communication his language
was always kind and generous, often affectionate,
even when dealing with opinions and things he did
not love. But in the war of words, where sharp
strokes are given and taken, there was no one whose
judgments were more colored by personal feeling, no
one who showed more temper in argument, or more
identified the principles with the persons of his an-
tagonists; no one who made bitterer foes or warmer
partisans; no one who carried more of intense and
breathing life into the whole disputed realm of tech-
nical theology or practical morals.
Still, it was with no hurry or impatience that he
entered into the conflict which afterwards absorbed
him so completely. Rather it was deliberately, even
slowly, after long study, with large training and
equipment, after considerable experience in life lived
quietly, and after that experience was widened by
travel and much acquaintance with men. He was
then at the age of thirty-four. He had measured his
powers and clearly defined his work. Slowly, almost
reluctantly, he was drawn on to that post in the front
of the battle, which he held in an attitude so deter-
mined, energetic, defiant. "He represented and pro-
HIS CONTROVERSIAL WORK.
member seeing in one or two English Unitarian papers (which I
confess vexed me), to the effect that I had said something in the
pulpit about the Fugitive Slave Law, which I did not say. Then,
as now, they who differed were too eager to misrepresent, and too
prompt in misunderstanding one another. Contradiction seldom
does much good, and time is the best corrective of mistake." The
publicity given to Mr. Parker's letter (Weiss's "Life and Corre-
spondence,” vol. ii. p. 110) justifies this personal reference.
1.
7
98
THEODORE PARKER.
claimed a revolution, and devoted all his powers of
conscience and understanding to organize the great
change by means of timely justice, that he might, if
possible, prevent Freedom from stepping to her place
through blood."
These words of his biographer sufficiently express
the position in which Theodore Parker now stood be-
fore the world. But the first task of a reformer must
always be with men's motives and their faith. It
was inevitable that he should begin as a controver-
sialist and a critic of religious opinion. In this he
was unsparing, imperative, scornful in speech, as his
nature compelled him to be in dealing with what to
him was error. But his positiveness of temper and
opinion, his hate of insincerity, his animosity towards
views that seemed to him degrading and wrong, grew
out of a deep, warm, trustful belief. In a letter an-
swering some inquiry I had made of him in behalf of
a friend, in reference to a rumor that he failed to find
comfort in his own belief, he gives his own position,
as it looked to him, in these words:-
"The great point in which I differ from most Chris-
tians is this: I believe in the Infinite God, who is per-
fectly wise, perfectly just, perfectly loving, and perfectly
holy. Of course he must have a purpose in creation, a
plan in creation, both perfect and consistent with this
infinite wisdom, justice, love, and holiness. This plan
must be adapted to secure the ultimate welfare of each
creature he has made, and must be perfect in detail as well
as in the sum. How, then, can I fail to find comfort in
even in the worst of sorrows, consciousness of
sin? I cannot. I have unspeakably more delight in re-
sorrow,
RELIGIOUS VIEW.
99
ligion, more consolation in any private grief, more satisfac-
tion in looking on the present or for the future, than ever
before, when I trembled before an imperfect God. I never
said, never thought, never felt the sentiment attributed to
me. Quite the contrary.”
As with his religious, so with his moral convic-
tions. If in his career of public assault on public
wrong he was dogmatic, imperative, scornful, — that
grew out of a personal feeling deep and sincere.
Moral emotion still more than intellectual convic-
tion was at the heart of his argument on such things.
The argument was concrete, living, personal. It was
the wrong actually endured by the slave, by the vic-
tim of drunkenness or profligacy, by the family of
the drunkard, by the crowded and vicious hordes of
the neglected poor. In later years especially he con-
nected his moral doctrine very much with theories of
ethnology,—that is, the facts of human nature seen
on the broadest scale; and with statistics, that is,
the facts of human society gathered and arranged so
as to let the underlying laws of them, the great and
general facts, be seen. But even in stating them in
the widest way historically, or in the precisest way
scientifically, or in the most positive way dogmati-
cally, he would never forget, as some do, that they
are human facts. The statement or discussion would
presently be relieved by some flash of sympathy
or tenderness or indignation; and the philosopher or
reasoner, at the heart and heat of his argument, was
always lost in the man.
Car
If we now look back upon the period of time when
his public labors began, we shall remember that it
100
THEODORE PARKER.
was a time when the controversies that have vexed
us since had only begun to take on the shape and
acrimony we of a later day have found in them.
Theological debate was lulled after the strifes of fifty
years ago. The churches held each its own position
pretty distinctly and quietly. The dispute about old
doctrines was subsiding. The more radical questions
that have stirred us since had not yet come up, ex-
cept in the minds of a few who were studying and
thinking by themselves. There was a truce in the
war of sects and creeds.
-
The question of Slavery had by no means taken
the ominous and dread proportions which it assumed
before Mr. Parker's death. Antislavery was an effort,
a faith, a sentiment, a hope, with a party compara-
tively few and unregarded. Emancipation was a
new thing in the British West Indies, and we were
rejoicing in the peaceable fruits of it so far, blind to
the practical difficulties still to be met. At home,
the Texas question was laid to rest, and only the
more sagacious (like President Adams) knew the
drift of party policy which soon opened up so rap-
idly. Henry Clay had predicted that slavery would
come to an end before the end of the century; some
sanguine persons thought that ten years more-the
middle of the century-would see the question
brought to its final issue, and universal liberty the
law of the land.
The cause of Temperance was just then entering
on its most interesting, glowing, hopeful stage, in the
Washingtonian movement." It seemed now as if
the decisive experiment had been made; as if the
((
QUESTIONS OF PUBLIC MORALS.
101
one needed lesson had been learned; as if the light
of safety and hope were brought home, once for all,
to those sunk lowest in the bondage of corruption;
as if the way were now plain to sweep all the forms
of at least one dreadful vice from the face of the
land. No suspicion as yet of the long vain struggle,
the countless difficulties and mistakes, the license
laws and penal laws, action and reaction of the pop-
ular mind on all that touches a popular sin, tenacity
of habit and depravity of will, variety and cunning of
the disguises that cloak the infirmity and shame of a
moral malady. How much of all this we were wait-
ing to learn from the experience of the years that
were to follow!
And, again, it was a pretty common feeling then
that the time had gone by for War-at any rate,
war on a large scale among civilized and Chris-
tian powers. It was really believed that the progress
of Christianity in general, and the Peace movement
in particular, had gone so far as that! Among the
more scrupulous and humane, the question whether
any forcible resistance to anything is ever right,
was a question pressing close upon the conscience,
as if that were likely to be the practical problem next
brought forward for solution. But the revolutions of
1848, beginning in an outburst of humanitarian sen-
timent, opened an era strangely different. To say noth-
ing of six great European wars-in Hungary, in the
Crimea, in Italy, in Germany, in France, in Turkey –
enlisting our sympathies so strongly on one side or
the other, the appalling disasters of our own Civil
War have opened to us what deeps below deeps be-
102
THEODORE PARKER.
neath that placid surface of mild emotion with which
we then entertained the question of resistance or non-
resistance, of peace and war!
Such was the generally buoyant and hopeful tone
in which the moral questions of the day were then
regarded. We may well confess to a little self-com-
placency, a superficial self-confidence, as if, after
all, the time of martyrdom had been mostly lived
through; as if the great work of Reform could be
carried on with fine sentiments, and delicate hands,
and hearts safe from the great storms of passion and
fear that had beaten in the past! Some of us well
remember how completely that feeling was uppermost
at the time referred to. The pure fervor of those
words in which Channing closed his last public ad-
dress did but echo the hopeful and sanguine strain;
did but reflect the aspect in which the gravest issues
were regarded, not merely in the buoyancy of youth,
but in the deliberate conviction of ripe years.
Mag
But it is not the way of Providence that any ques-
tion vitally touching the rights and welfare of hu-
manity, or the progress of Divine truth, should be
settled on such cheap and easy terms. If only that
men may know what their principles are, what depths
of character and experience they involve, it is neces-
sary to hold them as possessions attacked and fought
for. To know the preciousness of truth, it must be
slowly and painfully disentangled from a mass of
error. The battle cannot be won for us at second
hand. Each generation has its own warfare to en-
counter, and its own victories to win. What seemed
to us then a hopeful, busy, and prosperous advance
NATURE OF THE CONFLICT.
103
towards the easy achievement of truth and right;
what seems now to have been a somewhat superficial
and deceitful mood of moral emotion, or even a lull
and suspension of the struggle, had to be broken
up. A generation must be passed in the phases of a
conflict about truths which the heart holds dearest
and principles which the conscience holds holiest,—a
conflict of which none can yet see the course or end,
that a grander work may be done, and a nobler
faith may grow from the roots of a deeper life.
It was just this conflict which Theodore Parker
seems to have been expressly commissioned to open.
He was as early as any one to proclaim it. He threw
himself into it with all the wealth of his under-
standing, and all the energy of his will. He was so
closely identified with it at every stage that we can-
not call to mind a single event, or public act, or criti-
cal moment in the whole stir and stress of the period,
in which his voice was not one of the most clear and
decisive, and his word - bold, clear, ready, positive-
was not among the first to arrest the public mind.
And yet he so far shared the general state of feeling
then, that he always said the resistance he met in
the outset was a strange thing to him. He appar-
ently expected to find his words accepted and assented
He was only carrying out the principles
all liberal thinkers had proclaimed. The one further
service he would render must needs be welcome to
all who professed freedom of opinion in religious
things.
to at once.
In his earliest discourses addressed to the public
we observe these two things: a positive, dogmatic,
•
104
THEODORE PARKER.
almost disdainful way of laying down the main lines
of his argument,-and this as clearly and fully in his
very first words as ever afterwards; and, with this,
a certain confiding, poetic, sentimental way of stating
his ground of "absolute religion," as if the world had
only to hear and forthwith accept the new gospel in
all its simplicity. These two, strongly marked at first,
continued together unabated to the end.
Considering how much of a controversialist he was,
how familiar with the history and criticism of every
form of belief, how generally known as assailing other
men's opinions, it is remarkable how self-confident
he always was in asserting his own. It is as if he
had never known a doubt. It is as if there were no
shading-off in his mind between absolute belief and
absolute disbelief, as in the sky of the tropics there
is no twilight, but night shuts down dark against the
brightness of the day. As I understood him to say,
he never knew that period of transition which most
inquirers must pass through. The world of mingled
truth and error, of right and wrong, lay before his eye
with sharp contrasts of white light and black shadow,
like the surface of the moon, where there is no
softening atmosphere, but every shade is a blot of ab-
solute dark on a field of pure and shining white. It
did not occur to him that where he and other men
differed, he might possibly be mistaken; that there
might possibly be some truth of experience, if not
of fact or philosophy—in the doctrine he attacked.
And so he hated what to him was error. He could
not see any good in things evil, or any right in the
fabric built on a foundation he failed to recognize.
MODES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
105
With most men, the best part of their religion is
far from being that which lies in the clear, glaring
light of consciousness, or what they could give the
best account of to themselves or others. The twi-
light atmosphere of mystery in which our lives are
wrapped from clear light shading off imperceptibly
to obscurity and gloom is the sphere where most
of our pious thoughts and emotions lie. In Theodore
Parker it was almost as if this shadowy sphere did not
exist. Where he recognized any truth at all, it was
positive, clear, dogmatic, no half-truth of the emo-
tion merely, no mystery haunting the imagination
and secretly magnetizing the thought. Where other
men spoke of a hope reaching forth to the after life,
a reverent looking forward, a trembling trust, he was
ardent, confident, positive. With him, he said, im-
mortality was no wish or dream or hope. It was
more than belief: it was knowledge. He knew he
was immortal: he felt it in every fibre of the soul.
Anything less than that was unworthy the name of
belief at all. Any demand of proof was an imper-
tinence. Any offer of historical evidence was an
affront to the living faith.
So with the love of God for his creatures, and the
destiny He reserves for them in a future state. It
was not a thing to be waited for and trusted in with
awe and trembling, with dread and shame lest we
might not be worthy to behold the Holiest and live,
lest the glories of the life beyond might be higher
than our aspirations or our deserts. He would em-
brace without a shade of misgiving, for every man,
the prospect of a world beyond the grave. He knew
-
*
106
THEODORE PARKER.
God must mean the best for every creature; that
not even guilt can long be a barrier from His love;
that not the wickedest of men should be ever afraid
to die.
Again, the presence and action of God in human
life, it is now, here, always, or else never and no-
where. There is no middle ground between atheism
and the sense of a present Deity. God's miracles,
real miracles, are in the movements of the heavens.
and in the fresh growth of every spring-time. To
set apart any class of events and acts, and call them
miraculous, or any special evidence of God's power, is
as much as to deny that power in other events and
things. The revering and tender associations which
make so many cling to the miracles of the New Tes-
tament and believe in them illogically, perhaps; at
least, rather with heart than head- had no place
with him at all.
G
Q
Thus his theory of Christianity was far from com-
plete, and his judgments of other men were far from
faultless. Nor was his theory quite consistent with
itself. Especially where he stood most widely apart
from the general sense of Christendom, and most
gloried in the difference, in his theory of sin in the
soul, it seems impossible to reconcile his eager op-
timism with his godly hatred of all forms of evil in
the concrete. But to no man is it given to compre-
hend all truth, or to fulfil all righteousness. They
have little ground to censure his rejection of the “sa-
tanic element" from his theology, who have not shared
or excelled the ardor of his moral conviction.
Out of a certain defect in his mind which I have
ܣ
107
tried to indicate, he would often seem not in the least
to understand or do justice to the minds of others.
And so there was a vein of misunderstanding and
injustice, on both sides, which made bitter and false
a large part of his controversy with the popular the-
ology. I do not remember a single statement he ever
made of the doctrine of his opponents which they
would be willing to accept, while he did make many
statements of their doctrine which they considered
wilfully offensive misrepresentations and caricatures.
His generosity to the personal character of an oppo-
nent whom he deemed sincere made the more remark-
able the sarcasm and scorn which he visited upon
things dear to their heart and cherished in their
faith.
HIS SERVICE TO RELIGION.
It
In two directions, especially, his service ought to
be thankfully acknowledged even by those who think
his fundamental opinions dangerous and wrong.
is in evidence that his words were the first to break
the spell of superstitious terror in many a mind that
waited only for the trumpet-tone of such a voice to
chase away the spectres of an evil dream, and turn
religion from a slavish fear into the glad liberty of a
child of God. And, again, there was a form of scep-
ticism, an undercurrent of hostility to the popular
creed, which was running fast to an open and mock-
ing infidelity, taking more and more a sensual and
materialistic tone. The arm's-length and puny oppo-
sition which such unbelief as this finds in the paid
pulpit of an established creed is a very different
thing from the clear, bold word of the independent
thinker.
#
108
THEODORE PARKER.
-
By sheer mental force and wealth of knowledge
this man headed the column of insurrection against
the Church. But, in doing it, he gave a new type and
tone to that hostility. Under his lead heresy became
more pious, more thoughtful, more humane than the
orthodoxy it opposed. Hundreds were saved from a
reckless and blank atheism, because they saw his in-
dependent vigor of thought and his unsparing attacks
on error joined to a positive faith in the Divine
providence and law, an absolute loyalty to right, a
confidence clear, ardent, and unwavering in the im-
mortal life of every human soul. It was wonderful
how wide his words spread and with what eagerness
they were received, the only words, teaching any
free form of piety, that went as far as civilized men
followed the narrowing track across forest and prairie,
or wherever two or three were gathered together to
grope their way out of the tangle and obscurity of the
theological growths around them.
In the field of moral and political debate there was
one service he rendered which no other did, which
perhaps no other could, render so well. He carried
into that field all the wealth of a mind very richly
stored, a great fund of various erudition, a breadth
and masculine vigor of understanding, which re-
deemed the debate from partisan littleness and lifted
it upon the plane of the larger ethics. We know
how apt such discussions are to degenerate into mere
vaporing declamation, into vituperative wrangling,
into pitiful sects and schisms. We know how hard
it is even for a rich and highly cultivated intellect,
that gives itself wholly to them, to avoid the mistake
C
109
and harm. Mr. Parker did not entirely escape this
danger. There was passion and there was injustice
in his speech. But that was the honest flaming-out
of moral wrath; and it is a glory to a man to be
capable of that!
HIS OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES.
The great gain was, when a man whose profession
and bent of thought turned him towards what is high,
abstract, infinite, whose studies made him at home
in the wide field of history, whose professional
walk led him into scholarly and refined circles, as
well as among the lowly and the poor, when such
a man stood in the front rank as a champion of moral
reform. It was no vague and theoretical moralizing
he brought to the great debate, no mere polish of
accomplished oratory, no mere denunciation of the
evil, or eloquent vindication of the right. It was a
masculine judgment of men and things, such that in
all records of the sort we have never seen the like.
Industry like that of a blue-book, gorgeousness of
diction like Burke's, moral passion like that which
flames in Milton, might be gathered in a single occa-
sional discourse. There was the massing of materials
for other men's independent judgment, and the mar-
shalling of them so that their statement should be an
argument. That self-ordained tribunal commanded
the attention as much of those who hated and op-
posed as of those who admired and applauded. Be-
fore its terrible bar every event, every deed of evil
policy and every prominent actor in it, had to be
dragged, to abide something like the verdict of pos-
terity, pronounced by that fearless voice from those
unsparing lips. Unsparing of honest prejudice, of
110
THEODORE PARKER.
gentler feeling —unjust, no doubt, often to the mo-
tives of men, and too easily believing ill of them¹—
yet it was a tribunal which extorted hearing and
commanded respect.
Thus that breadth of vision, that wide sweep of
knowledge, prevented the debate being ever narrowed
to party bigotries and sectarian aims. To-day, the
boldest words as to some affront from slavery upon
the public conscience; to-morrow, a plea for the ig-
norant, the lowly, the degraded in our own city
streets now, vehement exposure and denunciation
of some man's act, or verdict on some man's char-
acter, unsparing in its bitterness; and again, some
tender breathing of filial piety, some act of delicate
sympathy and kindness for distress, some word of
gentle consolation to those that mourn and labor and
are heavy-laden. Large as was the field of action,
rich and various as were the gifts he brought to labor
in it, we find in his life a symmetry, a singleness of
purpose, a persistency of aim, a consistency of motive,
such as we rarely find in far lower and narrower
ranges of men's lives. Such a life can well afford
to acknowledge greater defects of opinion and graver
errors of judgment than can be pointed out in him.
I will return for a single word to the religious
tone and motive of the life. Mr. Parker's creed has
1 For example, he persisted in believing the strange calumny
(which would be insulting to a border ruffian) — impossible in what
it charged, and promptly denied that Dr. Dewey, a man of the
tenderest filial piety, had said he would "send his own mother back
to slavery" to sustain the law; and could not be induced to admit
that Daniel Webster was honest in dreading a war of Disunion,
which he was himself soon after incessantly predicting.
HIS MOOD OF PIETY.
111
been called "a humane and tender optimism, which
strove to embrace all the facts with 'something like
Divine impartiality." If this optimism was strongly
contrasted by the intolerant tone he often took in
public debate, then on the other hand it is borne
out with singular harmony and consistency by what
we are permitted to read of his private papers. Force
of character needs the nurture of solitude. The
minutes of those many lonely midnight hours regis-
ter with curious precision the steps and processes of
that nurture. The one characteristic most marked
in them, the one feature of character which perhaps
most required just this testimony to make it ade-
quately known, is the incessant reverting to the mood
of piety. Aspiration after moral purity, after a fear-
less and true spirit in doing the work of life, is
earnest and constant. If it were not for the immense
visible result in the work done and the battle waged,
the impression would be almost that of a pietist and
a devotee.
Yet this, too, is in strict consistency with his gen-
eral theory of religious things. Supplication for par-
ticular blessings and special "providences," as if the
Unchangeable were to be moved by human entreaty,
he shunned as idolatrous and profane. Even the
phrases of his devotion contain the formal denial of
that doctrine of prayer which has been held and
argued for so earnestly by many of the most pious
men. But if prayer signifies the earnest seeking of
the Holiest, "if haply we might feel after him and
find him;" if it implies absolute reliance, joyful con-
fidence, the power both to find and to impart conso-
R
•
112
THEODORE PARKER.
?
lation in human griefs from that heavenly source,-
then the "gift of prayer" has been bestowed on few
men in larger measure. Many, who were distant and
strangers in his lifetime, sincerely thought him an
enemy of Christian truth.
But such may find in this
record now, if not complete harmony of soul, at least
a deeper life-current, which blended the warmest
springs of devotion in the strength that battled as
rudely against men's cherished beliefs as against their
rooted wrongs. Perhaps it is not too much to say
that in piety of just this type we find the living link
which binds what is purest in past forms of religion
with what is best in those that are to be. If an
<<
age of reason" is to follow the "ages of faith,” it
was well that one brave pioneer should share so
largely in the characteristic life of each.
Theodore Parker broke down in the midst of his
unfinished work, and died before the age of fifty. In
his absolute confidence in the Wisdom and Love that
govern all things, he could call to mind barely one
thing-his childless lot-that he would have wished
otherwise. Almost to the last, he was able to speak
with cheerfulness, even pleasantry, of his passing
strength. Of course, it must have been with one deep
pang of keen sorrow and disappointment. He had
identified his life so completely with his work! and
the task was but hardly begun, even then growing
larger and harder upon his hands. It is the fallacy
of a strong heart and living conscience that God
cannot spare his laborers from their task; that the
work is theirs, not His; that they are responsible
for the result as well as for the deed. In those fifteen
113
years of strife, had the bondage of bigotry and error
been much loosened?—had the chains of the slave
grown any lighter?- had the curse of intemperance
and licentiousness, the dishonesties and inhumanities
of trade, the grief of hopeless poverty, been lessened
in the community he lived in and labored for?
Might it not seem, possibly, as if the labor had been
in vain,—at least, as if a few years more ought to be
given, to save it from being lost?
Questions like these must come we cannot tell
how often or how keenly when the over-wearied
laborer rests at night, and contrasts the scanty har-
vests of the afternoon with the glow and confident
promise of the morning. But a man can live only
once. If he has given his own measure of strength,
if he has brought his own best gift, it is all that can
be asked of him, or by him. Force, say the scien-
tists, is never lost, but only takes new forms. Cer-
tainly this is true, if anywhere, then of moral force.
He has cast in his own life as one of those innumer-
able forces by which the life of Humanity is made
complete. One is taken, and many another left.
THE END.
T
A
VI.
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
THE Secession of 1860, and the Civil War which
presently followed, introduced a period in sev-
eral ways favorable to the liberal movement in the-
ology. It was, in fact, as much a breaking up of old
lines of sect, and a liberalizing of the public mind on
religious questions, as it was the introduction of a
new era in politics. There was a great shaking to-
gether of all sorts of opinions in camp-life. In the
readjusting of parties, sects as well as sections came
to have quite a new understanding of one another.
In the heat of the new enthusiasm, old prejudices
were fast melted away. Persons before obnoxious for
their radicalism now found themselves quite in the
current of popular thought. It was no accident that
the one great national work of organized charity — the
Sanitary Commission- was due to the genius of the
best recognized leader of the liberal forces; or that
the same week which saw the surrender of Richmond
saw also the carrying out of his scheme of a National
Conference designed to give new coherence and exec-
utive vigor to the loose and scattered ranks of Uni-
tarianism.
There is, accordingly, a very special sense in which
the period that has followed, with the wider scale and
115
greater variety of denominational activity, is best
represented by the name of Dr. Bellows. His death
is quite too recent to let us measure the amount of
loss the Unitarian body has suffered by it. But it
may be said here, that he saw with singular distinct-
ness both the opportunity offered and the conditions
under which it had to be met. His view took in the
field, as perhaps no one before him had conceived it,
at once so widely and so vividly; and he recognized
with great decision, even if he did not formulate, the
terms of that larger alliance by which the tasks of
liberal theology must henceforth be carried on. His
was, besides, one of the few names of great weight
that served as living links between the later and the
earlier generation. The Unitarian body was greatly
fortunate, that, while there were still others to bring
it wealth of thought and sufficiency of scholarship,
there was this one leader, trusted and beloved, to
help it towards a generous breadth of fellowship,
and something like energy of concerted action.
But perhaps the period before us is still better
characterized by a much younger class of men, who,
with less of critical study or defined opinion than
their predecessors, have a readiness in action, a vigor
of self-assertion, a directness of method, and a range
of popular sympathy that set them quite apart from
the older school, and give them a new and different
hold upon the future. We have especially to recog-
nize a group that are working with great spirit
and independence at a distance from what was be-
fore the only centre of our action; and another
group who have come into the Unitarian body from
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS.
116
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
outside, seeking more liberty of thought, and bringing
with them the tradition and the habit of greater re-
ligious zeal. The position of the one and the new
associations of the other are both favorable to freedom
of opinion. Neither of them feels the strong conser-
vative bond of the Congregationalist tradition, or is
held so firmly by reverent and loyal memory of hon-
ored names.
In short, Unitarianism, so far as it is destined to
survive at all, must understand that it has outgrown
its old theological limits; and, as it was once the lib-
eral side of the old Congregational body, so now it
must know itself as the Christian side of the broader
scientific movement of our time. As a part of this
broader movement, it may still retain its intellectual
dignity and its interest for thinking men, whatever
its denominational strength or weakness. Apart
from that, it has but a feeble life of its own, and will
be soon scattered to pieces, or else merged in the
superior energy and the increasing liberality of the
larger bodies around it.
That result is freely predicted for it by eager sec-
tarians who oppose it, and by radical thinkers who
secede from it. If such a result is to be averted, it
must be by maintaining a positive religious life of its
own, with its foundation of deep conviction both in-
tellectual and moral; and at the same time by guard-
ing that absolute liberty of opinion, that freedom
from theological prejudice and restraint, which will
entitle it to move in equal alliance with the science
and literature of the time.
Now how far liberty of opinion is consistent with
The
117
religious sympathy and harmony of action, is a
matter for the present of very doubtful experiment.
Most persons, when they speak of liberty of opinion,
silently take for granted the limits they themselves
respect. Thus the "right of private judgment," with
the Reformers of the sixteenth century, included also
the "sufficiency of the Scriptures." The freedom
claimed by the early Unitarians assumed the whole
apparatus of miracle and special revelation. The
Reformers did not feel any inconsistency in demand-
ing that freedom of conscience should be within the
limits of an evangelical creed; or the Unitarians, in
assuming that it must accept the absolute authority
of Christ. Probably we should demur, most of us, at
a religious fellowship which should include outright
denial of God or immortality, or outright profession
of communism or free love, however honest it might
be. And when we speak of liberty of opinion, or
breadth of religious communion, it seems quite nec-
essary, at starting, to find out how much we really
mean by those terms.
THE LIBERAL POSITION.
It appears to me that the only answer we can
give that question, is one which absolutely disclaims
the drawing of all lines of religious fellowship at
men's speculative opinions about anything. All hon-
est opinions are matter of fair discussion, as between
individual minds. I think they should make the
lines of division among men only just so far as they
correspond with the natural groups, spontaneous and
unforced, into which men necessarily fall. Especially,
it appears to me, it is quite too late in the day to
draw these lines on points of theological doctrine,
118
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
that is, on points which have and can have no sci-
entific value and no possibility of verification. To a
certain extent, those lines will be drawn so naturally.
It is not likely that a believer in the Pope's infal-
libility will seek the sympathy of free religionists;
or that a scientific radical would complain of exclu-
sion from a Baptist conference.
When the case
comes, let it be provided for.
But, in speaking of a communion nominally free,
I wish to be understood as meaning all which that
term can possibly imply. I take for granted that
some serious purpose is meant by voluntarily joining
any religious organization at all; and where there is
a serious purpose,
even no more than the desire
to hear, and perhaps learn, what some new doctrine
is, I hold that no person should have it hinted, or
in any way implied, that any difference of opinion
from the rest puts him at all in the position of a
stranger or outsider, so long as he chooses to stay
and claim the sympathy due to a fellow-man. I do
not know whether a church, or a religious body, can
be built upon so broad a platform; but as liberal
men I do not think we have a right to do anything
to narrow it, or that as liberal Christians we have a
right to exclude, or seem to exclude, any who de-
sire any sort of help, light, or comfort from that
source. 1
I am stating that broad ground of fellowship which
→
P
1 This, evidently, has nothing to do with the question as to the
choice or qualifications of a religious teacher, which must be set-
tled not by abstract theory, but by personal considerations and the
circumstances of the case.
•
TERMS OF CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP.
119
most Protestant bodies seem to be coming to, con-
sciously or not. In many which call themselves
orthodox, all decent people are welcome as members,
even as communicants, and no questions asked. But
it is desirable that the principle should be distinctly
stated and accepted, and not acted on surreptitiously.
Especially it is desirable that it should be seen as
the natural working-out of opinion, not as if we were
driven to it illogically by way of subterfuge. In fact,
it is the logical result of the scientific study of theol-
ogy, which comes in our day to take the place of its
dogmatic and controversial study. To see this, it is
only necessary to look at the fact before our eyes.
I must add a word here, as to the meaning of the
name "Christian," as applied to so loose terms of
communion as I have described.
The name was at first, probably enough, used as a
term of reproach, or at least simply as the designation
of a small party or group of persons at Antioch. The
early defenders of Christianity played a good deal
upon the word, for as pronounced in Greek it denoted
"the party of the good" as well as "the party of
Christ.' And it has come in course of time to have
several meanings, either of which may be true in a
particular connection.
"1
It is used in a broad way, historically, to distin-
guish the Christian world in general from Pagan or
Mahometan;
It is used by Catholics, ecclesiastically, to mean
those who accept the government, creed, and discipline
of the Roman Church;
1 As derived from χρηστός or from χριστός.
:
120
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
It is used by the Evangelical sects, theologically,
to denote those who accept the orthodox scheme of
salvation through Christ;
It is used by many religious bodies, technically, to
signify those who have been personally converted, and
pledged to lead a Christian life;
It is used by Unitarians of the older school, as
opposed to deist or rationalist, to describe those who
accept the Christian revelation in its strict super-
naturalistic sense;
It is used by Unitarians of a newer school to de-
scribe those who accept Jesus personally as their
authoritative teacher and guide;
It is used by some transcendental thinkers
as it
was used with great fervor of insistence by Theodore
Parker in a sense identical with " absolute re-
ligion," and by many others, still more loosely, in a
sense identical with simple moral goodness;
And, still again, it is used in literature to desig-
nate not so much (I should say) virtue in general,
but a particular class of moral qualities, sympa-
thies, and aspirations, which it has been the special
work of Christianity to foster and educate, chiefly
charity, piety, and chastity, with the qualities that
most resemble them, and are of nearest kindred to
them.1
C
Thus the name is found, in modern use, in at least
eight different senses; and in either one of them, ac-
cording to the connection, it may be quite rightly used.
1 “It is well understood that, in social parlance, Christianity
is a term denuded of all doctrinal signification.
Saturday
Review.
""
“་
.
121
We notice, besides, that till within the last few
years the name Christian was considered rather a
privilege, or prerogative, which the most liberal of
religious thinkers earnestly claimed as their right,
and which ecclesiastics or theologians were just as
much inclined to define by sharp boundaries, and to
allow or withhold on purely technical grounds. Quite
recently, the tide has rather turned the other way.
In the increased daring of modern speculation, Chris-
tian thinkers, more strictly so called, are inclined to
desire and claim the alliance of any who do not
choose to take openly antichristian ground. They
incline to widen the definition, to level the bound-
aries, to accept any recruit who will swell their ranks
against the "infidelity" of modern science. On the
other hand, the more liberal party are not at all
anxious about their exclusion from that name, and
many of them distinctly repudiate and disclaim it,-
some as neutral, others as definitely hostile towards
it. To them it is a sectarian name, meaning either
narrowness or falsehood according as you look at it;
and so, while working out those forms of religious
truth in better harmony with the widening range of
knowledge and thought, they reject it just as they
would any other name of sectarian limitation, or any
other antiquated error.
1
For myself, I am not quite content with either of
the definitions I have given.
in some such way as this:
THE NAME CHRISTIAN.
I should state it rather
In religious fellowship
1 Mr. Emerson, who was understood to have declined the name
when it was taken for a theological badge, returned to it, with much
affection and veneration, before his death.
B
122
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
our basis of union is not intellectual, or theoreti-
cal, but emotional and moral, having to do not with
opinion, but with character and conduct. When I
say that in a given case this is a "Christian" basis
of union, I do not mean to be understood as com-
promising that statement. The name Christian does
not rest, as I hold it, on any theory whatever about
the nature or office or person or doctrine of Christ.
It rests simply on the fact that we are Christian by
habit or inheritance, unless we deliberately choose to
renounce that name in favor of some other.
Doubtless the name should not be asserted or re-
tained, except so far as it represents the fact. From
the side of free-thought, I am not sure that it always
does; but from the side of associated religious action
it (for the present) very accurately does, in the freest
of our so-called Christian organizations. As distinctly
as I realize any fact in human history, I realize, in
acting with such an organization, that the great Chris-
tian movement has not spent its force; but that in
some very important departments of thought, still
more in some of the most vital and practical spheres
of motive and emotion, its current still bears me
along. I yield to its pressure, and consciously work
with it, instead of standing aside to criticise and
judge it independently.
That is what I mean, for my part, by calling
myself a Christian. When I assume that name, I
understand myself not to be professing an article of
belief, however indefinite and vague, but to be stating
an historical fact, definite and precise. Whatever
Christian form or symbol I accept, I understand my-
CHRISTIANITY AND FREE-THOUGHT.
123
self not as pledged to any interpretation whatever,
which any other man may give or may have given
of such form or symbol, but simply as claiming my
part in the tradition which has come to us, just as
our natural life has, not by our act or choice, but
by drift of circumstance; and I am entirely free to
interpret or use it as I will.
I can well conceive that an interpretation might
be forced upon the Christian system or name, by the
overwhelming assent of numbers, which would make
it personally dishonest and morally impossible for me
to retain that name. But at present not only I do
not see it in that light, but it is my very business,
and the task to which as seeking to interpret a "lib-
eral Christianity" I am most strongly committed, to
prevent its being so. For with all its terrible abuses,
and with all its pernicious errors, Christianity is a
name that means too much for the higher life of men,
whether moral or spirtual, to be willingly let die.
It appears to me that, with this explanation of it,
neither the name Christian nor the name Unitarian is
inconsistent with the most absolute freedom and inde-
pendence of thought, understanding, of course, that
the thought is in harmony with the main aim and
purpose of what we call the Christian life. And this
I understand, though not always made quite clear in
consciousness, to be the position which the Unitarian
body has definitely come to take. I will not press
any other illustrations of this which might be given,
but will only say that when Dr. Bellows, the most
honored and trusted leader of the body, was in con-
trol of the "Christian Examiner," its most responsible
124
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
organ, and I was in confidential relations with him,
he, with the noble generosity of nature always char-
acteristic of him, distinctly refused, though at some
personal inconvenience and loss, to draw any narrower
line of fellowship than what I have attempted to lay
down; and as distinctly invited and urged the co-
operation of men who, he knew, dissented radically
from opinions which to him were sacred and funda-
mental truth,
The liberalizing of theology has been in some sense
the work of Unitarianism from the first. That pro-
cess includes two distinct steps. One of these steps
must be taken by the aid of historical criticism, and
the other by the aid of natural science. I say steps,
though each of them is a process made up of innumer-
able steps, and extending over many generations. I
have now to give a few words to each: not at all to
trace the development of it in past time, but to show,
very briefly, the points it has had to meet, and the
position it has come to take, in the course of these
last few years.
As to historical criticism, few knew even what the
phrase meant, not many years before the time I am
especially dealing with. Theological polemics was a
battle in the air. It was kept up with immense
learning on both sides, but with the sole aim on each
side to get the victory over the other, and on both, to
see which could hit the hardest blows. Each com-
batant spoke for a party,- evangelical, unitarian,
rationalistic, —and his business was to do that party
the best service and its adversaries the most damage
he could.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
125
This, we know, has been the tone of theological
warfare from of old. On the titlepage of his most
labored and learned piece of work, the translation of
De Wette's "Introduction to the Old Testament,"
Theodore Parker put the defiant motto, Strike, but
hear. This motto is strangely out of place in a book
of pure erudition; but it illustrates very well a tem-
per and a method which have not quite passed away.
That is the theological method as formerly under-
stood. It is always anticipating hostility, and in a
chronic attitude of fighting.
The scientific method is exactly different. It minds
its own business of building up what it can, little by
little; and, so long as it minds its business, knows
nothing, cares nothing, about any opponents, imagi-
nary or real. The difference, in short, is this: that
theology—at least as it was understood once lays
down its plan of thinking, and then goes on with its
mode of interpretation in harmony with it; science
builds together its facts, bit by bit, comparing, ex-
plaining, investigating, combining, but keeping as
clear as may be from all theories whatever, except as
they grow irresistibly out of the facts.
In this way it puts together its construction, — not
to satisfy a preconceived notion of what must be, but
to ascertain as perfectly as it can just what is or was.
It knows that our knowledge is imperfect and frag-
mentary; that beyond the horizon which we can see
are boundless regions which we cannot see. Its
work is never to deny what may be beyond, but, by
patient exploring, to carry the horizon farther out;
to enlarge the boundaries of accurate knowledge, and
126
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
within those boundaries to make what we do know
more orderly and precise. In this its method is just
the reverse of that which theology has more com-
monly followed. Theology pleads as an advocate;
science listens to all the evidence, and holds the bal-
ance like a judge.
In saying this, I do not mean that the dogmatic
method belongs to the orthodox party in theology, or
the scientific to its opponents. I do not observe, for
example, that the method of the deists or rationalists
is at all more scientific than that it attacked. Hume's,
for example, is less so than Lardner's, and Parker's
less than Norton's. The difference I wish to point out
is between the sober constructive temper on the one
side, anxious only to get truth uncolored by prejudice
or passion, and the partisan temper on the other side,
chiefly anxious to establish a foregone conclusion.
This last has been oftenest shown, no doubt, by
theological dogmatists, but often, also, by anti-theo-
logical dogmatists. These may be, and often are,
generous, large-hearted men, and their work is neces-
sary and noble. Only, they are what they are, and
their work is what it is, because for them the day of
science is not yet. Metaphysics, destructive dogma-
tism, anti-theological partisanship, hot passion enlisted
against bigotry and intolerance, are necessary to clear
the ground. They are the indispensable forerunner,
but they are no more what we call science than the
theories they oppose. They are simply a protest in
the name of intellectual freedom. The zeal and the
learning they bring to bear give weight to the protest,
and do an infinite service for those who are yet to
127
follow. But the partisan temper, the breeze of con-
troversy, must lull before we can have a scientific
theology in the proper meaning of that word.
In some respects the present is much more favor-
able for this than the time that went before. The
controversial temper has abated, and the scientific
temper has had quite a new training in the discus-
sions of these latter years. It would not be correct
to say that interest has lessened in the fundamental
questions of religious thought. It would be more
correct to say that a soberer and more radical, per-
haps more anxious, debate is going on as to the reli-
gious bearings of natural science as it is now coming
to be understood. Darwin, Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley,
are names of much more immediate moment to the
theological world than the names of Schleiermacher,
Strauss, Baur, and Parker. In the field of debate
now open, the place of honor is held, not by the
advocates of this or that opinion, but by those who,
patiently, learnedly, and candidly are doing their best
to bring a genuine scientific spirit to bear upon the
facts.
NATURAL AND THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE.
Now, what do we mean by theological science?
and how do its method and aim differ from those of
physical science? For example, how does a scientific
theology differ from a scientific physiology?
The method of natural science is well understood,
which is the observation and comparison of facts; and
its aim, which is to ascertain the "laws of similitude
and succession" of those facts. Theories of the origin
of life, or the general problem of Being, it dismisses
as belonging altogether to the sphere of the Unknow-
+
128
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
able, or at least as coming under the province not of
physics but of metaphysics.
A scientific theology has, to begin with, precisely
the same method and aim: it differs only in the data
it assumes, and the class of facts with which it has
to deal. It has (for example) nothing to do with
cosmological theories, evolutionary or other, though
many persons seem to suppose so. These, however
fascinating or instructive, belong to the field of physi-
cal or else metaphysical speculation. The facts it
has to do with directly are these: facts of the religious
consciousness, and facts of religious history. The
laws it has to investigate are the laws of life as they
bear on character and conduct. The phenomena it
explores are distinctively religious phenomena; that
is, ethical or emotional. These it is the business of
a scientific theology to interpret with as keen an eye
to fact, as physiology in interpreting the functions
of any organ or tissue. Whether on the narrowest
scale in the individual life, or more broadly in the
interpretation of sacred literature, or on the largest
scale in the great movements of human history, it is
the first business of a scientific theology to interpret
those facts, or alleged facts, of human life which are
remotest from the range of physical necessity, most
closely and essentially included in the field of char-
acter and will.
Of course, there is a province of pure learning which
belongs especially to the theological domain. This
includes the vast accumulated erudition in the way
of literary criticism, exegesis, dogmatics, historical
criticism, and a great proportion of what is commonly
DOMAIN OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
129
reckoned to belong to ecclesiastical history. Some of
these topics ecclesiology and textual criticism, for
example may be even said to constitute special or
ancillary sciences in themselves.
So, too, there is a view of the religious life which
contemplates its relations with the infinite, the unseen,
the incomprehensible; a view which (in the accepted
language of religionists) belongs not to knowledge,
but to faith. But for the present, and for the sake of
precision, it will be convenient to limit the province
of scientific theology to the interpretation of those
two classes of facts before designated, facts of the
religious consciousness and facts of religious history.
Just here, and at the very outset, we come
upon a wide field of disputed facts, the so-called
supernatural. On the received principles of natural
science, what are we to do with these? Religious
history is too full of them to let us pass them by.
Our methods of historical criticism are exposed to
their sharpest test in dealing with them. We cannot
very well begin by assuming that our only witnesses
in a given matter are retailing pure falsehood, deceiv-
ing or deceived. The mere strangeness of a phenom-
enon is no logical ground for denying it. Miracles
meet us on the threshold of our inquiry; and one
of our first tasks must be to get as clearly before our
minds as we can the principles of dealing with them
intelligently.
-
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
As this is quite the most perplexed and difficult
part of our whole inquiry, we must give it a some-
what patient and deliberate attention. Let us begin
by noticing one or two contrasts that follow from the
9
130
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
difference in the subject-matter between theology and
science, as that term is commonly applied.
Science assumes as its postulate or ideal (which it
has a perfect right to do), that every group of facts
supposably may be, and in time probably will be,
reduced within the domain of natural law, - that is,
within that orderly succession of events whose ante-
cedents or successions we can intelligently follow, and
at length predict; and its objective point will be to
reduce as many of them as it can. Theology assumes
as its postulate or ideal, that everything at bottom
proceeds from living, intelligent, personal force, and
sees in any given event an exhibition of that force.
It deals, in short, with Persons, as the other deals
with Things.
Science has the advantage of showing how a great
multitude of facts, once thought to be ultimate (that
is to say, super-natural), have been reduced to regular
order and succession, grouped and classified, so that,
the course of them can be predicted or intelligently
controlled storms and eclipses, for example, on one
side, and mental maladies on the other, neither of
which now seem to us supernatural in origin or sub-
ject to miraculous control. Theology has the advan-
tage, as soon as we come to deal with the motives and
acts of intelligent beings, and with all the higher
manifestations of life, that its theories come closer to
our notion of originating force.
Science, again, does not pretend to know anything
about the origin of existing things; and, if we at-
tempt to account for that at all, an intelligent Will
(as Comte said) is at least as rational and easy a way
•
131
as any other. Neither has science ever succeeded in
reconciling it to the common consciousness of men,
that our voluntary acts come within the uniform and
necessary sequence of natural law: such words as
virtue and crime, right and wrong— belonging in pe-
culiar to the theological domain-always presume the
fact of personal responsibility and moral freedom.
In short, we have the two great realms of Law and
Will, of necessity and liberty, of natural event and
human character, subsisting side by side, and abso-
lutely irreducible either of them to the other. Speak-
ing strictly, a free act is just as much a miracle as
the creation of a world; and, excepting a free act,-
that is, an act of intelligent will, such as we are
conscious of at any moment, there is no other
miracle.1
LAW AND WILL.
Now just how far the province of will, human or
divine, extends in the field of action or history, it is
not for any man to dogmatize. Most of us would
admit that an intelligent act was required, at any rate,
to start the human race on its course, and to appoint
the Law which has guided its evolution. To some
of us
and perhaps more and more, the more we
reflect upon it-it will appear not unlikely that a
living influence, a pressure (so to speak) like that of
the atmosphere, is felt in human affairs, acting every-
where and always, but especially through minds of
certain peculiar capacities and gifts; and that this
influence (which must be allowed for just as we allow
for the pressure of the atmosphere in mechanics) is
1 The point is further developed in Dr. Bushnell's "Nature and
the Supernatural.”
132
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
+
་
from a sphere outside the will, or the conscious in-
telligence of men. It is not a thing to dogmatize
about; and its laws, supposing it to work by law, do
not seem very likely to come within the range of our
mental science. Still, in speaking of it, we should
bear in mind that we are speaking of nothing contra-
natural or abnormal, but of what comes into the same
order of fact as the evolution of a planet or the sim-
plest act of volition.
Here, then, is the point to which we are led. All
that we call miraculous and supernatural, the whole
province of revelation and inspiration, lies (as all his-
tory does) in this field, which belongs alike to science
and to theology: to one as the exponent of Law, and
to the other as the asserter of Will. The question.
between them is simply how far the province of will,
or personal force, can enter upon and control the
domain of law, or natural sequence. If we say never
and not at all, we assert a mere dogmatic fatalism,
which is not only incapable of proof, but is in violent
contradiction to our moral consciousness. If we say
it may enter, ever so little way, by the original act of
the Creator, or by the free lifting of a hand, then we
waive all dogmatic a priori denial of the possibility
of miracle and revelation; and it only remains to us
to inquire, as accurately as we can, what is the real
fact covered by those words.
But that is not going to prove, as some theologians
have imagined, a short and easy process. It will not
do to take a single style of mental illumination, and
1 Obviously a different thing from the legitimate logical pre-
sumption against marvels.
133
a single group of acts, appearing at one given period
of history, and say that all revelation and miracle are
included here. Still less will it do to accept off-
hand one class or school of evidences as to these
particular facts, and rule out off-hand all other evi-
dence as to similar facts appearing at other times
and in other ways. The records of history are full of
alleged miracles, oracles, wonders presumed to be
supernatural. If the Hebrew and Christian records.
make a class entirely by themselves, and are to stand
alone in all the world as sufficient evidence of reve-
lation and miracle (which, with many, is the only
point at issue), that fact itself cannot be established
without exhaustive criticism and comparison, and a
long and intricate process of study, which is hardly
more than begun.
Grant that in these two groups of records there are
characteristics quite unique, giving them a claim to
be valued and studied quite peculiar to them, and
shared by no other, and there is a good deal in
them to justify that claim, still this by no means
forestalls the duty, in the face of the immense learn-
ing and argument arrayed against it, of establishing
it patiently and good temperedly, by fair reasoning;
not asserting it violently, on peril of denunciation or
worse, or even assuming it in advance to be defended
afterwards. Suppose those records to be intrinsically
and exceptionally divine, it will be some generatious
yet before that fact can be sufficiently established to
serve for a valid theory of sacred history. The old
proofs of it served for a time, but the whole process
of proof has now to abide a different class of tests.
MIRACLES.
134
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
!
Two needless difficulties have been introduced here
by modern defenders of miracles.
The first is the view which sees in them manifes-
tations, or invasions, of a higher realm of Law, over-
riding and controlling those lower ranges of law with
which we are familiar. This needless concession to
the terminology of science is dispensed with, by tak-
ing the simpler definition of a miracle, as an act of
Will under conditions exceptional and imperfectly
understood, particularly when those conditions have
to do with man's nervous or psychical organization.
The conditions, here as elsewhere, are defined by law;
but the act of will is in its nature (so far as it reaches)
the overruling of law. What is Law, after all, ex-
cept an observed sequence of phenomena? If there
is any force behind it, that is quite as likely to be
intelligent and free as otherwise.
поверн
The other difficulty is the assumption, often si-
lently made, that the exception which makes the
miracle is to be allowed in a single class of miracles
only, those of the Bible, which are involved in a
particular theological scheme. Thus the hardest and
most disputed point in the problem is put in front,
to be met first. It is evident, on the contrary, that
the true method would be to take the easiest and
nearest first, to decide, if possible, on the alleged
miracles of our own time; to examine testimony from
other parts of the historical field; and thus to secure
in advance the canons of evidence by which the
miracles of Scripture may be brought under scientific
tests.
I will not speak here of the great field that is
135
opened by the study of comparative religions, but only
of what belongs directly to the history and develop-
ment of Christianity itself. Its earliest defenders
(as Justin) admitted the reality of pagan oracles and
miracles, which they ascribed to evil dæmons, while
they laid no claim to supernatural powers of their
own. Its later advocates - conspicuously Augustine
and Gregory of Tours-testify in the most detailed
and explicit way to miracles of healing and of raising
from the dead, in their own experience, and by powers
directly conferred on Christian believers. The testi-
mony of these dignified and important eye-witnesses
is very different from the innumerable miraculous
legends that swarm in ecclesiastical chronicles and
lives of the saints.
TESTIMONY TO MIRACLES.
Catholic believers, however, have always asserted
that their Church retained its wonder-working power.
Some years ago, when living in Washington, I was
informed in great detail of a church miracle of heal-
ing which had been wrought there very recently, with
all formality and publicity. Sometimes tales like
these vanish when you come near them; sometimes
they do not. And no evidence in history appears to
be plainer, more explicit, or more respectable, than
what comes to us daily of works of healing, or the
like, quite outside any known scientific method, which
can be ascribed only to the exertion of the will under
special conditions: that is, they come under any defi-
nition of miracle which can be intelligently framed.
All these make part of the field open to scientific
exploration.
I do not bring up these illustrations as an argu-
136
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
ment bearing one way or the other on the reality of
miraculous phenomena. Personally, I have no theo-
retical objection whatever to what are commonly
called miracles, in the only sense in which I can un-
derstand that term, that is, as acts of will, whether
human or divine, under conditions which have not
yet been, and perhaps never will be, reduced within
our science. What I do object to is the logical in-
consistency of applying canons of evidence to one set
of facts, which we refuse at the same time to apply
to another set of facts.
K
I do not say, either, that all those facts must stand
´or fall together. They are found in great variety, and
supported by widely different degrees of proof. I do
not even deny that the final result of the most skil-
ful and fair investigation may be to leave the mira-
cles of the Bible in their place of honor, the sole and
only facts of that order which history will allow per-
manently to stand. I only say that the preliminary
studies have not yet been undertaken, at least, not
carried by any means far enough,— to justify that as
the final verdict. Men of science have been too radi-
cally hostile to the very idea of miracle, or in fact of
any free-agency at all; while theologians have been
too tenaciously bent on proving or disproving the
authenticity of particular books, to allow the real
question to come before the court of reason.
For the present, therefore, what we are entitled to
demand is this: that the Biblical record, after due
process of literary criticism, shall be judged exactly
as we judge other records, ancient or modern, of al-
leged contemporary fact. More than this the friends
M
•
CANONS OF EVIDENCE.
137
of science have no right to demand; less than this
they cannot be asked or expected to accept.
I say nothing of what it may be when the true
conditions of historical criticism are better under-
stood. But provisionally, and for the present, we seem
to be justified in accepting a Scripture miracle as true,
if the same or a corresponding degree of evidence
would convince us of the same thing happening in
Asia to-day or in America a hundred years ago; and
we are not justified in so accepting it if the same or a
corresponding degree of evidence would not convince
us of the same thing happening in Asia to-day or in
America a hundred years ago. And at all events we
need, to establish our canons of evidence or our test of
credibility, some well certified and generally accepted
judgment of scientific men, after sufficient investiga-
tion, of the alleged "miracles" of our own day. No
other judgment appears to be either rational, ade-
quate, or candid.
Accepting this as a general criterion, we shall not,
probably, be over hasty or confident in applying it to
the record of particular facts. If, however, we may
judge by the turn given to modern observation of
such things, it would appear that there is one large
class of Scripture miracles, or what are generally re-
garded as such, chiefly the healing of nervous and
mental disorders, which we may accept with little
hesitation, subject, of course, to the criticism of an im-
proved physiology. There are others chiefly those
concerning certain natural phenomena - which we
should almost certainly reject as facts, without any
hesitation at all. Some of them may be poetry, like
-
-4
138
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
that of Joshua and the sun; some allegory or myth,
like that of Jonah and the whale, the ascension of
Elijah, or the children in the fiery furnace; some
like the feeding of the multitudes, stilling the tem-
pest, walking on the waves, or blasting the fig-tree
a natural enough misunderstanding of the real fact
(whatever that may have been), or perhaps a parable
misconceived. Such expositions lie mostly in the
region of pure hypothesis.
There are others which have taken a deeper hold
on the religious imagination, and which have become,
so to speak, articles of religious faith in themselves.
As to these, the judgment of candid and honest minds.
is likely to be greatly in suspense, and painfully.
That we cannot help. We wish to see, if we are
candid and honest, just where our principles of belief
are likely to lead us.
Of such events the typical one, and beyond com-
parison the most momentous, is the resurrection of
Jesus. To this our ordinary canons do not quite.
apply: first, because absolute belief in it, by those
who claimed to be eye-witnesses, was the mainspring
of a great and definite movement in human history;
and second, because belief in it not only qualifies
men's view of the course of events in general (as all
miracle does), but is apt to determine their whole
view of human life and destiny. Not only as the
demonstration of a life to come, but as symbol and
proof of the victory of good over evil, the place
which it holds in the religious mind is entirely
unique. Criticism is therefore bound to approach it
more deliberately, more anxiously, more tenderly, than
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS.
139
it approaches any other which it is really seeking to
understand.
We may admit, at the outset, the overwhelming
presumption which the modern mind finds against
the literal interpretation of the narrative. It is prob-
ably not too much to say that no educated mind-
that is, no mind trained in modern methods — now
believes that a body of flesh and blood literally came
from the grave, and in plain sight of men rose above
the clouds, the view of it which most early be-
lievers maintained with great intrepidity. That has
passed away, along with the dogma of the resurrection
of the body, which it was held to prove.
The alternative which forces itself upon the mod-
ern mind is plain: either there was no real death, or
there was no real revival of the dead. No weight of
evidence will outweigh the vast improbability. But
that alternative only brings us to the threshold of the
interpretation we seek. It only puts the question in
another form: Is it possible for a human soul, after
death, to manifest its presence in a way of which the
resurrection of Jesus is an example and a type? And
to this question there are several affirmative answers,
giving as many phases of belief, none of them dis-
proved, and some of them, it may be, not incapable
of future proof.
A valid answer, again, would give—or for it we
should need a far better knowledge than we have
now of the exact relation between this and what, for
want of better knowledge, we call the unseen world.
Granting only that such a realm of conscious life ex-
ists, it would be absurd to deny that it could be made
S
140 .
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
known to us; and there would remain no difficulty
either in the recorded appearances of Jesus, or in
countless other manifestations of spirits that have
passed into it before us. It becomes simply a ques-
tion of the larger possibilities and destinies of human
nature.
It is perfectly easy to see what the first disciples
understood by the resurrection of Jesus, and in what
sense they believed in it. Paul, to be sure, the
earliest Christian writer, speaks of it very vaguely,
except as to the point of its reality, which he insists.
on in every possible way, as the very foundation of
Christian faith. This reality, to his mind, is the
glorified life in heaven of the living and exalted
Messiah, who, in his new official station, is the direct
source of inspiration and strength to his disciples.
The particular event and way of "the resurrection
from the dead" he says nothing about, except to
insist that it is not a form of flesh and blood, but a
spiritual body," that dwells in the after life.
But the next generation have left us no room
whatever to doubt of their meaning. They have
explained and argued, in the most explicit terms,
that it was a body of flesh and blood which rose from
the grave.
It was proved to be so by the act of
eating and drinking; it was shown by wounds and
scars to be the same that was actually mangled
upon the cross; and it was visibly taken up in plain
daylight into the sky. It is saying nothing what-
ever to criticise or condemn that belief, to say that
it has passed wholly out of the educated mind of
the present day, along with the kindred and de-
<<
EXPOSITIONS OF THE RESURRECTION.
141
pendent doctrine of the resurrection of our own
bodies.
Of modern expositions, accepted by Unitarians,
may be mentioned the following:
Dr. Furness sets aside the whole accompaniment
of angelic visions, and represents Jesus as rousing
himself as if from a deep sleep,- manifestly imply-
ing that there had been no death in the ordinary
or physiological sense.
Mr. Edmund H. Sears-a mind rare and admi-
rable, in whom piety and imagination were far more
robust than sober understanding-held that the risen
body of Jesus became by degrees, during forty days,
attenuated, spiritualized, visionary, so attaining the
condition of what is called the "resurrection body,"
in which condition it was withdrawn from human
sight. 1
James Freeman Clarke regards the resurrection of
Jesus as "an example of a universal law," and his
visible appearances as illustrating the conditions
under which the departed may manifest themselves
in a "spiritual body," his real body having been
removed by priests or soldiers.2 We have here, ap-
parently, the same phenomenon as in the "materializ-
ations" of modern Spiritism; since "a universal law"
cannot, of course, be inferred from a single disputed
example.
President Walker-one of the most grave, candid,
and honored of Unitarian thinkers-held, more
simply, that the resurrection of Jesus was really the
1 Foregleams of Immortality.
2 Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, p. 83.
+
rada
·
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A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
strong personal impression or conviction of his living
presence, produced on the minds of his disciples by
his own spiritual contact and influence while in the
unseen world, which they interpreted as a visible
appearance. To him the Ascension was decisive
against a material resurrection.
A view to which many of the most thoughtful and
intelligent appear to incline-most strikingly set
forth by the author of "Philochristus "— is, that the
imagination and faith of the disciples created out-
right those visions or appearings of their risen Lord
which afterwards took shape in the gospel narratives,
or in later legends, hard to reconcile with one an-
other, but easy to reconcile by that vivid and creative
fancy, inspired by revering affection, and an absolute
hope of his future return in celestial glory.
These are interpretations suggested by believing,
serious, religious minds. Mere scientific criticism,
neutral or hostile, goes much further, so as to make
the whole account sheer fabrication, imposture, myth,
or hallucination.
I have thus indicated what appears to me the true
attitude of scientific thought towards the most dis-
puted and difficult questions of theology, in which I
do not include such properly philosophical or meta-
physical questions as the being or attributes of God,
freedom of the will, and the natural argument for
immortality. For the profoundest thought on these
questions of the higher philosophy, from the Uni-
tarian point of view, I may refer to Dr. Hedge's
"Reason in Religion," and "Ways of the Spirit," or
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT.
143
to the superb and eloquent exposition that has been
given of these and similar topics by Mr. James
Martineau.
I have been drawn into making this discussion,
more than I meant, a statement of personal opinion
as far as it goes; because that seems fairer than a
method purely impersonal and non-committal. It
appears to me that the chief lesson we have to learn
as to these matters is modesty and patience. Hasty
dogmatism is the demand of the impatient partisan,
and the source of never-ending, bitter, fruitless con-
troversy. What I have called a "scientific" method
of dealing with the subject will tolerate no such
thing. The long experience of physical investigation,
leading to the enormous enlargement of our positive
knowledge and power, teaches always this one lesson,
-intellectual humility.
Science forbids partisanship and passion: it does
not forbid an intense, deep, personal interest in the
wide field it explores. The world of man—of emotion,
character, and act opened to us in Christian history
and in the study of the human soul—is far nearer to
our thought, and far more interesting, than the splen-
did realm of outward phenomena taught in our cos-
mology and our physics. Let it be studied with equal
patience, reverence, humility, with equal loyalty to
the revelation of simple fact, and its fruit will not be
less precious or abundant.
Again: Science involves Criticism; and the results
of criticism are often, for the time at least, negative,
not positive. But while there is many a thing which
we can only have left behind with reluctance and
144
A SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY.
pain, yet as one is intellectually the "heir of all the
ages," so the later he inherits, the richer his inheri
tance. The scientific spirit is likely to prove braver,
manlier, honester, than the ecclesiastical spirit, even
if less serious and tender; and the tendency to a
certain mental timidity, half-heartedness, and com-
promise can never again, I should think, be quite as
strong as some of us have felt it in the past.
There is always a temptation to try our hand at
some ideal theory of reconciliation and mental har-
mony among the widely diverse elements of our ex-
perience. But history makes very light of all such
ideal theories. We are not responsible for the begin-
ning of things, or for the end of things; though by a
sort of generous illusion we are apt to feel so. For
us, the only answer of any value to any of the great
questions respecting God, Life, Destiny, is the answer
we find very slowly and late in life perhaps - by
doing our own best work in our own best way; and
in keeping mind and heart always open to the whisper
of the Spirit of all Truth. And that is, after all, the
best contribution we can make to the larger result,-
perhaps the only one.
1
M
VII.
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
TH
HAT very brilliant and striking book, "Ecce
Homo," has made familiar the phrase "enthusi-
asm of humanity," to describe the spirit which, more
than anything else, characterized the new religion as it
was conceived in the minds of Jesus and his disciples.
This may be justified, perhaps, by the emphasis
which the New Testament lays on the purely human
qualities of justice, charity, and compassion, above
all tradition, form, or doctrine. And there was a
time when the Christian Church assumed the heav-
iest of tasks in the preserving or reconstructing of
society in a long period of violence and disorder.
That was, however, in the name of God, not man, and
by the offices of a priest, not by appealing broadly to
the human reason; still less by the intelligent study
of the causes that make for human welfare and virtue
as against misery and crime.
Thus the phrase "enthusiasm of humanity" was
never properly characteristic of the Christian Church
as such; and it never had a distinct meaning in any-
body's mind till within the last hundred years. It
really belongs not to the religion of the past, but to
the religion of the future. And when we speak of
any connection it may have with the liberal move-
10
146
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
ment in theology, we speak of the most important
thing of all, in which that may have any hold upon,
or any service of preparation for, or any hope in, that
better life for man at which Religion aims.
Here let me recall a single step of the ground over
which we have already passed. Unitarianism, as it
was at the end of the last century, had in it two ele-
ments: the element of Reason, in which it was an
outgrowth of the realistic school of Locke; and the
element of Justice, in which it was allied with the
revolutionary spirit and the political radicalism of a
hundred years ago.
In its later history in this country these two ele-
ments have continually reappeared side by side.
They have determined, on the one hand, the movement
of free-thought against the old theology, and, on the
other hand, they have defined the issues of later con-
troversy. Let us see to what point they have already
brought us.
It may be fairly said that reason is now in the as-
cendant in the field of theology. The old questions
of history, criticism, and dogma are, it is true, far
enough from being settled; but at least they have all
been brought under a scientific method of inquiry,
which (so far as we can see) is their final stage. But
thought is, at best, an inconsiderable part of the
domain of life. If the next great development of
religion is to be in the direction of intelligent service
of humanity, — which, with all generous minds, is to
take the place of ritual and dogma, our most im-
portant study must be the antecedents, principles, and
conditions of that service.
THE MODERN SPIRIT.
147
The Christian ideal of human society is summed
up in the phrase, "Kingdom of heaven upon earth."
In its practical sense, that ideal was soon in great
part lost sight of by the early Church. The old creed,
Catholic and Calvinist alike, had its root in a sort of
despair of human nature and earthly destiny. In
strong contrast to the New Testament, it remanded
to a future paradise and hell the solution of a riddle
which (as we see with Saint Augustine) it felt itself
incompetent to solve in this world.
The great reaction against that creed began with
the deism and philosophism of the last century. The
gross sins of Voltaire, the grosser offences of Rous-
seau, against general faith and morals, are more than
atoned, in the view of our generation, by the intrepid
humanity of the one and the sentimental pleadings
of the other This new spirit, still fresh, vivid, and
full of hope, inspired the era and dictated the max-
ims of the Revolution. It is just over a hundred
years since the new gospel of humanity, the modern
creed of liberty and equal right, was put in distinct
expression to justify our declaration of national inde-
pendence, to inspire enthusiasm in a doubtful strug-
gle, and to assert the principles of a new political life.
In France, what we should call the modern Bill of
Rights is still appealed to as the "idea of eighty-
nine;" that is, it defines the doctrine and aim of the
Revolution as against the old constitution of State
and Church.
This new gospel of humanity, the code of human
rights, became a sort of religion in its way, and the
object of as passionate devotion as any religious
148
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
as it was
dogma of the past. Theophilanthropy
called in one of those fervid episodes under the
banner of "that good democrat Jesus," or of the
new revolutionary "Supreme," was an attempt to
enlist the impassioned enthusiasm of the religious
sentiment in the war against privilege and wrong.
Its doctrine was futile, its forms were melodramatic
and ridiculous. But, as far as sentiment goes, nothing
was ever more generous; few things, I should think,
have been more sincere. A humble but very touch-
ing illustration of it struck my eye in visiting the
great School of the Blind, in Paris, where the dates
of charitable foundations and gifts were the dates of
successive stages in the French Revolution; and re-
called not the eras of prosperity and glory, not the
splendors of aristocracy and court, but the time of
terror, when the people felt the first sense of a blood-
bought power, and France was in arms against the
world.
C
Now from that period of revolution our own has
grown, and has received no small part of its spirit-
ual inheritance. And especially among us here in
America. Here, that sentiment of justice and equal
right has been cultivated, for more than a century,
as a sort of religion. It has been proclaimed in in-
numerable patriotic addresses, and sung in all our
national songs, and incorporated as a bill of rights in
our State constitutions, and made the only basis of
political power. Even now, the enormous incon-
venience of irresponsible suffrage and sentimental
legislation has hardly begun to check the fervor of
that early faith. In the most formidable political
GOSPEL OF THE REVOLUTION.
149
crisis we have met, the sentiment of equal liberty, as
much as the plain necessity of national union, was
the condition and the assurance of our victory.
What made the religion of our politics inspired also
the reform of our religion. When the revolutionary
gospel of humanity had become so deeply discredited
abroad, when the Te Deum of the Holy Alliance had
been chanted over its downfall, then it became part
of the task of Christian liberalism to give what was
true in it a fresh consecration, and baptize it anew in
the name of the Son of Man.
Nothing is more characteristic of the early Uni-
tarianism than this: that, in proportion as it de-
parted from the old theology, and especially as its
moral doctrine was more clearly contrasted with the
creed of inherited depravity, it became committed to
a generous faith in human nature, and more and more
made its religion consist in service to mankind.
Thus the doctrine of peace was fervently pro-
claimed, with strong abhorrence of all war,-a part
of the reaction which set in after the five-and-twenty
years of carnage that ceased at Waterloo. The tem-
perance reform in its first stages was part of the same
generous gospel, and found nowhere else so forward
advocates as in the ranks of the liberal theology.
The great expansion given to the prevalent ideas of
education, and the great improvements in its method
which came in forty or fifty years ago, had no more
zealous propagandists. When public attention was
turned to asylums for the blind, and hospitals for the
insane, and reformatories for young offenders, and
humane methods of prison discipline, -all these were
150
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
•
taken up, in an eager, hopeful way, and engrafted on
the same humanitarian creed. That genial optimism,
that faith of sentiment, that buoyant confidence in
a golden future just opening, when all the harsher
wrongs that afflict humanity should melt before the
rising of that auspicious sun, this made part of the
atmosphere of liberal theology of forty years ago, and
deeply tinged the light under which its younger dis-
ciples then looked forward to their life-work as it lay
before them.
M
I must now speak of a certain reaction in the years
that have followed since. For two distinct results
may be traced as succeeding that era of fervid procla-
mnation and humanitarian faith. The first is, that the
faith itself has been cheapened (as it were) by diffu-
sion, and takes the form of that shallow sentiment-
alism which is one definite source of mischief in the
social theories of the day; the second is the shape
which the reaction is apt to take with those who
have outgrown its crude but ingenuous fervor. A
weak humanitarianism on one side is matched against
a sombre pessimism on the other.
Those axioms of political justice, those maxims of
social ethics, which make the liuman side of our re-
ligious creed, are each a half-truth touching some fact
of human nature: the bright or illuminated side, but
not the whole of it. To state it as if it were the
whole truth makes one of the most troublesome of
those fallacies with which morals or politics has to
deal. A fallacy of this sort is sometimes a rudiment-
ary or embryonic truth, sometimes a stranded or fossil
truth. What is the inspiration of one age may be
SENTIMENT AND SENTIMENTALISM.
151
the delusion of the next. What is the illumination
of one period may be the ignis fatuus of another.
In a high flood-tide of sentiment, action becomes
heroic, which when the tide goes down becomes im-
possible or else insane: witness the Crusades, -a
genuine enthusiasm of pious adventure, under God-
frey or St. Bernard; a dreary and languid tragedy,
under Simon Montfort or the contemporaries of St.
Louis. At the same flood-tide, a belief becomes pas-
sionate and fervent, a hero's inspiration or a martyr's
strength, which fades out afterwards into a symbol,
an opinion, a creed, with the divine life all ebbed
away. So it was with the trinity, with transubstan-
tiation, with the infallibility of the Bible; so it is
with that sentiment of a Divine Humanity, which
perpetually tends to fade into the thin cold light
of sentimentalism.
There is something ungracious in appearing to dis-
own thus the popular gospel of our time, — so gene-
rous in its sympathy, so gushing in its philanthropy,
so zealous in its works of charity, so honorable to
human nature itself as compared with the creed of
any former generation, so congenial to our own best
tradition and theory of Christianity. But we cannot
fail to see that the waters are ebbing away, on which
it floated so fair and brave a generation or two ago.
Men's faith in human nature is undergoing a stern
revision, and collation with pitiless facts. What is al-
ready part of our tradition-what is taken for granted
in easy assent, not fought out and won in the mind's
own effort after truth and the soul's hunger after
righteousness is no longer the same thing. It is
152
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
+
beginning already to be debased and alloyed. The
same gospel of humanity which Channing made the
most advanced interpretation of Christianity in his
day, was greeted with eager welcome as the soul of
a new thing in literature when Dickens took his
heroes from the work-house and his heroines from
the street. Even then there was something in it
melodramatic and false. The same thing, at a later
stage, becomes conscious satire thinly disguised, as in
"Joshua Davidson" and "Ginx's Baby." Striking
at very obvious social wrongs, it suggests no solution,
unless it be socialism or a spurious Romanism,—as in
the wretched sophisms and travesties of Mr. Mallock.
Meanwhile, since the Dickens period, the period
of a gushing and morbid sentimentalism, - litera-
ture has taken quite another phase. It has become
critical, cynic, weary. Just as theology becomes eru-
dition, as philosophy turns into formula, and science
into sterile nomenclature, so in the arts of culture
mental analysis goes back on enthusiasm and faith.
This tone, not lacking in George Eliot, strongly colors
the atmosphere in which the facts of life and history
are set before the sight of a younger generation.
So far as we are conscious of it in our own mood,
we might suspect it to be the loss of the natural.
glow of youth as years go by, an outgrowing of the
emotions and aspirations of our own past. But it is
more than that. In the generation that comes after
ours it is still more marked than it is in us. The
younger culture has already outgrown, or else has
never shared, the generous illusions which made our
own inheritance from the Revolutionary age. I speak
}
153
here more especially of the cultured, the literary, the
scientific class. In the popular mind, less touched
by the critical temper of the time, those vague emo-
tions, those generous maxims, retain more force. But
from the inspiration of a reforming zeal they become
dogmas of a sentimentalizing policy. From glittering
generalities on the banner in front of battle they
degenerate to mere fallacies of social ethics, languid
half-truths, whose side of truth, even, is not recog-
nized by those who think they have outgrown them.
For facts, alas! have not borne out those generous
vaticinations. For the first time in the world, a
whole people were trusted to exhibit the doctrine of
equal rights in the government of a Free State,-to
issue in the present condition of our politics. We
fondly hoped, we fervently believed, that the reign of
force was passing away before the advance of reason
and humanity; but, behold! six great wars crowded
within five and twenty years (to omit such tragic
episodes as India and Mexico), -wars engaging the
most advanced and powerful Christian nations, and
each in its way memorable for some new horror, on
some vaster scale than all the tragedies of the past
had quite prepared us for! Nations and laws, we
said, are shaped more and more by the spirit of
Christian philanthropy. But, no! Blood and iron,
says the foremost statesman of the age, blood and
iron make the strong cement in which the founda-
.tions of States must be laid. And perhaps in all
human history the secret dread of war was never so
deeply felt as now, and the open preparations for war
were never half so formidable.
THE REACTION.
154
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.”
Was, then, that faith in human nature which made
the most choice and precious part of our religious
inheritance, that which seemed benign and sure as
sunlight to our fathers, was it a delusion and a
dream? Such questions many ask themselves in a
sort of despair. The answer can come only in a
working faith, too busy in act to speculate on result;
or else in an intellectual faith, which must grow up
slowly among the new conditions of the time. It is
quite too soon to do more than guess and hint what
the new gospel of humanity shall be. Despair is for
the idle and unfaithful, hope for the willing and
strong.
Let us now consider briefly the background which
is given us for the new Religion of Humanity in the
scientific conceptions of the day.
First of all, I do not think we need trouble our-
selves in the least about the effect of natural science
upon our speculative theism. The God of scientific
theory by no means appeals to devout feeling, like
the Divine Father of the Christian gospel, but is at
least as good as the subjective Absolute of meta-
physics, and infinitely better than the avenging Sov-
ereign of the popular theology. And by the God of
scientific theory I mean simply the Force-personal
or impersonal behind all phenomena, with which
science, as such, has nothing to do; which it knows
only as manifest in the primary qualities of matter
and the laws of motion. The mystery of the uni-
verse itself is so prodigious that it makes light of
all our little differences in the attempt to state it.
Consider, for example, what the most bigoted ma-
M
C
THEISM AND NATURAL SCIENCE.
155
terialist must embrace in his summary of facts. He
believes, such is his reliance on the veracity of
things, with absolute conviction, that in spaces
immeasurably remote he has ascertained the presence
of vast nebulæ of substances having the exact prop-
erties of elements familiar to his experiments; that
there as here, at a given temperature, a given pair of
them (as oxygen and hydrogen) will infallibly unite,
always and everywhere in proportions exactly fixed,
with accuracy more perfect than any chemist's bal-
ance could weigh them out; that the vapor thence
resulting will just as infallibly, at a given lower tem-
perature, crystallize in myriads of frosty stars, with
every angle measured by a geometry more exquisite
than any human draughtsman's, the effect if not
the act of perfect Intelligence, most literally present
in every spot, in every atom. And this, only one of
the simplest of innumerable chemical changes best
known to us; a rude intermediate process, we may
even call it. WHAT MAKES IT? Answer that, and
you have answered everything. A single one of
Helmholtz's whirling rings (which make the ultimate
form of molecule as now conceived by many) is a
creation as astonishing as a solar system. Account
for that, and you have accounted for everything.
When the same process of unfailing accuracy is
traced through increasing complications of being, up
to all forms of organic growth, without a single loop-
hole left anywhere for chance or caprice,-absolute
Intelligence seen everywhere in result, if not in act,
-it seems a very harmless thing, after all, to say
that Matter, so regarded, has in it "the potency and
C
156
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
›
the promise of all forms of life." And that "harp of
three thousand strings," which Tyndall describes as
existing in the structure of the human ear, shaped by
the needs and cravings of the organization so as to
respond to every tone or finest interval of musical
sound, well! if these are the responses and the po-
tencies existing among material things, I do not know
where we could possibly go for a definition of Crea-
tive Intelligence, infallible, omnipresent, absolute, so
well as to the repertory in which a thorough-going
materialist keeps his store of facts; or to that curious
summary of them in which Hartmann records the
attributes of "The Unconscious." Special arguments
of efficient or final cause seem dwarfed into nothing-
ness beside the simple statement of the fact. They
testify, at best, to the thoughtful and reverent habit
of the mind which contemplates the fact.
Scientific theory, then, I think, is absolutely neu-
tral as to our speculative theism, serving only (as it
necessarily must) to state the conditions under which
it must be held. But it is a very different thing as
it affects our religious theism. When we think of
the overwhelming vastness, the appalling indifference
to our interests and emotions, to all human pain and
guilt, with which the circles of Being sweep their
everlasting round, can we, that is, under the ordi-
nary limitations of the human mind, can we think
of any conscious sympathy between our own life and
that stupendous Force? Can we conceive or retain
a belief that events are intelligently ordered, to work
out the designs of "the highest Wisdom and the pri-
mal Love"? Dante could dare to put those words on
Catal
157
the portal of his Hell, because the system of things
he knew of was so small and near. Can we still hold
them true, as a key to the inmost meaning of our
Cosmos, so vast and with a horizon so remote ?
In trying to see how this question may possibly
show itself to the modern mind, outside of theological
circles, one or two considerations occur. I put that
question once to Louis Agassiz; and while he very
earnestly urged the proof of Intelligent Design in the
creation, it seemed to me that he did not find in na-
ture any very clear mark of the character of the Cre-
ator, the only point which has any other than a
purely speculative interest for us. And, on the spec-
ulative side, the answer given by most interpreters of
science is simply negative. The being and character
of God are topics with which, as such, it would ap-
pear that science has nothing whatever to do.
Now it is not easy for us, who are trained to a very
keen interest in primal and final causes, to understand
this attitude of absolute intellectual indifference or
reserve. The Positive philosophy-or by whatever
other name we call the general view of things taken
by the scientific mind-by no means attempts so
foolish and hopeless a task as to account for the exis-
tence of anything by those laws of phenomena with
which alone it professes to deal. Mr. Martineau's
very eloquent and noble essay disclaims any purpose
of arguing with any form of Materialism which does
not show on its own principles a solution to the prob-
lem of existence. Now no recognized form of Mate-
rialism at the present day, surely, attempts any such
thing. "But," said a friend to Professor Tyndall,
THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
158
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
<<
surely you must have some theory of the Universe."
"My dear sir," was the reply, "I have not even a
theory of Magnetism."
This mood of mind is not necessarily either irreli-
gious or atheistical. We do not, as a general rule,
experience an access of religious emotion when we
light the gas with a match, although the process is as
much more intricate and curious as it is more conve-
nient than the spindle and stick which our ancestors
held sacred for thousands of years, because that was
the way the miracle of fire had come to them. Yet
we do not hold ourselves more undevout than they.
"I am no atheist," Comte protested vehemently: he
said it to me about two years before his death. An
atheistic theory of the universe he held to be the
mere dotage of metaphysical vanity. If you will
have a theory of existence, he said, an Intelligent
Will is the best you can have.¹ In his unique fash-
ion, he held it the great work of his life to restore to
Religion its supremacy in all matters of conduct; the
very phrase "religion of humanity" is claimed as his
invention. But all theories of theology, cosmogony,
metaphysics, and sidereal astronomy were ruled off
with impartial rigor from his intellectual scheme, as
they were from his notion of the service of Humanity
in a working world.
And, again, it is not easy for us, dealing as we do
with human life very much on its emotional side, in
view of its deeper consolations and nobler hopes, to
1 "However imperfect the natural order, its origin would agree
far better with the supposition of an Intelligent Will than with
that of blind Mechanism." - Politique Positive, vol. i. p. 51.
THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER
159
conceive the condition of mental calm with which it
may be looked on by those who think of these as of
the dreams of children. What consolation, we think,
for those who do not accept life as the discipline of a
Father? What hope to those who anticipate nothing
beyond the sensible horizon that bounds our days?
Questions such as these we are apt to argue with a
certain sense of personal responsibility for the result,
-as if the reality of a life beyond turned on our own
power to make it real to our own thought; as if one
forfeited his immortality by being unable to believe
in it; as if it were impossible for another to win
calmness of mind on any other terms than ours.
Yet, as matter of history, we know that Spinoza was
singularly calm and pure in his submissive sense
of the Universal Order; as matter of fact, we know
that life does not lose its keen interest, intellectual or
other, for those who deliberately rule out from their
scheme of things all "thoughts that wander through
eternity." I have heard that, in a convention of seven
hundred European scientists, not one admitted the
thought of personal immortality as possible. Yet the
daily work of science, done by a thousand hands, is as
diligent, as devoted, in its way quite as contented with
itself, as the daily work of ecclesiastics and devotees.
But there is a certain spirit and temper, not essen-
tially connected with natural science, and making no
part of its creed, which yet claims close affinity with
it. And this spirit or temper tends more and more
to show itself not simply neutral, not merely con-
temptuously indifferent, but definitely hostile — not
to this or that creed or form of Christianity, not to the
160
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
mere name of it, but to ideas and emotions that have
always been held to belong to its inmost life. Thus
that circle of Christian ideas included in the words
sin, repentance, pardon, atonement, salvation, holiness
which we have ourselves been at so much pains to
interpret in our reading of the religious life- is, as
I understand it, radically opposed by the general
view of life widely coming to prevail. As far as it
does prevail, those words will have not merely to be
explained, but to be explained away. This hostility,
in so far as it does exist, we ought-as theologians,
still more as religious men to look in the face, and
understand it if we can.
G
At the outset, the theory of Evolution itself is a
great shock to the feeling of the sacredness of human
life, so carefully cherished by Christianity; and to
the sense of the dignity of human nature, which
marked our earlier interpretation of Christianity.
The shock will pass away in time, and the religious
feeling will get adjusted to the new surroundings.
But let us do justice to the deep repugnance with
which that theory has been resented. That the
mythical first human pair-with its halo of marvel
and reverence, with the schemes of history and the-
ology grouped about it should be displaced by the
chance coupling of a superior breed of "anthropoid
apes" stronger and cunninger than the rest, with
lower forms of bestiality in the background; or, if
not this, yet the wild and brutish savagery of the
primitive man, out of which the race has fought its
way to something better, through perhaps a thousand
centuries' struggle for existence, — all this may be
S
•
161
the best way we have at present of stating the facts;
but, after all, the facts are not pleasant to took at so,
and we have not got used to looking at them yet, in
that shape, from the religious point of view. Our
debt to the Humanity that has suffered and toiled
before us is even enhanced by that statement, as has
been well said; but somehow the Divine guiding
Hand is not, to the common eye, so plain to see.
And so, again, when we first clearly foresaw the
doom that awaits, at however distant date, all forms
of life upon this planet; when we learned that we
could no longer look forward to an indefinite career
of progress for the human race upon earth, but, as
the wave of life has risen, so it must inevitably sub-
side; when we saw, too, that civilization itself is a
destructive as well as a creative process, and that the
treasures we thought exhaustless may be economized,
but must be spent, it was with a sort of chill. What
are four or five thousand years, what are two hundred
thousand (plausibly enough reckoned as the limit of
past and future duration to the human race), in com-
parison with eternity? The destined end of all
things and systems visible to us is announced by
Science with a certain pitiless precision; and no
compensation is even suggested for the enormous pre-
sumption that is asserted to lie against our hope of
personal immortality. If human life in its origin
looks ignoble, under the light of modern theory, even
more depressing is the aspect, so regarded, of its des-
tiny and end.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.
M
Now this, unwelcome as it may be to our religious
feeling, is distinctly the order of conceptions and ideas
•
+
11
162
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
"
which the religious thinker of our time has got to
meet. For the present, apart from religious feeling,
it appears to have had two distinct effects on men's
imagination. The first is a certain hard, unsympa-
thetic way of regarding human life on a large scale,
history merging into anthropology, and that more
and more into natural history, especially when it
deals with the lower races or classes of mankind, and
so emerging in great disdain and race or class pride
among the superior. "We will not be missionaries
any more," it says, "and sacrifice ourselves for the
barbarian. Let the perishing classes go. It is the
law of the struggle for existence that they should
perish and make place for those worthier to live than
they," that is, ourselves. The other effect is a
certain dreary and sad way of seeing things, as if the
vast tragedy of human life were vulgarized, from the
terror and the pity (which make it human tragedy)
being taken out of it, seen from the austere height of
modern speculation.
g
This double tendency, to aristocratic pride on the
one side and a sombre pessimism on the other, I do
not think can be denied to be a very common and
formidable symptom in the educated mind of the day.
If any one were to doubt it, I should ask him to con-
sider the tone of Strauss's retrospect, the pyramid-
like ethnology of Renan, the dreary view of nature
and life that impressed itself on the keen suscepti-
bility of John Stuart Mill, the deepening gloom that
settled upon the mind of Carlyle in his contempt of
the humaner sentiment of his day, the way in which
questions of practical philanthropy are dealt with by
163
the school of Herbert Spencer, or what is said of the
philosophy of Hartmann, as reflected in the domi-
nant thought of Germany. Involuntarily, when we
speak of "the fair humanities of old religion," we
think not of the poetic paganism which Coleridge
had in mind when he wrote the phrase, but of our
own younger days, as compared with much of what
we hear now. What attacks only the name and
creed of Christianity may not alarm us much; but
the spirit now described must give us pause, especially
any symptoms of it which may have seized on the
generation that is advancing to take our place.
A TENDENCY OF SCIENCE.
But of this two things remain to be said.
The first is, that Science itself is really neutral,
and not hostile. The representative minds of science
are found on both sides of the line that marks the
most radical difference of spiritual theory. And that,
not only in the case of those who hold the two halves
of their thought quite independent and distinct, -
as it was said of Faraday, that when he went into his
oratory he turned the key of his laboratory, but
with those like Carpenter, men of Christian habit and
nurture, who with their best intelligence adjust and
harmonize the two. We do not know what shape
this adjustment may take in time to come; but we
may be very sure that the higher nature of man will
always claim its own right somehow.
“That mind and soul according well
May make one music, as before,
But vaster"
.
A
M
is the very meaning and motive of all sound religious
thinking.
164
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
•
The other point is this: that, as Science affects to
give no explanation or account of things, so these
To
must always be suggested from another source.
say that we cannot discover or conceive the antece-
dents of the visible Universe is not to say that there
are no such antecedents: it would weary us even to
recount the postulates that must be assumed, to make
the laws of heredity and natural selection intelligible
or the process of them possible. To say that we can
see nothing beyond the sensible horizon which bounds
our life is not to say that there is nothing there it is
merely to leave the thought of the Unseen where it
properly belongs,to the heart or the imagination,
as a celestial hope.
Physical science accounts for nothing. It must
involve in its premises all it can possibly evolve in
its results. Mere evolution from below-mechani-
cal force working up into vital, mental, spiritual,
without forethought or guidance anywhere—is as
abhorrent to intellectual theory as it is to the moral
sense, which postulates moral freedom. Somehow
and somewhere- it would be truer to say, always and
everywhere - Mind acts back on Things. The Cos-
mos itself is blank and unintelligible, except for some
equivalent to the Christian faith in a Living God.
Turning now from the theoretical, let us consider
next the practical side of the matter.
I do not think that, as a working faith, the reli-
gion of humanity is likely ever to show itself in a
form more heroic, more devoted, more generous and
tender, than what we have been familiar with under
the older types of Christianity. From the very first,
HUMANITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 165
the Christian faith has been a missionary faith. Its
message, with such understanding as men could have
of it, has been not to a select class or race, but to all
mankind. No "enthusiasm of humanity" is likely
hereafter to do more than rival the devotion of the
first martyr age, when the world lay under a horri-
ble threefold yoke of superstition, corruption, and
despotism, and when the Christian salvation meant
deliverance from all three; or the heroism of the
great missionary age, when the Church found such
servants as St. Martin, St. Severinus, St. Patrick, St.
Boniface, and St. Anschar to fight its battle with bar-
barism, and when its calendar was crowded with the
names of those who fought and fell in that greatest
warfare for humanity of all history; or the self-
sacrificing compassion of such more modern saints as
Francis Xavier and Charles Borromeo, who fulfilled
their mission of charity amid the miseries of famine
and pestilence that afflicted the sixteenth century;
or those missionaries of our day, who have carried
their message of divine compassion or their ready
hand to help, and have willingly laid down their
lives among the squalors of savagery, in the loneli-
ness of exile, in the reeking infection of plagues and
prisons and military hospitals,- from the resolute
and sober consecration of John Howard to those brave
women who have worn the red cross or the red cres-
cent through the horrors of the last Eastern war!
No form of piety or humanity in coming days is
likely to do more honor to the large sympathies of
which human nature is capable. It will be the
noblest of triumphs, if the world is able to keep
166
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
undiminished the splendid inheritance it has received
in the record of these saintly Christian charities!
Why not, then, we may ask, simply keep that in-
heritance as we have received it, and so hand it down
to posterity along with an improved theology?
That is just what we desire to do, but just where
the difficulty lies. For the Christian charity of the
past was not simply a sentiment; it was a convic-
tion. It rested distinctly, though often unconsciously,
on a notion of human nature and the Divine govern-
ment, which necessarily passes away in the decay of
the old theology.
That theology put vividly before the imagination
these three things: first, the lost and miserable con-
dition of mankind in its present state; second, the
inexorable justice of God, along with his infinite but
contingent mercy; third, the absolutely inestimable
value of each single soul, in view of the eternity of
glory or horror that certainly lay before it.
These three, intensely conceived as the most appall-
ing, the most inspiring of realities, not only stirred
every generous nature to rescue perishing men from
their impending doom, but acted very powerfully on
the springs of character and emotion in the soul itself,
infinitely deepening and quickening the sentiment of
compassion for human misery in every form. The
brutal inhumanity of the ancients, the tender senti-
mentality so frequent in the modern world, hardly
seem to belong to the same race of beings at anything
like a similar stage of civilization. Part of the change
is due to race, circumstance, mental refinement, or
the mere softness of amiable ease; but a great part,
167
and far the noblest part, in the modern sentiment of
humanity is due to the eighteen centuries' assiduous
culture of the Christian Church, resting distinctly on
a theological basis, which as distinctly passes slowly
and inevitably away.
Now while that sentiment in its integrity is the
fairest and noblest thing our nature has to show, it
becomes, when crippled and decayed, one of the most
serious dangers, and offers one of the most serious
difficulties, of the problem with which we have prac-
tically to do. Sentiment cut away from its intellectual
base becomes sentimentalism. What was wholesome
and strong becomes morbid and enfeebling. What
was the soul of a vigorous body, once detached, re-
mains a thin, restless ghost, a misleading phantom, a
lying spirit. Thus love is better than faith or hope,
says Paul; but not the "free love" of the modern
evangel, — " free," because detached from faith or
hope.
DECAY OF SENTIMENT.
And so with the forms of active charity. If this
life is necessarily a highway of misery and pain,
leading to an eternity of bliss or woe, it is of small
consequence that you show mere almsgiving to be a
cause of more destitution than it heals. Whatever
softens this rugged path to a single weary foot, even
for a moment, is its own justification. Whatever
multiplies, indirectly, the number of souls, candidates
for eternal joys, and keeps them in that state of hu-
miliation and dependence which is the best prelude
to eternal joys, has in it the promise and the reward
of ecclesiastical faith. But suppose the faith is gone,
while the sentiment remains: then the same form of
168
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
charity becomes half-hearted, weak, and mischievous.
Suppose this life is not looked on as the inevitably
painful and miserable highway to another. Suppose
the faith in that other life to grow dim, and the fear
of unending misery for a single human soul to be
utterly passed away, as the science and the com-
passionate temper of the modern world manifestly
tend: what have we left but a sentimentalism, so to
speak, without body and bones, a direct hindrance
instead of help to any wise, firm, lasting service we
can hope to render to mankind?
The sentiment, then, assiduously nurtured for so
many centuries by the Christian Church, gropes and
pines for an intellectual foundation to take the place
of that so deeply undermined. It is one of the dan-
gers of a transition time like ours, that tenderness,
sympathy, compassion, on the one side, and reason,
intelligence, practical good sense, on the other, get
alienated and divorced. The tender-hearted would
inflict no pain; would take no man's life, even the
guiltiest; would have all the suffering and dependent
the criminal, pauper, insane, idiotic, idle, or un-
employed - share the comforts and luxuries which
Nature makes the hard-earned reward of prudent toil.
The cool reasoner sees that pain is often a part of the
needful social surgery; that the choice must often be
made between the life of the guilty and the safety
of the innocent; that luxury and comfort, to those
who have not earned or inherited them, mean a ruin-
ous tax on industry and an enormous multiplication
of the distresses it is sought to relieve.
Thus sentimentalism, from an inspiration of social
169
justice, becomes a disturbing element in social ad-
ministration. Unless guided by a cool and even
severe practical judgment, it serves directly to call
out that cynic temper, bitterest enemy of humanity,
which says: "Let the race, then, be to the swift, and
the battle to the strong! Let the fittest survive as
they may in the struggle of existence, where no quar-
ter is given to the helpless and weak! Abolish all
your charities: the experience of them only shows
that they make more misery than they cure! Every
man for himself, and the weakest to the wall!"
A RELIGIOUS THEORY OF LIFE.
-
of
Now with Sentimentalism on one side and Cyni-
cism on the other, there is only one possible way
reconciliation. It is a theory of human life itself
sound enough to satisfy the reason, broad enough to
admit all the sympathies and affections that brighten,
comfort, purify, and bless. Such a theory men have
found in the past, in an understanding of the Chris-
tian revelation which offered an object of our worship
in a glorified Divine Humanity, and made the whole
thought of this life solemn by the radiance or the
shadow cast upon it from another sphere. And many
of the best and bravest lovers of humanity in our day
see no other solution to that grave question of the
time than to go back, in humility and contrition,
upon the path which the critical understanding has
followed so far; to accept that yoke of doctrine and
ordinance which, from being easy and light, had be-
come too burdensome to be borne; and to restore
purified, no doubt, and enlightened - that spiritual
supremacy which once made the Church the sovereign
of all men's thoughts and lives.
*
170
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
This means, if we are consistent in our logic, to
bring back, under modern conditions, the empire-
church of the Middle Age. And I do not hesitate in
the least to say, that, if our method in this thing is
to be ecclesiastical at all, a Catholic Church such as
we might easily conceive, under a spiritual head such
as the present Pope appears to be, grave, dignified,
austere, cultivated, liberal of temper, is by far the
best and likeliest solution. It needs only a little of
the wisdom of which that Church has shown itself
capable in the past, to make it likely that very great
multitudes of this and the coming generation will
choose that way.
But I shall not speak here of the arguments for or
against that consummation, or of anything that may
be said of any form of compromise in the creeds of
Protestantism. As I honestly think-though here
I do not undertake to dogmatize the ecclesiastical
root out of which they all grow alike is withered, and
will put forth no more new growth. At any rate,
the order of thought with which we have most to do
is absolutely detached from that root, and is growing
in other soil. The intellectual foundation which we
have to assume is laid not in Theology, but in Science.
And, in dealing with any of the questions that touch
the condition, the destinies, the religion of humanity,
we must take in hand, first, the conceptions given us
by Science. For the motive which Theology made
strong and victorious in other days, we must substi-
tute a motive, if we can, in keeping with the knowl-
edge, thought, experience, and opinion of our own
time.
A CHANGE OF VIEW.
M
171
<<
I dislike to use in this connection the word evo-
lution," which has come to be a sort of catch-word,
implying a dogmatism as sharp on one side as that it
supplants on the other. But the accepted scientific
theory of our time must at least contain the hint of
the solution we seek. We shall find it (when we do
find it at all), as that magnificent conception becomes
familiar to us, suggested in the modern doctrine of
evolution, that our great, our real, religious task is
to aid in the unfolding of human nature, society, and
life, toward the highest, noblest, fairest forms of which
they are capable. This, in its narrowest sense, is the
religion of humanity" as each one of us has to make
it the personal task of his own life. This, in its
broadest sense, is the "religion of humanity" as the
object of scientific contemplation and an exalted
speculative faith.
<<
I do not go here into the details which a full illus-
tration of this matter would demand. It is easy to
see, however, that it contains the hint of what must
serve to supply the place of the former dogmatism
at almost every point. For example, the problem
of Physical Evil: instead of making it the work of
God's great Adversary (" an enemy hath done this "),
modern thought makes it simply one phase of the
inevitable "struggle for existence," which is the law
of the animal creation; nay, wider, of the whole or-
ganic world. The problem of Moral Evil: instead of
making it, as Milton does, "the ruin of our first par-
ents,"―a Fall, to be recovered by sacrifice and pain
of expiation, the modern view shows it to reside in
that realm of passion and appetite which we share
172
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
with all living creatures, by which they and we are
equipped for that struggle of animal existence,
which is more and more put in the background and
trampled under foot, in proportion as our human ca-
pacity and quality become developed. The theory of
Moral Duty: it is made to depend no longer on the
arbitrary edict of a Divine Sovereign, and the reward
or penalty imposed by an Eternal Judge, but on those
conditions of happiness and advancement, on the un-
folding of the affections, sympathy, and sense of right,
which are ascertained to be a part of the law of our
being here.
0
I might continue this list through the whole cata-
logue of moral and religious obligations, or points of
faith. But the obvious thing in them all is the very
thing which I wish to emphasize. It is that, step by
step, the theological is supplanted by the scientific,
the divine by the human view. It is, in other words,
a "religion of humanity," taking the place, in our
generation, of a religion of theosophy. Its founda-
tion is Law, not Dogma. Speculative theology has
no longer any place in it, as defining arbitrarily the
nature and character of our obligations, any more
than it has in shaping our views of history and
cosmogony.
The thought of a Divine existence, of an infinite
Will, remains, but only to give lift to imagination,
gravity to reflection, reverence to the temper of the
soul, and a foundation of gratitude and trust. Its
value is less speculative than emotional. It is to be
known not in dogmatic assertion, but through such
symbol as we may imperfectly apprehend it by,-
-
173
the Life of the Universe, the Source of all Being, the
Object of our adoration as we aspire more and more
to the higher life. But when it comes to the task of
interpretation and instruction and guidance, then it
is the lesson of experience and the word of science
that we need. History, politics, economy, social sta-
tics and dynamics, the laws of wealth, the laws of
charity, the laws of character and heredity, the laws
of population, the laws of crime, these must make
the subject-matter of our study, when we seek to fol-
low out any line of practical duty and morals. It is
with these, and not with any theological scheme of
duty and opinion, that our nobler sentiments, our
sweet and charitable emotions, will have to be recon-
ciled.
THE PROVINCE OF RELIGION.
One other step is needed, to give the full breadth
of meaning in our phrase, “religion of humanity." It
is very characteristic of the thought of the present
day, that it has followed up, with extraordinary in-
dustry and zeal, the study of comparative religions.
So long as Religion was thought of as consisting in
one single, unalterable, revealed type of morals and
doctrine, it had to be the religion of a race, creed,
church, or dispensation, and not of humanity at large.
As late as fifty years ago, to the average mind, the
terms "Mahometan and Pagan" were enough to map
out, rule out, cast contempt upon, all forms of faith
outside the Christian world. Thus "Imposture" and
"Idolatry" were the words sufficient to cover them
all in a certain lofty, possibly pitying, condemnation:
—at best pity; never an approach to sympathy or
respect.
174
THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
•
Contrast with this the wealth of knowledge, the
greater accuracy of discrimination, the attitude even
of discipleship toward special phases of mental or
moral life, found in the study of the world-religions
to-day! The patient, homely, plodding morals of
Confucius; the charity, humility, and austerity of the
Buddhists, with their strange tenderness to inferior
creatures; the wild Brahman imagination, with its
ancient and elevated forms of piety; the Parsee wor-
ship of Light and struggle with the powers of Dark-
ness, from which the battle of Good and Evil was
adopted into our own doctrinal tradition; the ad-
venturous enthusiasm contrasting with the absolute
submission of Islamism; "the fair humanities of
old religion" in Greece and Rome, with what may
be gathered from remoter Egypt and Assyria, these
make up the rich, varied, magnificently impressive
panorama of the great faiths of mankind, before or
beside the traditions of our Bible or creed. How
striking, how immense the contrast presented in this
view, when set beside the horror and repugnance of
the early Church, and the virulent hate or else pity-
ing scorn of the later Church, for all forms of faith
except its own!
It is the task of the Religion of Humanity not
simply to recognize the broad field of various beliefs
in which the races of mankind have been trained, but,
far more, to recognize whatever common spirit of jus-
tice, mercy, and truth may be in them all. It is not
itself the creation of science, or the outgrowth of those
comparative studies. It takes science for its instruc-
tor and guide; it takes comparative study for its
175
wealth of illustration. But in itself it is that spirit
of consecration to a better life, of willing service to
mankind, which avails itself of these guides and
helps. Its aim will be to gather and preserve what-
ever is good in the tradition to be found from every
source. But for this it must have an independent
life of its own, as much as the corn that is planted
or the acorn that is dropped in a soil enriched by the
wash of a continent. Without it, the richest of soils
will give us nothing but weeds. The characteristic
life was hidden in the tree from which the acorn
fell, or the harvest-field from which the corn was
gathered.
It is the chief glory of Christianity to have secreted
and ripened the seed that was to be cast into so gen-
erous a soil. The service of humanity hereafter may
be more wise, more fruitful, more various; but it will
never be more tender, generous, and devout than it
has been during the long ages of its training. The
dogmatic foundation it rested on so long is under-
mined and fast crumbling away. In that process of
undermining, Unitarianism has had its share to do.
A candid view of it will show that it has done its
task, in the main, with a reverent, patient, honest, if
not always a skilful hand. Partly in the work it has
done, but much more in the minds it has nurtured
and the souls it has comforted and fed, it has given
its share towards preparing the way for a broader
and stronger life.
COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS.
VIII.
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
MY object, in what I have now to say, will be to
consider, as attentively as I can, some phases
of religious thought and life which come nearest
home to us, especially those included under the broad
term Liberalism.
But I wish to hint, at the start, the limitation con-
tained in the phrase "Gospel of Liberalism." A
gospel is not a theory or a sentiment or a speculation
or a creed. It is something greatly more noble and
broad than either. It addresses not primarily the
understanding or the affection, but the conscience and
the soul. To the one, it is a law of life; to the other,
it is a home of rest. It means an authority that
commands obedience, and a deep foundation of spirit-
ual peace. A gospel is something to live by, and it
is also something to die by. Above is Duty, "stern
daughter of the voice of God;" underneath are the
Everlasting Arms. What we call a gospel, then,—
as distinct from a theory, a sentiment, a speculation,
or a creed, contains these two fundamental ele-
ments of the religious life. And it is in view of
these—that is, with a practical and not a speculative
aim that I shall attempt to trace some of the bear-
ings of our position, here and now.
177
For the Harvard Divinity School has been con-
nected, in a very special way, with the history of
religious liberalism in this country, and is responsible
for a good many of its features. I need not recite
the list of bright names that are scattered along its
record, running back now sixty-five years, that is,
nearly two generations of the sons of men. You will
recall them easily in one swift glance of memory;
and you will see how they not only include those
names of love and honor which represent the modester
learning and soberer piety of an earlier time, but
cover the most radical and brilliant thought of a
younger generation, that are rapidly pushing us who
stand on the ripe side of fifty towards the eternal
shadow. It is not for us, certainly not to-day, so
much as by a thought or hint, to disown either por-
tion of a life so broad and ample. If I might be
allowed to say a word for myself, it would be that my
heart lives so largely in the gracious and venerable
past of our communion, and that my thought goes
forward with so keen and active sympathy with those
younger minds to whom the privilege of my place
brings me into daily near relation, that it would be
impossible for me to say a word that should put me,
consciously, at difference with a single phase of it
that has been honestly thought or lived.
And yet my purpose is as far as possible from the
vague glorying and complacency which are often in
what we say when we speak of the triumphs and ad-
vances of liberal thought. On the contrary, the tem-
per in which we have just now to regard the situation
is that which sees it as grave, perhaps critical; at
OUR OWN POSITION.
-
12
178
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
least, which is willing to see what there is in it of
grave and critical. Of all forms of Epicurean de-
light, perhaps the most repugnant to such a temper is
the easy-going optimism which turns religion into an
idle sentiment, and parades, under the name "lib-
eral," an inane triumph at the mere levelling of the
shrines of an austerer faith. The walls of old Error
may fall to the sound of trumpets and shouting. The
bulwarks and palaces of the new City of God will
never be built but through skill and. patience and
toil and prayer and pain, one hand holding a weapon
to strike for the Truth, the other a tool to build for
the Life.
I do not speak of our denominational fortunes, or
the prospects of any particular form of opinion and
belief that we may hold in common. But it is true,
now as ever, that the Power which presides in hu-
man things exacts heavy pledges of fidelity of the
agents honored and commissioned to do its work.
The prophetic office was evermore a "burden;" and
it was never taken up with a light heart by any one
worthy and fit to carry it. He is "driven of the
Spirit," like Jesus. A "necessity is laid upon him,"
like Paul. And, as Milton says, "When God com-
mands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or
jarring blast, it lies not in man's will what he shall
say or what he shall conceal." The occasion is al-
ways great to him who can conceive it greatly. And
the greatness of the occasion is measured not by the
joy and applause alone, or the expanding sense of
power, but by the pain and fear and danger of the
way, and by the weight of that burden of misery and
NEED OF A GOSPEL.
179
want and crime which our Gospel is commissioned
to relieve.
<<
So, then, what we mean by a Gospel of Liberal-
ism," if there is such a thing, is not a theory that fits
smooth and soft to the methods of our understand-
ing; not a sentiment, bright, comfortable, and sweet
to the moods of our emotion. Nor is it even, in a
more generous way, that large sympathy and satis-
faction with which we feel ourselves to walk in the
direction of the world's progress, and to work in the
front lines of the world's work.
It is not summed up, again, in the word Culture,
which had a certain claim to be the gospel of half a
century ago, no matter how large, rich, and deep
the sense we give that word; any more than in the
older and profounder word Salvation, narrowed to
mean our own rescue from the wrath to come. Its
watchword is at once lowlier and nobler, that is,
Service. And it is not till we have measured the
whole sweep of the peril, the terror, and the wrong
from which mankind is to be delivered; not till we
have sounded that deep sea of unbelief, ungodliness,
despair of the future, which threatens to drown men,
as of old, in destruction and perdition; not till we
know in our hearts the hollowness of a refined mate-
rialism and the empty mockery of its Epicurean
creed, that we begin to know the privilege and the
burden that belong to our better faith.
Now I have been using words and phrases and
availing myself of sentiments which belong, as some
would say, to the old theology, and have no place left
in the smooth and comfortable Liberalism of the day.
·
*
180
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
1
The devil is dead, they say, and the fires of hell are
put out.
What need have we of salvation, and what
meaning can we find in it? If any should say this,
or feel this, then I should reply that that is just the
fallacy it is our business to meet. We have a mes-
sage to the world of some sort; at least, we think we
have, or else it is with very vain thoughts indeed that
we undertake to meet the life-problems which occupy
us to-day. The adequacy of that message depends on
our being able to share not only the fresh vigor and
breadth of modern thought, but the sweetness, the
fervor, the devout aspiration, the hate of evil also,
and the consecrated will, which are the sacred tradi-
tions and the birthright of our Christian faith.
In what is left for me to say, I shall attempt, if not
to interpret that message, at least the more modest
task of grouping a few points that may help show the
direction in which the interpretation is to be found.
It is properly of two sorts,-theoretic or intellectual,
and religious or practical. A few words are due to
each.
M
Of the first, I will only say that for the intellec-
tual solution of the questions which lie so near our
thought, what is sometimes called the reconcilia-
tion of knowledge and faith, I am sure that we
must look a great way farther off than most of us
have been accustomed to think. By this I mean a
solution accepted by the thinking world at large:
we all, I trust, have found the practical solution to
the problem of our own life. But, more broadly, we
have thus far only secured (more or less completely)
the mutual independence of Science and Religion.
A LONG PERSPECTIVE.
181
For their mutual harmony we have doubtless very
long to wait. It is told of the statesman Cavour,
that, not long before his death, he said those of the
younger generation were to be envied; for, before the
end of the century, they would witness the grandest
of historical events, the birth of a new religion. Pro-
phets, says Mr. Martineau, are apt to be mistaken in
their dates. I suppose that what Cavour had in mind
was some Positivist conception, more or less distinctly
realized, of what is coming to be called "the religion
of humanity." Whether that or not, at all events he
meant some sort of "consensus" or reconciliation
some visible organization, perhaps of sentiment,
thought, and life, which are so grievously at discord
now.
But any "positive" theory. of knowledge is very
far, as yet, from making the basis of a religion. For
the realization he talked of it would be cheap to wait
not twenty years, but ten or twenty times as long.
Consider that it has already taken four hundred years,
since the ghastly collapse of Mediæval faith, to bring
us where we are. Consider the tasks of scientific
theology yet before us, hardly attempted or begun;
consider the slow development of an independent
ethics, large and delicate enough to take in all the
complexities of modern life:-and these are but two
of the conditions. Any perspective shallower than
that of centuries will scarce give us the equipoise we
need, in dealing with so large issues.
We are working unconsciously -we ought to be
working consciously- for a future that is a great way
off. The intellectual patience so essential, without
182
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
<<
any lack of ethical fervor, can absolutely be had only
by the familiar habit of dealing with historic periods
and long lapses of time. Providence," says some
French writer, "moves through time as the gods of
Homer through space: it takes a step, and ages have
rolled away." But we fidget and are impatient. At
every little advance of our knowledge we must out
with our pocket-rule, and measure how the new piece
will fit the majestic heavens and the rolling earth.
At each fresh phrase of each new school in meta-
physics we fancy we have found, at length, an ade-
quate theory of creation and providence. These
theories, all the way from Plato down to Spencer, are
the playthings of the mind; and we use them, as
children do, in childlike unconsciousness of the dif-
ference in scale between those crystal spheres and our
round nursery globes. In my own brief recollection,
two or three very promising theories of the universe
have come up as a flower and been cut down; and I
fully expect to outlive that which seems most fash-
ionable now.
-
I have no mind here to criticise the philosophy
of Evolution, so called, either for attack or defence.
That task should be left to competent specialists.
An amateur in such things is apt to be a bungler,
and most of us are amateurs. It would even be an
impertinence in me to say that I accept the theory,
- except as probably the most instructive, certainly
the most entertaining, way to co-ordinate and har-
monize certain known facts, and help us deal with
them practically; not at all to account for them, in
any philosophical sense, theoretically. To account
183
for facts of life by laws of growth, for existence by
laws of similitude and succession of phenomena, is
too plain a solecism to need more than an allusion
to it here. It is only the presumption which some
expounders of the new creed have found in it, in the
direction of fatalism and denial of the moral life, that
justifies even this allusion.
Not that these premature assumptions are matter
of complaint or regret from our point of view. On
the contrary, it is ground of real congratulation, as
regards the true interests of the religious life, that
the theory has been run out so fast in the direction
of blank and blind Necessity; that Fatalism has
shown its hand, before the capacity of devout emo-
tion or moral enthusiasm had been slowly smothered
under it. The brutal materialism which we have seen
cited in Büchner's exposition of it strikes quick, like
those swift sounding-leads that go like a bullet into
the sea-depths, against the indomitable bottom fact
of human consciousness, the sense of moral freedom.
As soon as we see just what that logic can do, and
just how far it will go, we may breathe free again,
and take up, cheerily and patiently as before, the
suspended thread of the religious evolution.
ers.
Our relation as "scientific" theologians to the
larger world of science is at once that of willing
learners, and of independent co-workers and explor-
We want the enterprise and courage of natural
science, not its limitations; its freedom, not its bon-
dage or constraint; most of all, its affirmations; least
of all, its denials. What it can give us we take for
our help; but there is no need that we put ourselves
A FATALISTIC DRIFT.
}
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
184
in servitude to any man or creed or school that claims
to speak its final word. We have to do, not with
cosmogonies, whether gnostic or agnostic, or with
theories about the origin of the lower forms of life.
Our proper business is with the highest forms of all.
We were not in at the birth of things, and we shall
not be in at the death. Not where life begins, and
not where it ends, but where it culminates, is the
portion of it given us to explore.
Our business, as explorers, is with primary facts of
human experience, and with what, in scientific phrase,
are called "laws of similitude and succession" of those
facts; that is, the laws of human character, human
life, human destiny, within the horizon that bounds our
observation. The "phenomena" we have to watch
include the height of aspiration, the depth of passion
and contrition, the wealth of experience, which make
up the higher life of men. The "facts" we are called
to study and account for are known by such grand
names as salvation, regeneration, atonement, holiness,
religious peace, faith, self-knowledge and self-conse-
cration born out of conviction and experience of sin.
These, on their human side at least, are neither
unprovable” nor "unverifiable.”
Now those great words mean something: for us,
not (it may be) dogmatically, but at any rate relig-
iously. It is our business to find out what they
mean. Their religious sense, rightly caught, becomes
their scientific sense. Most likely we reject the dog-
matic sense fastened on them in the old theology.
But the moment we ask what brought them into use
at all, what has given them their weight and power
"(
DATA OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
185
as factors in human life, we see that we are dealing
with the very foundation-stones of character and con-
duct. While Christianity is the accepted interpreter
of those words, so long she holds the key of the moral
situation. Without that key, "Science, falsely so
called," can only grope and fumble about the lock.
No theory of life that ever was invented—of its
transmission or development-claims any respect
from us as religious thinkers, that does not take in
the full meaning of those words, as standing for
phases of human consciousness and for great facts of
human history. If there is such a thing as a "scien-
tific theology," its function is to be found, not in
slavishly adopting the dicta or the deductions that
have been found valid in the lower ranges of being,
but in adding our independent share, as students and
explorers, to that common stock of data and postu-
lates, from which any theory of life worth having
must be deduced.
Our especial field is those moral forces which lie
back of men's character and conduct; or, on a larger
Lu
scale, those strong tides of passion which have borne
forward the great procession of human institutions
and events. We are not going to accept that cheap
and easy theory about these things, which simplifies
the problem by ignoring the most complex and im-
portant of its conditions. The highest fact in human
nature is as much a fact, and as valid in its way, as
any number or any co-ordination of lower facts.
Whatever view we choose to take of the Universe
at large, a soul is at least as near the origin of life
as a mollusk or a stone. Into whatever forms of fact
186
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
Lu
we translate our thought, the thought remains true
that Life ebbs and flows in the veins of the mighty
Mother that has borne us all, and has its source in
the Heart of all things, which we can call only mys-
terious and Divine.
And now, a word as to the situation. A few years
ago grave warning was given, under the alarm-cry
"Rocks Ahead," of a widening gulf between the
popular faith and the belief or no-belief of educated
minds. Our own public has heard something since
of the peril of a "moral interregnum," and of "cer-
tain dangerous tendencies in American life," threat-
ening from the divorce which to many eyes seems
imminent between the science and the religion of
our time. I take these hints simply to fix our point
of view, not seeking to add emphasis to them by any
words of mine. After all, the spectre of doubt or
disbelief must be looked straight in the face, to see
what it really is. It will not vanish by any pious
closing of our eyes to it.
The problem, to be sure, is no new one.
It is just
over seven hundred years since the Medieval Church,
startled from its sense of secure dominion, began to
feel its way slowly, with many a misgiving and hor-
rible recoil, towards the suppression of dissent by
force. What that led to, we know by such names
of terror and hate as the Inquisition and the Wars of
Religion. Those methods are now by some three cen-
turies happily obsolete. What we have now to heed
is not so much the world's hate as its indifference
and contempt, a phenomenon new to our time, in
187
strong contrast to the passions and violences of the
past. A thousand years ago the social force, the ac-
tive thought, the political life, drifted just as steadily
towards the great Catholic organization as they are
drifting from it now. Alliance of Church and Empire
was as natural, as needful then as the divorce of
secular and spiritual authority is seen to be to-day.
Charlemagne was as much a product of his time as
Gladstone and Bismarck are of ours.
HISTORICAL CONDITIONS.
Let us reflect a moment on the significance and the
bearing of that change. Its movement is like that of
the Drift Period in geology. Its ultimate sources are
in the elemental life of things; its sweep lies far be-
yond the strength of the strongest will, the craft of
the most skilful policy, to control. That is why we
call it "drift": its course is determined not by con-
scious engineering, but by granite walls of circum-
stance. Hildebrand and Barbarossa break vainly,
alike, against those adamant bounds. Their work is
caught up and swept on, alike, by that resistless flood.
At best, we may do something to understand the
course and sweep of great historic forces. It is not
likely that any effort or thought of ours will do much
to help or thwart them.
But, indirectly, thought may do something to con-
trol the movement which it is impotent of itself to
create or check. Else, why endure the burden and
pain that go with all serious thinking? Even that
vast curve, which at first sight seems to trace out
fatally the orbit of human things, it may be possible
to deflect a little, as soon as we can read its formula
and understand the law of its generation. Events in
188
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
the large are ordered by a Power as much beyond
our comprehension as beyond our reach. Events in
detail are ruled for the time by passion, compulsion,
and authority. Providence is on the side of the
strongest regiments, when a particular issue is to be
fought out. But in the long run of any one genera-
tion, — much more, of a hundred years, or of twenty
generations, the course of events is guided by the
course of general opinion. Thought is the engineer
that traces the channel of the stream, deepening it
here, cutting it off there, and so at length controlling
its direction. Science finds and equips the pioneers,
who go in advance of those strongest regiments. Its
pioneer work, for us, has been well and thoroughly
done. Liberalism, following close, is already well
able to hold the field of mind. There is little to
dread from the spiritual despotisms of the past.
Whatever disturbance religious passion may bring
into the political conflicts of the day, Thought at least
is free. A reaction towards ecclesiastical tyranny
is neither possible (we may hope), nor even conceiv-
able.
A
Yet Liberalism cannot afford to extenuate or dis-
parage the forces of its two great adversaries, Ecclesi-
asticism and Dogma. Outside the range of pure
intellect, it is as yet far inferior to either. In the
sphere of religious education, pious emotion, and moral
influence, the Papal Church is all the stronger, perhaps,
since twelve years ago it was disencumbered of its
hampering temporalities. One word from the Vatican
to-day could stir or still a tempest of religious fanati-
cism in Dublin, Vienna, or Warsaw; in Quebec, New
G
L
ECCLESIASTICISM AND DOGMA.
189
York, or San Francisco. Rome has even some special
advantage here, in the easiness of our laws, in the
enormous accumulation of untaxed property, and es-
pecially in the great immigration of its obedient sub-
jects, who vote as they are told, whose party leaders
are true to that one interest, and who have been said
to hold twice as much political power as so many
Protestants, owing to their remarkable skill in mul-
tiplying votes. It is not for us in America, at least,
to think lightly of that power.
So too, religiously, Liberalism is far inferior to that
pliant, zealous, many-headed, many-handed organiza-
tion known as Protestantism, even to the feeblest of
its congeries of sects and creeds. Broken and weak
as it may seem, looked at intellectually, Protestant-
ism is yet, looked at religiously, the chief single force
in the three great political systems of England, Ger-
many, and America. It has command of prodigious
wealth, and includes a large part of the wealth-pro-
ducing skill of the world. It has still a very large
and enthusiastic body of adherents, whose zeal it
keeps up by great generous enterprises, such as mis-
sions, charities, and education. It has immense
resources at its command, to nurture the religious
sentiment, to cultivate religious sympathies, and to
inculate religious belief. Not, certainly, with a futile
and vain notion of its weakness, but with a distinct
apprehension of its very great and still preponder-
ating strength, should we suffer ourselves to speak of
its system of opinion (which we are so apt to do) as
doomed and perishing. It may be so; but not yet,
not in our day.
190
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
Of Protestantism as dogma we take the less ac-
count, however, since in the argument it rests on
is the one fatal weakness: it must appeal to Reason
to maintain itself against a claim of authority far
weightier and older; it must appeal to its own slen-
der Authority to defend itself against the reason it has
invoked. Protestantism as a life has been very great
and noble. As dogma, it has been simply an ex-
pounding and attenuating of the older creed. For
theology, it still remands us to Augustine, Aquinas,
or the Reformers of the sixteenth century. It has
gained little in these three hundred years, except the
accumulation of great stores of learning, most of it
valuable only as material for the historian or anti-
quary; while in the same period it has lost its mili-
tant, heroic, aggressive character, and been put at
heavy disadvantage in the fight. It is never once
thought of by sagacious Catholics as a formidable,
hardly even as a serious, enemy. The political power
of Protestant countries they may very likely fear and
hate; but Protestantism as a system of thought
serves them only (so to speak) as a break-water, pro-
tecting them, so far as it goes, from the only enemy
they do fear, namely, Modern Science, and the un-
belief that comes from science, against which, with
pathetic simplicity, the present Pope is setting up
the interior pasteboard defences of Scholasticism.
Sentimentally, Protestantism helps to keep up the
tradition of ecclesiastical authority, in belief and
practice, with the unwholesome craving for it; and so
plays fatally into the hands of its opponent. Intel-
lectually, Catholic theologians hold their Protestant
WEAKNESS OF PROTESTANTISM.
(C
191
adversaries (justly or not) simply in contempt, or at
least take pains to make us think so. Their own
learning is at least equal; their reliance on authority
is far more consistent and distinct. But behind
Protestantism itself there is a spirit and a power
disowned of Protestantism, which they do fear, — a
spirit and a power which they know they will have
to meet presently, and take account with, face to face.
They understand, as well as we, that the really formi-
dable alternative is not "Protestant or Catholic," but
Reason or Rome."
There would be something ludicrous in the large
and confident way we sometimes have in speaking of
these things, if we only said them as Unitarians;
that is, as the smallest of Protestant sects, disowned
or ignored by nearly all the rest. Why we speak
largely and confidently is because we feel ourselves
consciously allied with vaster forces, which we are
assured will have the heritage of the future. Per-
sonally, I am a Unitarian, and hold that birthright
very dear; just as historically I am a Christian, ec-
clesiastically a Protestant, and hold that birthright
very dear. But, as students of opinions and forces,
we are obliged to take in a much larger field. It is
on that large field that we must watch the slow un-
folding of human thought. We cannot go back on
the pathway which the human mind has followed in
its irresistible advance. We cannot unsay the word,
or undo the work, which has reduced not only these
beliefs and dogmas of the past, but the forms of ex-
perience they grew from, within the categories and
methods of scientific criticism. From that tribunal
192
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
it is too late in the day to hold any mode of opinion,
or any moment of evolution, secluded and enshrined.
Our view of the Past must be swift enough and broad
enough at least to guess what the coming stage of
development is to be.
A single aspect of this wide view is all that con-
cerns us now. Let us look a moment, then, at the
supplanting of the received Cosmologies by larger and
more precise conceptions of Nature and Life, with
the resulting effect on current religious ideas.
Five hundred years ago, Dante's scheme of Hell
as a great cavern running through the earth, of Pur-
gatory as a hill on the other side, and of Paradise as
filling the nine concentric celestial spheres—was a
fair enough picture of the way the most highly edu-
cated looked on things; a long advance on the earlier
notion of the earth as a four-square plane, patterned
like the tabernacle of Scripture, with the lake of fire
below, and the solid crystal vault above. Copernicus
was ten years older than Martin Luther; and his sys-
tem (which Melanchthon would have violently sup-
pressed, as atheism) gave the first, by far the rudest,
shock the old belief has ever felt.
Think of the steps that have been taken since:-
Galileo's discoveries about the planets, suggesting a
plurality of inhabited worlds; Kepler's laws of plane-
tary motion, dissolving away the solid spheres of the
old astronomy; Newton's theory of universal gravita-
tion, displacing arbitrary will as the direct cause of
the celestial motions; Franklin's proof that lightning
and electricity are the same, doing away the super-
stitious awe at thunder-storms; Laplace's nebular
193
hypothesis, so generally accepted, carrying back the
origin of the solar system to incalculable remoteness;
Dalton's demonstration of definite proportions and
elective affinities in chemistry, making ridiculous the
old notion of "dead matter" as the antithesis of Spirit
or the enemy of Good; demonstration of the speed
of light and distances of the stars, destroying utterly
the old belief in a local heaven; geological proofs of
the uniformity of cosmic forces and antiquity of the
globe, disproving absolutely the popular chronology
of creation; discoveries of the spectroscope as to the
atmosphere of the sun and the light of stars, widening
enormously and at once the range of our physics;
the well-established doctrine of the conservation and
equivalence of energy, with its far-reaching effect on
our conception of the laws of life; and now the
scheme of evolution by natural process, apparently
destined, with whatever modification, to supersede
and swallow up every other theory of the trans-
mission of life and the inheritance of natural good
or evil.
STEPS OF ADVANCE IN SCIENCE.
These successive steps near half of them taken
within living memory-interest us chiefly, not as so
many advances or conquests of human intellect, but
as they bear on conceptions and ideas which were
once wrought up without question into men's relig-
ious belief, and were held necessary to their salvation.
It is very impressive to survey those steps in their
connection and in their order of sequence, if we only
stop a moment to reflect how prodigious is the men-
tal revolution they imply. To take one step the other
way, to roll back by ever so little an arc the driving-
13
194
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
wheel of that revolution, is manifestly impossible.
And the steps have been coming with increasing fre-
quency and increasing weight.
With a wise instinct, the Church-or the theologi-
cal spirit it had trained-tried to throttle at the birth
those twin earth-born giants, Natural Science and
Free Thought. It burned Giordano Bruno. It silenced
Galileo in the cells of its Inquisition. It allowed the
Newtonian theory to be taught only when it became
absolutely necessary in courses of the higher mathe-
matics, and then only as hypothesis, never as fact.
It continued to pray for rain and against thunder,
and so continues to this day. It protected the first
chapter of Genesis by frivolous and grotesque inter-
pretations, and tries so to protect it now. It insisted
that fossil remains were manufactured in that shape
by the Almighty, and packed into rock-strata when
the earth was built. And its advance lines are only
beginning to fall back from the defences, somewhat
hastily thrown up, to resist the threatened attack of
the new philosophy of Evolution.
The tendency which these things indicate, it is
safest for us to accept as fixed and inevitable. It is
no part of our business to add to their momentum, or
to oppose any feeble check of our own.
We may as
well think of trying to push on the rapids above
Niagara; we may as well think of trying to stop
them. Our only concern with them, as religious
thinkers, is to see, as clearly as we can, how they
touch or define for us the conditions of religious
thought.
But observe, again, that all this series of great
195
shocks against the ancient faith have affected only
what was outside and incidental. They have not
touched what is inward and essential. Religion may
yet be saved whole and unharmed, we think; but
only by that cordial co-working with the spirit of the
time, which is the very thing we mean by a liberal
faith. And what does this imply?
Liberalism is not a code of opinion. It is simply
a habit of mind, making the atmosphere of one's
opinions. What those opinions are depends on a great
many things. Sometimes they will be such as to
keep one very close to the old theology and the be-
lievers in it; only, while theirs is a dogmatic, his is
a sentimental belief. Sometimes they will be such as
to repel him violently from them, and put him in the
attitude of aggressive radicalism. But, in general, it
is away from, not towards, the established creed. It
begins, for example, with criticism of text or doctrine;
it goes on with more and more searching criticism of
the Sacred Books themselves; until it sets seriously
about the task (which is that of the more advanced
scholarship now) of bringing the entire record under
the generally received canons that apply to all his-
tories of men and all growths of opinion.
Of course, it tends thus to discard miracle in the
sacred narrative: not that it necessarily denies the
facts which looked miraculous once, but that, when it
accepts them (as Dr. Furness does), it seeks to put a
natural interpretation on them; and this, while it
leaves unimpaired their value as appeals to pious
sentiment, quite destroys their value as evidences of
religious dogma.
TENDENCIES OF LIBERALISM.
196
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
It rejects, without hesitation or fear, all doctrines
—such as election, reprobation, and an endless hell —
which affront either reason or natural justice or the
character of the Divine government. It loves to re-
cognize what is attractive in other forms of religion,
-as Buddhism, Brahmanism, and the rest, -some-
times to the unjust disparagement of Christianity.
It inclines strongly to humanity, kindliness, natural
charity, as against set acts of piety, in its view of
human duty. In its social theory, it disinclines just
as strongly to admit the hard facts or accept the hard-
conditions of human life. Its working plans are at
once expanded by a generous sympathy, and weak-
ened by an amiable sentimentalism. Its moral peril
is, of too strong recoil from austere bigotry to indo-
lent laxity of judgment. And it too easily admits an
over-conceit of itself, which leads to spiritual impo-
tency, cowardice, and self-indulgence.
Away from this moral peril, the great glory and
strength of Liberalism are in its cheerful, courageous,
confident piety. The sweetest of hymns and the
serenest of good lives have flowed from it. Passion
and fervor of the religious life it is apt to lack. That
spirit belongs rather to a more stern and ascetic faith.
It comes from a sense of terror, a depth of contrition,
a gratitude for rescue, which Liberalism cannot feel,
since the only God it knows is a God of love. And
it is weak in this, that it does not recognize what
Nature alike and the deep conviction of sin declare
a God of terror and a God of wrath, as well.
In the several forms in which we have known it
hitherto, Liberalism has given to the world many of
WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH OF LIBERALISM. 197
the noblest, purest, gently serene, obedient, and holy
lives. But of itself, and intellectually regarded, it
is only a step of transition. It is very far, in any
exposition it has made of itself as yet, from even at-
tempting to state a theory of the Divine government
so as to take in the dark side of it, as Calvinism did.
It is very far now from being a great power to move
the world, as Calvinism was. It is, as we may say,
the religious, pietistic, sentimental side of our modern
thought. It serves, at best, but as a set-off to the
harder and more practical, the positive, the scientific
side. And our best wish for it is that it may survive
as the gracious, beaming, benignant soul, making
glad, hopeful, and bright a world whose glory seemed
threatening to depart.
For, as we cannot fail to see, those steps of mental
revolution which I have spoken of have seemed to
many grave thinkers the coming on of the chill pe-
numbra that betokens before long a total eclipse of
faith. Even if it were so, the body that intercepts
the light is, after all, a celestial body, though earthy
and opaque, and its shadow will doubtless presently
pass away.
And there is compensation, even here. We may,
indeed, for a generation or two, lose that near and
comforting assurance of the Divine Personality which,
I am sure, will come back to us in a glorified form
when our minds are grown to apprehend the condi-
tions under which it must be held. As it has been
held by many, and still is, it is a mere idolatry-
sometimes cringing and cowardly, sometimes inso-
lently familiar which we shrink from as blasphemy,
C
198
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
often, in the prayers we hear and the threats addressed
to men's religious terror. If our speculations on the
Divine Nature fail us, let us first think worthily of
the divine reality in life. Then, it may be, we shall
have clearer vision of the Living God, who is the
fountain of universal life.
So, too, it may be needful that men should lose for
a season their clear and vivid conviction of the Future
Life, seeing what evil use has been made of it in the
craven fears and selfish hopes that have constituted
the buttress of ecclesiastical tyranny; seeing how
multitudes of religionists have deliberately sacrificed
the urgent duties and forgotten the deep wrongs and
griefs of the life that now is, in their self-indulgent
brooding on joys or terrors of the life to come. It
were better for us all to ask less how we may be sure
than how we may be worthy of that incomprehensi-
ble and august destiny. The nobility of the Hebrew
race began when it left behind the Egyptian creed of
another life, and entered on the wilderness of wan-
dering and pain, believing only in the present Deity;
when it cast aside the "Book of the Dead," with all
that solemn ritual and imagery, and the grave judg-
ments of Osiris beyond the dark river, and accepted
instead, for its sole portion, the Ten Commandments,
as it began its bleak but valiant march. From that
seed grew its later, better faith in immortality, and
the larger life which is ripening to-day.
If it is true, then, and I do not say that it is,
though many will say it for me, that there is going
to be an eclipse, for longer or shorter, of those two
great lights of faith, one of two things will certainly
M
De
M
;
THE ETHICAL FOUNDATION.
199
occur. Either our intellectual creed will drift stead-
ily into that sombre pessimism which is the last word
of a merely fatalistic evolution, while a practical ma-
terialism will come more and more to hold the field,
in a godless science, a ruder scramble for wealth, a
baser giving up of ourselves to sensual delight, a
widening of the insolent and cruel distinctions of
rich and poor, learned and ignorant, with the ever-
impending danger of a war of classes, threatening to
blot out the glory and life of civilization itself,-
that on the one hand; or, on the other hand, salva-
tion must be found where it has been ever of old,
in deepening and renewing the springs of life in the
soul itself.
And here we must bear in mind that, while nothing
we can do or say or think can alter in the least the
FACT of the Divine government or our own ultimate
destiny, yet our own relation to that government or
that destiny depends wholly on what we do and think
and are. The lessons of Christian history, which
make by far the most profound and instructive chap-
ter in the moral history of mankind, have taught us
little, unless they have shown how salvation, at the
hour of extreme crisis, has always been found in one
way, that is, by returning upon the deepest moral
convictions of the soul.
Not speculation, not emotion, but Conscience is
the true foundation of the higher life. It has always
begun with an intense conviction of Sin and sense of
personal need, or else with an intense perception of
the Evil in the world to be overcome by good. It
has always worked out in a new freshness and vigor
200
THE GOSPEL OF LIBERALISM.
in the sense of right and wrong, in a more living
conception of practical righteousness. It was so with
Jesus; it was so with Paul; it was so with Augus-
tine; it was so with Luther; it was so with those
disciples who one by one embraced the stern, sad,
valiant creed of Calvin, and through it saved to
the modern world most of what makes its life worth
saving. With each of them, it was associated with
doctrines, or forms of thought, which are seen now
to be outgrown, and which the world must soon in-
evitably leave behind, with false Messianic hopes;
with crude anthropologies; with dogmatic creeds,
strange and effete; with impossible socialistic dreams.
But with each of them it has left not only great ex-
amples of personal fidelity: it has left also a distinct
lesson, as needful to-day as then. It is a very pitiful
and meagre thing to have exposed their error, unless
we have grasped and interpreted their truth.
And, finally, what is that truth, as it bears now on
our thought and life?
1
For answer, think what it was at the time of the
decline and fall of Rome. Then, as now, there was a
system of material fatalism ¹ coming to be widely ac-
cepted among cultivated minds. Then, as now, old
creeds were dissolving. The restraints of ancient
piety being loosed, whole communities were plunged
into scepticism, and with that into the luxuries and
vices for which scepticism offers a cheap and easy
excuse to self-indulgence. Imperial Rome was then
what, with a startling likeness, imperial Paris seemed
1 Under the name Manichæan, see "Fragments," etc., pp.
131-133.
M
F
201
fifteen years ago. And then the key to a nobler life for
Humanity was found in the soul of one man¹ who
with passionate earnestness sought to cleanse himself
of his personal share of guilt, and so found anew
the sense of moral freedom, and the solution of his
life's problem, in absolute surrender of himself to
an Almighty Will.
ETERNAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Now, whatever else the course of thought may
leave behind, it remains that every man of healthy
intelligence knows there is a Right and there is a
Wrong, and that the difference between them meas-
ures the highest law of his being. The foundations
of the Universe are far, very far, beyond our sight;
but we know they must be laid in equity. There is
"an Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteous-
ness."
"If this fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.”
This deepest law of our life we cannot always
learn by way of theory. So much of it as concerns
ourselves we learn by way of obedience. One may
be our Theology; the other is our Religion. When
the desire to know and the purpose to obey have taken
full possession of a man; when they mount in his
aspiration, and flame in his passion, and breathe in
his piety, and give their color to his thought, and
nerve him to his work, then we have the true Re-
ligion which our time demands, independent of all
its Philosophies, and nobler than all its Creeds.
1 Saint Augustine.
M
APPENDIX.
MEMORIAL ADDRESS
Spoken on the 30th of May, 1882 (Decoration Day), at the Annual
Meeting of the American Unitarian Association.
BY REV. FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D.D.
MR. PRESIDENT, We do well to devote a portion
of this anniversary day of our Association to the
memory of those servants of our cause who during the past
year, having finished their work, have retired from our
ranks to "join the choir invisible."
—
HENRY W. BELLOWS.
It falls to me to speak of Dr. Bellows, who, if less im-
pressive as a preacher than the honey-lipped Nestor¹ who
hastened to follow him in death, has had in all our annals
no equal as a man of action.
Two years ago, we celebrated the memory of that illus-
trious divine whom we regard as our father in the faith.
To-day, we commemorate the disciple and brother by whose
organizing genius that faith has been made to take to itself
a body as compact as our unformulized theology and the
right to differ, which we all claim, will allow.
1 Dr. Dewey.
2 Dr. Channing.
J
204
APPENDIX.
He was our Bishop, our Metropolitan. The dignity is
unknown by name in our communion: the office has no
place in our acephalous, isocratic polity. But this once in
our history, by this one man in our brotherhood, the func-
tion was exercised, and that by no robbery but by univer-
sal consent of the brethren. It was no rape of clerical
ambition, but a lot which fell to him by native gift. He
took possession of his see by supreme right of natural
leadership and self-evident vocation,a see extending
from the Bay of Fundy to the Golden Gate. An ecclesi-
astical Centurion, "set under authority," he said to this.
man, Go," " and he went; to another, "Come," and he
came. He ordered us hither and thither, and we surren-
dered ourselves to his ordering. One day, he summoned
us to New York, and founded the National Conference of
Unitarian Churches. Another day, he summoned us to
Springfield, and established the Ministers' Institute. These
organizations, which we trust will survive him and last as
long as our communion shall maintain its specialty and
continue a separate fold in universal Christendom, testify
of his far-seeing sagacity as well as his far-reaching zeal.
They are his monument, had he no other. They are his
'epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all
men, “written not with ink, but with the spirit of the
living God."
""
66
"6
St. Paul, enumerating the trials and triumphs of his
mission, boasts that he was "in journeyings often." Our
Unitarian missionary, in journeys not less frequent, ex-
ceeded, if journeys be estimated according to their length,
by many a meridian the apostolic mark. When Starr King
died, he hastened to San Francisco, while as yet no rail
had pierced the Rocky Mountains, comforted the orphaned
diocese, with counsel and ordinance confirmed the church,
-and established a pastor in the vacant pulpit. This was
205
one among many of the generous impromptus of his alert
and enterprising spirit.
HENRY W. BELLOWS.
His qualifications for the office he assumed were, first of
all, faith in the cause and fervent love of the cause he
espoused. With the heart, and not with the understand-
ing only, he believed in the liberal gospel of our Church.
With the heart he desired to see it prevail and extend its
beneficent influence in the land. He was not content to
hold the beliefs he cherished as a private estate. The doc-
trine by which he had been enlightened and cheered and
inspired he burned to impart to others for their enlighten-
ment, encouragement, and inspiration. He believed in its
final triumph, but not without adequate efforts devoted
to that end. Those efforts, so far as he was concerned,
should not be wanting.
To these moral incentives we must add a felicitous tact
and extraordinary power of adaptation. He discerned two
hostile forces at work: on the one hand, a headlong, radi-
cal spirit tending to Nihilism; on the other, a timid, con-
servative temper threatening arrest in the past and captivity
to dogma and the letter. He set himself to mediate be-
tween the two. His own theological proclivities inclined
to the conservative side, but his convictions were not very
exigent. He could practise a tolerant frankness, which
by conciliating dissent might limit the aphelion of denial,
while it shamed stagnation and loosened the bands of
custom.
He craved popularity, he needed it for the end he had
at heart. And he was popular. Innocent of duplicity,
by virtue of a never-failing suavity, he could be all things
to all men, conciliating the self-willed, humoring the weak,
noticing the obscure, acknowledging the claims of the em-
inent, paying tribute where it was due, and collecting it
from all. Always the man he talked with deemed him
206
APPENDIX.
}
his particular friend. There was no falsity in this and
no hypocrisy : it was pure affability, the easy libation of
a fluent nature and a brimming cup.
I note in this man the rare combination of the conse-
crated soul with the boon companion, the enthusiast with
the man of the world. He was not one of those of whom
it could be said, as Wordsworth said of Milton,
"His
soul was as a star, and dwelt apart." He was not one of
the bloodless hermit saints, who seem not to belong to this
world, attached to it by only the slenderest thread of
animality, whose soul
"Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light."
He was no ghost, no lank ascetic, but an honest, whole-
some son of earth, at home in the flesh, who without being
in the least a sensualist, not living by bread alone, yet
lived by bread in the widest sense, a boon companion
who enjoyed the feast and the jest, could give as well as
take of that coin, was quick at repartee, met the worldling
on his own ground, and charmed the table with the bright-
ness of his wit. Yet he never unfrocked himself, nor
pained his friends with any sense of incongruity between
his discourse and his calling. As in Philip Neri, the jester
was the foil of the priest.
Withal, as I said, a consecrated soul. If he shone as a
man of the world in worldly converse, he had none the
less his conversation in heaven. His supreme aim in life,
embracing and subordinating all secondary aims, was in
one or another way, by this or that ministry, to fix and
extend the kingdom of heaven on the earth, everywhere
rooting out evil and planting good. For this and in this
he lived and moved and had his being. Time, money,
:
207
and pen were at the service of every good cause. In what
charity was he not active? In what philanthropic move-
ment did he not lead? As champion and advocate of all
the humanities, that great and populous city of his abode
had no citizen more honored and called for, no voice more
prompt and commanding. Remember that shining episode
of his public life, the Sanitary Commission! Who of us,
brother ministers, his survivors, can be named whose rec-
ord contains a chapter like that, so replete with laborious,
needful, beneficent service? Few who were not intimate
with our brave brother can know what toil and cares, what
runnings to and fro, what appeals to the indifferent, what
wrestlings with officials, what liberal expenditure of pri-
vate means that enterprise involved. And he was the soul
of it all. It is not too much to say, that, although without
him it would doubtless have originated, and in the hands
of Olmsted and other willing and able coadjutors have
done a good work, it could not without him have been
the power and the success which it was. We learned
from his example that the age of chivalry was not past, as
Burke complained, when this new Hospitaller and Knight
of St. John took the field in the cause of mercy. I visited
not long since the cemetery at Arlington, where thousands
upon thousands of the soldiers who fell in the war of the
Rebellion are interred. As I wandered among those
mostly nameless graves, I reflected that perhaps not one of
that mighty host had perished without having experienced,
directly or indirectly, some alleviation of his sufferings
through the hand of that great charity of which our brother
was the head.
HENRY W. BELLOWS.
And all the while, through all the years of the war, he
retained his cure of All-Souls Church, preached in his
pulpit, and fulfilled the duties of his pastorate.
I recall with wonder his indefatigable diligence, his
208
APPENDIX.
}
amazing activity. The steam was always up in that fierce
engine that was in the body of him, of which his life was
the fuel. The driving-wheel was never still. Even in his
.dreams, I think he must have been at work. Minister of
a cultivated, intelligent, and, as one might suppose, ex-
acting congregation, he satisfied their demands with his
preaching; and yet preaching was but a small part of his
activity. Often, his sermons were written at one sitting.
But haste was not apparent in them. The same sermons
would have cost some of us whole days in the preparation.
Then, he found time for other writing in many kinds and
various interests, literary and practical, spiritual and tem-
poral, and conducted a correspondence that might have
taxed the ability of a statesman. He never neglected a
letter due. Indeed, writing was as natural to him as
breathing. It seemed as if the pen were a part of him, a
supplementary organ which Nature, foreseeing his needs,
had attached to his finger-joints, and which could be
sheathed or unsheathed at will. At houses where I have
visited with him in his vacations, he would sit up late
after the rest of us had retired, and rise before we woke,
to write. It was thus that he composed his history of
the Union League Club.
You will say that with all this activity, with this ex-
cessive giving out, there could be no time to take in, no
time for study and reflection. As to reflection, I cannot
say. Long, deep, silent, patient brooding, I suppose, was
not in his nature. But this I know, he was a diligent
reader. Scarcely a book of special importance in the
province of history, or popular philosophy, or even fic-
tion, was uttered by the press but he somehow found time
to acquaint himself with its contents.
The one talent denied him was that of repose. He
could not do nothing; he could not lie by. Of leisure he
1
1
HENRY W. BELLOWS.
209
had no experience, no relish, scarcely knew what it meant.
His health breaks down from overwork and he goes abroad,
undertakes a grand tour for its recovery. But the tour is
turned to new toil. Half the night is spent in bringing
to protocol the observations and events of the day. From
the railway, from the saddle, from rounds of sight-seeing,
straight to the ink-stand. The written sheets are sent
home, are committed to the press; and when the journey
is ended, behold! it is a book. I say this not by way of
commendation, but of characterization. I do not think it
is the way to get the full benefit of travel. It is not even
the best way to see what we "went out for to see." What
we inspect only to describe on the spot we do not see to
much advantage: the impression escapes with the report.
To see well, one must have no ulterior end, must be pas-
sive, must let one's self be acted upon by the thing seen,
-must be one's self (so to speak) the Object, and the
thing seen the Subject.
But such passivity was not in Bellows's make: he must
see with the will, if at all. He could not be intellectually
passive and active at the same time, except occasionally in
the sense in which
"The passive master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned."
Occasionally. Here, I come to speak of a master-trait of
our friend, a ground principle in his mental constitution,
not to mention which would be a grave omission. I am
at a loss by what term to express it. If I cared to be
pedantic, I would say, in the Greek sense of the word,
dæmonic. I will call it, in plain speech, an extraordinary
capacity of pure inspiration. No one has really heard
Bellows, no one really knew him, who has not heard him
at his best on the platform. He was not always at his
י.
14
210
APPENDIX.
best, though never prosy.
But when he was! We talk
of extempore speech. In my experience there are two
kinds: one that is good, but is not really extempore; and
one that is extempore, and is not good. And there is
another which is miraculous, incomparably better than
anything the speaker could have possibly compassed by
careful preparation or conscious effort.
"Take no care how or what ye shall speak, for it shall
be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.”
One must be an exceptional nature for whom this shall be
a safe rule. For ordinary mortals it is a very unsafe one.
I have known but two preachers in whose case it was ap-
proved; but two who could be effectively beside themselves,
who could trust their good genius to bear them better and
higher than their own wit; but two whose wings were di-
vinely assured to them. One of these was the late Father
Taylor, and the other was our Brother Bellows. With
other men, their best things come to them by lonely mus-
ing; his, in the torrent and storm of public speech. It
was wondrous to listen to him in those exalted moments
when fully possessed by his Dæmon,-
"Filled with fury, rapt, inspired."
You could not report those flashes with anything like a
reproduction or justification of their effect, any more than
you could write the aurora or stereotype the lightning. It
was not so much the words themselves which he uttered
as the spirit which gleamed in them and through them
that thrilled you.
Of the moral qualities of this hero of our homage I need
not descant to you. It might be safely assumed, did we
not otherwise know it from personal acquaintance with
the man and his record, that such power as he exercised
and the influence that went forth of him must have had
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
211
their source in great virtues. But it needs no assumption.
All who knew him can testify of a moral courage which
quailed at nothing, which braved all risks and defied all
consequences; a generosity which took no counsel of selfish
prudence, and exceeded, as other, richer men would have
reckoned, his pecuniary ability; a tender sympathy with
distress, which affliction never appealed to in vain; a
loyalty which made his friendship a prize; a kindliness
of nature which made sunshine where he came.
Such was our brother in his life and work. We do not
claim for him the vision of the seer; we do not claim for
him the penetration of the great original thinker, nor the
erudition of the deep-read scholar, nor even the insight of
the emancipated critic. What we do claim for him is a
transcendent power of beneficent action. He has left no
written word which, like that of Channing, has secured
for itself a wide acceptance and a long future; none which
will worthily represent him to posterity. But the spirit
in which he wrought, is it not immortal? His work, shall
it not survive in its fruits? The lesson of his life, shall it
not abide with us, though his place in our ranks can know
him no more? Will that place ever be filled again by one
so brave and strong? The best that can be said of any
man may surely be said of him, that he was one of those
"who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well."
It is good to celebrate such. It is better, so far as our
meaner gifts and feebler will may suffice, to follow them.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
And now, Mr. President and Friends, I crave your in-
dulgence for one more word, a brief word in memoriam
of another preacher of our communion, more recently de-
ceased; once for a few years a preacher in the technical,
ecclesiastical sense, occupying a pulpit in this city as his
ટ્
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↓
#
212
APPENDIX.
!
father had done before him; always a preacher in the
higher, universal sense, a prophet, the greatest, I
think, this country or this age has known. Your thought
will doubtless have anticipated me, when I name the name
of Emerson.
▬▬▬▬
Prevented by accident from assisting at his interment
and offering my tribute with others at his bier, I desire in
this presence to acknowledge the debt we owe him as pro-
moter of the cause to which this association is vowed,
the cause of spiritual emancipation.
An emancipator he was by the positive, affirmative
method, so much rarer and more effective than the neg-
ative, aggressive one adopted by most reformers. In
the words of Dr. Holmes : "Here was an iconoclast
without a hammer, who took down our idols from their
pedestals so tenderly that it seemed like an act of wor-
ship."
Let me say, then, that Emerson, in my judgment, stands
at the head of American literature in two of its most im-
portant functions: as philosophical essayist, and as lyric
poet.
As philosophical essayist he is marked by absolute sin-
cerity, independent judgment, and the freshness of original
thought. His aim is not to set forth in conventional
phrase the prevailing sentiment of his time, not to voice
the accepted doctrine of "good society," but to face the
primary fact, and to state in terms of his own what "the
brooding soul" has revealed to him of the aspects and
meaning of life. An original observer of Nature's plan
and of human ongoings, he does not strain or strive to see
and understand; he does not worry to detect the truth
of things, but trustingly accepts what comes to the open
sense and the waiting mind. "Stand aside and let God
think "
his own memorable saying expresses the
I
213
mental process by which he gained his insight and
reached his conclusions.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
It was not love of singularity, as hostile critics alleged,
but plain sincerity, that made his views and his writing so
unconventional, and that here and there shocked propriety
with some startling contradiction. It might be his misfor-
tune, but it was not his fault, that he could not see things
as others saw them. He must state them as he saw them
himself. And the different view took on, as nearest his
meaning, the unwonted phrase.
No writer among us has incurred more ridicule and en-
countered more abuse than this, our joy and our pride, in
his earlier utterances. "What will this babbler say?"
His speech was characterized as "the most amazing non-
sense,” as the raving of one who could "not put two ideas
together," as sheer "blasphemy," by the Areopagites of
the day, the self-constituted guardians of right thinking
and good taste. The angry invectives launched against
him by his censors might grieve one who prized as dearly
as another the good-will of his kind; but they could not
turn him from his orbit, nor baffle his serene self-posses-
sion, nor extort one syllable of wrath in reply.
Nature covenanted with me that I should never appear to
disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure?” “I see
not any road of perfect peace which a man can travel but
to take counsel of his own bosom." With such sentiments
as these he steeled himself against the shafts of his adver-
saries, and steered "right onward."
"Has
And now, what a change! Who names him but to
praise? He has created his own public. He has formed,
as Wordsworth did, the taste by which he is enjoyed.
Did he write: "Greatness, once and forever, has done
with opinion"? He has conquered opinion. So truly he
prophesied: "Let a man plant himself indomitably on his
1
214
APPENDIX.
own instincts and there abide, and the huge world will
come round to him."
Two streams of tendency appear in his Essays. As a
philosopher he is both Platonist and Stoic: a Platonist in
his contemplation of nature; a Stoic in his practical view
of life. Locke still held sway when he began his career.
The "Essay on the Understanding" was the text-book of
philosophy in his academic years; but the whole being of
the youth inclined in the opposite direction, and though
not directly and at first hand conversant with the new
German philosophy, he welcomed the first breathings of
its spirit, which saluted him through Coleridge, and he
found the fundamental principles of "transcendentalism"
in his own mind. And, on the other hand, in relation to
the conduct of life, as the "Meditations" of Antoninus
were the favorite study of his youth, so he echoes and
reproduces that imperial strain in his ethic. What more
Antoninian than this: "To find the journey's end in every
step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours,
is wisdom. Let us be poised and wise and our own
to-day. I settle myself ever firmer in the creed that we
should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad
justice where we are.”
A Stoic he is in the emphasis with which he affirms
Right to be the absolute good,— right for its own sake,
not for any foreign benefit. "There is no tax on the good
of virtue, for that is the incoming of God himself, or abso-
lute existence without any comparative." "In a virtuous
action I properly am."
And what a triumphant optimism in his view of human
nature! "Nothing shall warp me from the belief that
every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no
pure malignity in Nature. The entertainment of the pro-
position of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation.
T
215
Could it be received into the common belief, suicide would
unpeople the planet."
No writer is so quotable. Scarcely a page, especially of
the earlier essays, but supplies some terse and pregnant
saying, worthy to be inscribed in a golden treasury of
portable wisdom. And this is the signal merit of his phi-
losophy; it gives us results instead of processes, sharp
statements of weighty truths instead of long disquisitions.
One pungent saying, one compact axiom that proves itself,
is better than pages of laborious demonstration. Demon-
strations we forget, but wise and witty sayings we remem-
ber; they score themselves in the brain. Force of state-
ment, the surprise of fitness, the hitting of the nail on the
head, is of Emerson's writing the distinguishing trait. No
moral teacher has been so instructive to his generation.
I place Emerson at the head of the lyric poets of Amer-
ica. In this judgment I anticipate wide dissent; but the
dissent, I think, will be less when I explain the sense in
which the affirmation is intended. I do not mean that
Mr. Emerson excels his competitors in poetic art. On the
contrary, the want of art in his poetry may once for all be
conceded. The verses often halt, the conclusion sometimes
flags, and metrical propriety is recklessly violated. But
the defect is closely connected with the characteristic merit
of the poet, and springs from the same root, his utter
spontaneity. And this spontaneity is perhaps but a mode
of that sincerity which I have noted in his prose. More
than those of any of his contemporaries, his poems for the
most part are inspirations. They are not made, but given;
they come of themselves. They are not meditated, but
burst from the soul with an irrepressible necessity of utter-
sometimes with a rush which defies the shaping
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
-
ance,
intellect.
The inspiration is not always continuous or equal
216
APPENDIX.
1
:
+
throughout; often the beginning of the poem is better
than what follows. It seems as if it were not the man
himself that speaks, but a power behind, — call it Dæmon
or Muse. Where the Muse flags it is her fault, not his;
he is not going to help her out with wilful elaboration or
emendation. There is no trace, as in most poetry, of
joiner-work, and no mark of the file.
Wholly unique, and transcending all contemporary verse
in grandeur of style, is the piece entitled "The Problem."
When first it appeared in the Dial, forty years ago, come
July, I said: "There has been nothing done in English
rhyme like this since Milton." All between it and Milton
seemed tame in comparison. Some of its verses have been
found worthy of a place in Westminster Abbey, the spirit
of whose architecture and that of kindred temples they so
fitly express.
What was said of Emerson's prose is equally true of his
poetry; it is eminently quotable. More than those of any
other poet of our time his lines establish themselves in the
memory.
His life is a measure of the liberty wherewith he has
made us free. If forty years ago one had ventured to
commend him to this Association, he would have pro-
nounced his own doom of ecclesiastical ostracism. Forty
years ago he was a heretic, a blasphemer, a pest and peril
to Church and State. To-day he is acknowledged a pro-
phet, and those who reviled him are ready to garnish his
sepulchre. Thus he verified his own words: "Patience
and patience and patience, and we shall win at last."
As a preacher born and nurtured in our communion, he
belongs to ús; and I have to say of him that, as a preacher,
he was one of the few in all the ages who in the realm of
spirit have spoken with authority, — authority in the high
sense in which the supreme Teacher from whom our Chris-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
M
tendom dates was said to speak "as one having authority,
and not as the scribes." There is an authority to which
the many bow, the authority of place, of office, the au-
thority of tradition, of the letter, the authority of the past.
His is the authority of an original, independent witness.
"I am an inquirer with no past behind me." He brought
a fresh eye to the contemplation of those things which
most men see only through the eyes and report of others,
a vision unforestalled by precedent, unbiassed by tradi-
tion, uncontrolled by the will, unbribed by interest or
passion. Such vision was possible to him through that
unconditional surrender to the Spirit expressed in his say-
ing, "Stand aside, and let God think."
•
To see thus was his rare privilege, to say what he saw
his high calling and prophet mission. He would say only
what he saw, only what he found the warrant for in his
own vision and experience. Absolute sincerity in seeing
and saying, this is testimony which we must perforce
respect. This is authority. He, too, could say with
Jesus: “Therefore came I into the world, that I should
bear witness of the truth."
217
Ga
The sect of Friends have a phrase, "to live near the
truth." Such living is more common with people of low
estate unknown to fame than it is with men of public note.
Of all distinguished men I have known, Emerson was the
one who lived nearest the truth. He was truth's next
neighbor, and there was nothing between. In my life-
long converse with him, I could detect nothing between
him and the truth,—not only no hypocrisy or pretence,
but no wilfulness, no vanity, no art to win applause, no
ambition even
“That last infirmity of noble minds.”
He was not covetous of speech. He had no hankering
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218
APPENDIX.
༅།
for the ears of men. He did not go about seeking oppor-
tunities of speech, as some who are reckoned philosophers
use. If he could hold his peace, he chose it rather. To
be, not seem, was his intent.
When his house was burned, friends who had long
waited a fit opportunity, under pretext of rebuilding it,
sent him a large donation of money. In his letter of ac-
knowledgment he wrote: "The salvages are greater than
the damage." As I have looked upon him in these last
years, when his power of communication was impaired by
a troublesome aphasia, and have seen in his face the old
serenity, the old dignity, and more than the old sweetness,
it has seemed to me that the salvage was greater than the
loss. A loss which he felt most keenly, but bore how
patiently!
To be, not seem, is the lesson of his life. So living, he
has lived down censure, has lived down ridicule, has lived
down slander, oppugnance of the worthy and the unworthy,
and is now accepted by us all as our best preacher of true
marliness, of patience, of sincerity, of faith, of moral free-
dom and independence, of "whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report."
"He spoke, and words more soft than rain
Brought the age of gold again.
His action won such reverence sweet
As hid all measure of the feat."
INDEX OF PERSONS.
Adams, J. Q., 29, 100.
Agassiz, Louis, 157.
Alcott, A. B., 69.
Allen, Joseph, 38, 84.
Andrew, J. A., 29.
Bancroft, Aaron, 27.
Bartol, C. A., 69.
Baur, F. C., 127.
Bellows, H. W., 22, 23, 44, 47,
114, 115, 123, 203–211.
Birney, J. G., 61.
Bismarck, 153, 187.
Boyle, Robert, 36.
Bradford, G. P., 69.
Brownson, O, A., 69, 86-88.
Bryant, W. C., 30.
Büchner, 183.
Buckminster, J. B., 36, 48.
Burke, Edmund, 13, 14, 109.
Bushnell, Horace, 131.
Carlyle, Thomas, 70, 162.
Carpenter, W. B., 163.
Cavour, 181.
Channing, W. E., 22, 27, 42,
43-63, 64, 71, 83, 87, 90,
102, 152, 203.
Clarke, J. F., 69, 141.
Clay, Henry, 61, 100.
Coleridge, S. T., 13, 163.
Comte, Auguste, 130, 158.
Copernicus, 192.
Cowper, William, 53.
Cranch, William, 29.
Dalton, 193.
Dante, 156, 192.
Darwin, Charles, 127.
Dewey, Orville, 27, 110, 203.
Dickens, Charles, 152.
Dwight, J. S., 69.
Eliot, George, 152.
Edwards, Jonathan, 39.
Emerson, R. W., 29, 68, 69, 70,
71, 121, 211–218.
Everett, Edward, 29, 36.
Faraday, 163.
Francis, Convers, 69.
Franklin, 192.
Frothingham, O. B., 69.
Fuller, S. M., 69.
Furness, W. H., 68, 141.
Galileo, 192.
Gannett, E. S., 28, 82, 96.
Gannett, W. C., 37.
Greenwood, F. W. P., 42.
Hartmann, 156, 163.
Hedge, F. H., 22, 23, 65, 69,
142, Appendix.
220
:
INDEX OF PERSONS.
Helmholtz, 155.
Hollis, Thomas, 36.
Hopkins, Samuel, 45.
Howard, 165.
Hume, 126.
Huxley, 127.
Jefferson, Thomas, 12.
Kepler, 192.
King, T. Starr, 28.
Laplace, 192.
Lardner, N., 12, 126.
Lawrence, A., 25.
Leo XIII., 170.
Leroux, 87.
Locke, 9, 146.
Longfellow, H. W., 30.
Lovejoy, E. P., 60.
Lowell, J. R., 71.
Luther, 192.
Martineau, James, 21, 24, 143,
157, 181.
May, S. J., 84.
Melancthon, 192.
Mill, J. S., 162.
Milton, 9, 55, 79, 109, 171, 178.
Morse, Jedediah, 35.
Newton, Isaac, 9, 192.
Newton, John, 53.
Norton, Andrews, 24, 28, 68,
126.
Noyes, G. R., 28, 68.
Paine, Thomas, 15.
Paley, William, 13.
Palfrey, J. G., 28.
Parker, Theodore, 22, 24, 28,
44, 64, 70, 72, 74-78, 80,
85, 90-113, 120, 125, 126,
127.
Peabody, Ephraim, 28, 42.
Peabody, E. P., 69.
Phillips, Wendell, 60.
Pierpont, John, 28, 64.
Price, Richard, 14.
Priestley, Joseph, 14, 16.
Putnam, George, 27, 69.
Quincy, Josiah, 29, 41.
Renan, E., 162.
Rice, Asaph, 38.
Ripley, George, 69, 70.
Rousseau, J. J., 147.
Schleiermacher, 127.
Sears, E. H., 141.
Shaw, Lemuel, 29.
Socinus, F., 7.
Spencer, H., 127, 163, 182.
Spinoza, 159.
Stetson, Caleb, 69.
Strauss, 127, 162.
Sumner, Charles, 29, 80.
Tuckerman, Joseph, 59.
Tyndall, John, 127, 156, 157.
Voltaire, 147.
Walker, James, 28, 141.
Ware, Henry, 27, 36.
Ware, Henry, Jr., 68.
Webster, Daniel, 110.
Weiss, John, 91, 97.
Whitefield, 39.
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications.
HEBREW MEN AND TIMES
FROM THE
Patriarchs to the Messiah.
BY JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN,
LECTURER ON ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
New Edition, with an Introduction on the results of recent Old
Testament criticism. Chronological Outline and Index.
TOPICS: I. The Patriarchs; 2. Moses; 3. The Judges;
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Prophets; 9. The Captivity; 10. The Maccabees; II. The Alex-
andrians; 12. The Messiah.
• • •
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in Israel.' Such a want as this the present volume aims to meet."
•
Rev. O. B. Frothingham in the Christian Examiner.
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FRAGMENTS
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CHRISTIAN
HISTORY
To the Founding of the Holy Roman Empire.
[First Eight Centuries.]
BY JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN,
LECTURER ON ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
With Chronological Outline and Index, and an Introduction on
the Study of Christian History.
TOPICS: I. The Messiah and the Christ; 2. Saint Paul;
3. Christian Thought of the Second Century; 4. The Mind of
Paganism; 5. The Arian Controversy; 6. Saint Augustine; 7. Leo
the Great; 8. Monasticism as a Moral Force; 9. Christianity in
the East; 10. Conversion of the Barbarians; 11. The Holy Ro-
man Empire; 12. The Christian Schools.
"In whatever way we regard the origin and early growth of Christianity,
whether as special revelation or as historic evolution, the key to it is to be
found not in its speculative dogma, not in its ecclesiastical organization, not
even in what strictly constitutes its religious life, but in its fundamentally
ethical character. In either way of understanding it, it is first of all a gos-
pel for the salvation of human life." - Preface.
· •
"I have read your Fragments of Christian History with instruction and delight.
You are a miracle of candor and comprehensiveness. . . . You and Dr. Hedge are
almost the only men who know thoroughly the whole grand field of Ecclesiastical
History. I most cordially send you my thanks for such an illumination as you
have given me, on many obscure points of Christian History."-E. P. Whipple
to the Author.
"We do not desire to state an unqualified agreement with all the conclusions
of Professor Allen, and yet we are free to confess that we know of no work of the _
same scope which could be put into the hands of a thoughtful young man, in
which he could find so much sound philosophy, valuable historical review, and
devout apprehension of essential Christianity as he will find in 'Fragments of
Christian History.'"- Chicago Alliance.
Sold everywhere by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the
publishers,
ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
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