Ticknor, the historian, the Society to encourage Studies at Home. During
the twenty-four years of its existence it conducted by correspondence the
reading and studies of over 7,000 women in all parts of the country, and
did an important work in enlarging the sphere of women, preparing them for
the work of teachers and for social and intellectual service in many
directions. The society was discontinued in 1897, because, largely through
its influence, many other agencies had come in to do the same work; but the
large lending library, which had been an important feature of the
activities of the society, was continued under the management of the Anna
Ticknor Library Association until 1902. The memorial volume, published in
1897, shows how important had been the work of the Society to encourage
Studies at Home, and how many women, who were otherwise deprived of
intellectual opportunities, were encouraged, helped, and inspired by it. It
was said of Miss Ticknor, by Samuel Eliot, the president of the society
throughout the whole period of its existence: "While appreciative of the
restrictions which she wished to remove, she was desirous to gratify, if
possible, the aspirations of the large number of women throughout the
country who would fain obtain an education, and who had little, if any,
hope of obtaining it. She was very highly educated herself, and thought
more and more of her responsibility to share her advantages with others not
possessing them. In addition to these moral and intellectual
qualifications, she possessed an executive ability brought into constant
prominence by her work as secretary of the society. She was a teacher, an
inspirer, a comforter, and, in the best sense, a friend of many and many a
lonely and baffled life."[23]
The service of Mrs. Mary Hemenway to education also deserves recognition.
Possessed of large wealth, she devoted it to advancing important
educational and intellectual interests. She established the Normal School
of Swedish Gymnastics in Boston, and provided for its maintenance until it
was adopted by the city as a part of its educational system. With her
financial support the Hemenway South-western Archaeological Expedition was
carried on by Frank H. Cushing and J.W. Fewkes. It was largely because of
her efforts that the Montana Industrial School was established, and
maintained for about ten years. Her chief work, however, was in the
promotion of the study of American history on the part of young persons.
When the Old South Meeting-house was threatened with destruction, she
contributed $100,000 towards its preservation; and by her energy and
perseverance it was devoted to the interests of historical study. The Old
South Lectures for Young People were organized in 1883, soon after was
begun the publication of the Old South Leaflets, a series of historical
prizes was provided for, the Old South Historical Society was organized,
and historical pilgrimages were established. All this work was placed in
charge of Mr. Edwin D. Mead; and the New England Magazine, of which he was
the editor, gave interpretation to these various educational efforts.
Mrs. Hemenway devoted her life to such works as these. It is impossible to
enumerate here all her noble undertakings; but they were many. "Mrs.
Hemenway was a woman whose interests and sympathies were as broad as the
world," says Edwin D. Mead, "but she was a great patriot; and she was
pre-eminently that. She had a reverent pride in our position of leadership
in the history and movement of modern democracy; and she had a consuming
zeal to keep the nation strong and worthy of its best traditions, and to
kindle this zeal among the young people of the nation. With all her great
enthusiasms, she was an amazingly practical and definite woman. She wasted
no time nor strength in vague generalities, either of speech or action.
Others might long for the time when the kingdom of God should cover the
earth as the waters cover the sea, and she longed for it; but, while others
longed, she devoted herself to doing what she could to bring that corner of
God's world in which she was set into conformity with the laws of God,--and
this by every means in her power, by teaching poor girls how to make better
clothes and cook better dinners and make better homes, by teaching people
to value health and respect and train their bodies and love better music
and better pictures and be interested in more important things. Others
might long for the parliament of man and the federation of the world, and
so did she; but while others longed, she devoted herself to doing what she
could to make this nation, for which she was particularly responsible,
fitter for the federation when it comes. The good state for which she
worked was a good Massachusetts; and her chief interest, while others
talked municipal reform, was to make a better Boston."[24]
[Sidenote: Popular Education and Public Libraries.]
The interest of Unitarians in popular education and the general diffusion
of knowledge may be further indicated by a few illustrations. One of these
is the Lowell Institute in Boston, founded by John Lowell, son of Francis
Cabot Lowell, and cousin of James Russell Lowell. He was a Boston merchant,
became an extensive traveller, and died in Bombay, in 1836, at the age of
thirty-four. In his will he left one-half his fortune for the promotion of
popular education through lectures, and in other ways. John Amory Lowell
became the trustee of this fund, nearly $250,000; and in December, 1839,
the Lowell Institute began its work with a lecture by Edward Everett, which
gave a biographical account of John Lowell, and a statement of the purposes
of the Institute. Since that time the Lowell Institute has given to the
people of Boston, free of charge, from fifty to one hundred lectures each
winter. The topics treated have taken a wide range, and the lecturers have
included many of the ablest men in this and other countries. The work of
the Lowell Institute has also included free lectures for advanced students
given in connection with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, science
lectures to the teachers of Boston, and a free drawing school.
In 1846 Louis Agassiz came to this country to lecture before the Lowell
Institute. The result was that he became permanently connected with Harvard
University, and transferred his scientific work to this country. This was
accomplished by means of the gift of Abbott Lawrence, who founded the
Lawrence Scientific School in 1847. Although the Lowell Institute was
founded by a Unitarian, and although it has always been largely managed by
Unitarians, it has been wholly unsectarian in its work. Many of its
lecturers have been of that body, but only because they were men of science
or of literary attainments.
In 1854 Peter Cooper founded the Cooper Union in New York for the
Advancement of Science and Art, to promote "instruction in branches of
knowledge by which men and women earn their daily bread; in laws of health
and improvement of the sanitary conditions of families as well as
individuals; in social and political science, whereby communities and
nations advance in virtue, wealth, and power; and finally in matters which
affect the eye, the ear, and the imagination, and furnish a basis for
recreation to the working classes." He erected a large building, and
established therein the Cooper Institute, with its reading-room, library,
lectures, schools, and other facilities for bringing the means of education
within reach of those who could not otherwise obtain them.
Peter Cooper was an earnest Unitarian in his opinions, attending the church
of Dr. Bellows; but he was wholly without sectarian bias. In a letter
addressed to the delegates to the Evangelical Alliance, at its session held
in New York in 1873, he expressed the catholicity and the humanitarian
spirit of his religion. "I look to see the day," he wrote, "when the
teachers of Christianity will rise above all the cramping power and
influence of conflicting creeds and systems of human device, when they will
beseech mankind by all the mercies of God to be reconciled to the
government of love, the only government that can ever bring the kingdom of
heaven into the hearts of mankind either here or hereafter."
About 1825 there was opened in Dublin, N.H., under the auspices of Rev.
Levi W. Leonard, minister of the Unitarian church in that village, the
first library in the country that was free to all the inhabitants of a town
or city. In the adjoining town of Peterboro, in 1833, under the leadership
of Rev. Abiel Abbot, also the Unitarian minister, a library was established
by vote of the town. This library was maintained by the town itself, being
the first in the country supported from the tax rates of a municipality. In
the work of these Unitarian ministers may be found the beginnings of the
present interest in the establishment and growth of free public libraries.
In the founding and endowment of libraries, Unitarians have taken an active
part. What they have done in this direction may be illustrated by the gift
of Enoch Pratt of one and a quarter million dollars to the public library
in Baltimore. Concerning the time when Jared Sparks was the minister of the
Unitarian church in Baltimore, Professor Herbert B. Adams has said: "Some
of the most generous and public-spirited people of Baltimore were connected
with the first independent church. Afterwards, men who were to be most
helpful in the upbuilding of Baltimore's greatest institutions--the Peabody
Institute, the Pratt Library, and the Johns Hopkins University--were
associated with the Unitarian society."[25]
Professor Barrett Wendell speaks of George Ticknor as "the chief founder of
the chief public library in the United States."[26] Ticknor undoubtedly
did more than anybody else to make the Boston Public Library the great
institution it has become, not only in giving it his own collection of
books, but also in its inception and in its organization. The best working
library in the country, that of the Boston Athenaeum, also owes a very
large debt to the early Unitarians, with whom it originated, and by whom it
was largely maintained in its early days.
[Sidenote: Mayo's Southern Ministry of Education.]
One of the most important contributions to the work of education has been
that of Rev. Amory D. Mayo, known as the "Ministry of Education in the
South." After settlements over churches in Gloucester, Cleveland, Albany,
Cincinnati, and Springfield, Mr. Mayo began his southern work in 1880. He
had an extensive preparation for his southern labors, having served on the
school boards of Cincinnati and Springfield for fifteen years, lectured
extensively on educational subjects, and been a frequent contributor to
educational periodicals. He has written a History of Common Schools, which
is published by the national Bureau of Education, prepared several of the
Circulars of Information of that bureau, and printed a great number of
educational pamphlets and addresses.
"One of the most helpful agencies in the work of free and universal
education in the South, for the last twenty years," says Dr. J.L.M. Curry
in a personal letter, "has been the ministry of A.D. Mayo. His intelligent
zeal, his instructive addresses, his tireless energy, have made him a
potent factor in this great work; and any history of what the Unitarian
denomination has done would be very imperfect which did not make proper and
grateful recognition of his valuable services."
[1] Christian Examiner, XLVII. 186; Mrs. E.B. Lee, Memoirs of the
Buckminsters, 325.
[2] Memoir of Buckminster, introductory to his Sermons, published in
1814, xxxii.
[3] The Pentateuch and its Relation to the Jewish and Christian
Dispensation. By Andrews Norton. Edited by John James Tayler, London,
1863. This was the Note, with introduction.
[4] Boston Unitarianism, 244.
[5] Hengstenberg's Christology, Christian Examiner, July, 1834, XVI. 321.
[6] Ibid., 327.
[7] Ibid., 356.
[8] Ibid., 357.
[9] Ibid., 358.
[10] Our Liberal Movement in Theology, 68.
[11] The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel and Other Critical Essays
selected from the published papers of Ezra Abbot, edited, with
preface, by Professor J.H. Thayer.
[12] The Divinity School of Harvard University: Its History, Courses of
Study, Aims, and Advantages, published by the University, 9.
[13] The Divinity School as it is, Harvard Graduates' Magazine, June,
1897.
[14] B.A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the
United States, 127.
[15] B.A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the
United States, 148.
[16] Henry Barnard, Normal Schools, 125.
[17] B.A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann, 147.
[18] Quoted by J.P. Gordy, Rise and Growth of the Normal School Idea in
the United States, Circular of Information of the Bureau of
Education, 1891, 49.
[19] Ibid., 43.
[20] S.J. May, Memoir of Cyrus Peirce, Barnard's American Journal of
Education, December, 1857.
[21] G.A. Hubbell, Horace Mann in Ohio: A Study of the Application of his
Public School Ideals to College Administration, No. IV. of Vol. VII.,
Columbia University Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology, and
Education, 50.
[22] Mary Mann, Life of Horace Mann, 44; Henry Barnard, Normal Schools,
93.
[23] Memorial Volume, 2.
[24] Edwin D. Mead, The Old South Work, 1900; also Memorial Sermon, by
Charles G. Ames, 17.
[25] Life and Writings of Jared Sparks, I. 141.
[26] A Literary History of America, 266.
XIX.
UNITARIANISM AND LITERATURE.
The history of American literature is intimately connected with the history
of Unitarianism in this country. The influences that caused the growth of
Unitarianism were those, to a large extent, that produced American
literature. It was not merely Harvard College that had this effect, as has
been often asserted; for the other colleges did not become the centres of
literary activity. It was more distinctly the freedom, the breadth of
intellectual interest, and the sympathy with what was human and natural
developed by the Unitarian movement that were favorable to the growth of
literature. Yet from the beginning of the eighteenth century Harvard
fostered the spirit of inquiry, and helped to set the mind free from the
theological and classical predispositions that had checked its natural
growth. A taste for literature was encouraged, theology took on a broad and
humanitarian character, and there was a growing appreciation of art and
poetry. Harvard College helped to bring men into contact with European
thought, and thus opened to them fresh and stimulating sources of
intellectual interest.
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of the
nineteenth New England was largely devoted to commercial enterprises.
Every coast town of any size from Newport to Belfast was concerned with
ship-building and with trade to foreign ports. Such towns as Boston and
Salem traded with China, India, and many other parts of the world. Not only
was wealth largely increased by this commercial activity, but the influence
upon life and thought was very great. The mind was emancipated, and
religion grew more liberal and humane, as the result of this contact with
foreign lands. Along the whole coast, within the limits named, there was an
abandonment of Puritanism and a growth into a genial and humanitarian
interpretation of Christianity. In New York City somewhat the same results
were produced, at least on social and intellectual life, though with less
immediate effect upon religion. It was in these regions, in which
commercial contact with the great outside world set the mind free and
awakened the imagination, that American literature was born.
[Sidenote: Influence of Unitarian Environment.]
The influence of Unitarian culture and literary tastes is shown by the
considerable number of literary men who were the sons of Unitarian
ministers. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the son of William Emerson, the minister
of the First Church in Boston at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
George Bancroft was the son of Aaron Bancroft, the first Unitarian minister
in Worcester, and the first president of the American Unitarian
Association. To Charles Lowell, of the West Church in Boston, were born
James Russell Lowell and Robert T.S. Lowell. The father of Francis Parkman
was of the same name, and was for many years the minister of the New North
Church in Boston. Richard Hildreth was the son of Hosea Hildreth, Unitarian
minister in Gloucester. Octavius Brooks Frothingham was the son of
Nathaniel L. Frothingham, minister of the First Church in Boston. Joseph
Allen, father of Joseph Henry Allen and William Francis Allen, was the
minister in Northboro for many years. Of literary workers now living
William Everett is the son of Edward Everett, Charles Eliot Norton of
Andrews Norton, and William Wells Newell of William Newell, minister of the
First Church in Cambridge for many years.
This influence is shown in the large number of literary men who studied at
the Harvard Divinity School and began their career as Unitarian ministers.
It may be partly accounted for by the fact that at the beginning of the
nineteenth century literature offered but a precarious opportunity to men
of talent and genius. The respect then accorded to ministers, the wide
influence they were able to exert, and the many intellectual opportunities
offered by the profession, naturally attracted many young men. During the
first part of the nineteenth century no other profession was so attractive,
and enthusiasm for it was large amongst the students of Harvard College. As
literary openings began to present themselves, many of these men found
other occupations, partly because their tastes were intellectual rather
than theological, and partly because the radical ferment made the pulpit no
longer acceptable. Such a man as Edward Everett would never have entered
the pulpit, had it not been socially and intellectually most attractive at
the time when he began his career. In the instance of Samuel A. Eliot, who
took the full course in the Divinity School, but did not preach, being
afterward mayor of Boston and member of Congress the influences at work
were probably much the same.
George Bancroft is another instance of a graduate of the Divinity School
who did not enter the pulpit, but, beginning his career as a teacher,
devoted his life to literature and diplomacy. With such men as Christopher
P. Cranch, artist and poet; George P. Bradford, teacher, thinker, and
friend of literary men; H.G.O. Blake, editor of Thoreau's Journals; J.L.
Sibley, librarian; John Albee, poet and essayist; and William Cushing,
bibliographer, the cause operating was probably the same,--the discovery
that the chosen profession was not acceptable or that some other was
preferable. Another group of men, including John G. Palfrey, Jared Sparks,
William Ware, Horatio Alger, James K. Hosmer, Edward Rowland Sill and
William Wells Newell, who occupied Unitarian pulpits for brief periods,
were drawn into literary occupations as more congenial to their tastes. The
same influence doubtless served to withdraw Emerson, George Ripley, John S.
Dwight, Thomas W. Higginson, Moncure D. Conway, and Francis E. Abbot, from
the pulpit; but with these men there was also a break with traditional
Christianity.
[Sidenote: Literary Tendencies.]
The early Unitarian movement in New England was literary and religious
rather than theological. The men who have been most influential in
determining the course of Unitarian development, such as Charming, Dewey,
Parker, and Hedge, not to include Emerson, who has been a greater
affirmative leader than either of the others, were first of all preachers,
and their published works were originally given to the world from the
pulpit. They made no effort to produce a Unitarian system of theology; and
it would have been quite in opposition to the genius of the movement, had
they entered upon such a task.
With the advent of the Unitarian movement, for the first time in the
history of the American pulpit did the sermon become a literary product.
Channing and his coworkers, especially Buckminster and Everett, departed
widely from the pulpit traditions of New England, ceased to quote texts,
abandoned theological exposition, refrained from the exhortatory method,
and addressed men and women in literary language about the actual interests
of daily life. Their preaching was not metaphysical, and it was not
declamatory. The illustrations used were human rather than Biblical, a
preference was given to what was intellectual rather than to what was
emotional, and the effect was instruction rather than conversion. It
resulted in faithful living, good citizenship, fidelity to duty, love of
the neighbor, and an earnest helpfulness toward the poor and unfortunate.
[Sidenote: Literary Tastes of Unitarian Ministers.]
In studying any considerable list of Unitarian ministers, and taking note
of their personal tastes and their avocations, it will be seen that a large
number of them were lovers of literature, and ardently devoted much of
their time to literary pursuits. Not only was there a decidedly literary
flavor about their preaching, but they were frequent contributors to The
Christian Examiner and The North American Review; and they wrote poems,
novels, books of travel, essays, and histories. They were conspicuous in
historical and scientific societies, in promoting scientific
investigations, in advancing archaeological researches, in every kind of
learned inquiry. Their intellectual interests were so catholic and so
vigorous that they were not contented with parish and pulpit, and in some
cases it would seem that the avocation was as important as the vocation
itself.
Dr. Channing would be named as the man who has done most to give direction
to the currents of Unitarian thought on theological problems, but he was
also conspicuously a philanthropist and reformer. He was less a theologian,
in the technical sense, than one who taught men to live in the spirit. His
spiritual insight, humanitarian sympathies, and imaginative fellowship with
all forms of human experience gave his writings a literary charm and power
of a high order. He was a great religious teacher and inspirer, a preacher
of unsurpassed gifts of spiritual interpretation, and a prophet of the
truer religious life.
The Unitarian leaders who were influenced by the transcendental movement,
of which the most prominent were Parker, Hedge, Clarke, and C.C. Everett,
interpreted theology in the broadest spirit. Parker was essentially a
preacher and reformer. It was the one conspicuous aim of his life to
liberate religion from the intellectual thraldom of the past, and to bring
it into the open air of the world, where it might be informed of daily
experience and gain for itself a rightful opportunity. He was therefore
literary, imaginative, ethical, practical. He wrote for The Dial, and
established The Massachusetts Review, he was one of the most widely heard
of popular lecturers, and he was a leader in the most radical of the
reforms prominent in his day. Parker made all wisdom subservient to his
religion, treated a wide range of subjects in his pulpit, and brought
religion into immediate contact with human life.
Frederic H. Hedge did more than any other man to give Unitarianism a
consistent philosophy and theology. His Reason in Religion and Ways of the
Spirit have had a profound influence in shaping the thought of the
denomination, and have led all American Unitarians to accept his view of
the universality of incarnation and the consubstantiality of man and God.
He was wise as an interpreter, and by no means wanting in originality, a
brilliant essayist, a philosophical historian, and a student of high
themes. His Prose Writers of Germany, Hours with the German Classics,
Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, and Atheism in Philosophy show the
range of his interests and his ability as a thinker.