wrote poetry, was more than once an editor, often appeared on the lecture
platform, was a frequent contributor to the leading periodicals, wrote
several works of biography and history, gave himself zealously to the
advocacy of the noblest reforms, and produced many volumes of sermons that
have in an unusual degree the merit of directness, literary grace,
suggestiveness, and spiritual warmth and insight. His theological writings
have been widely read by Unitarians and those not of that fellowship. His
Self-culture has been largely circulated as a manual of practical ethics.
His Ten Great Religions and its companion volume opened the way in this
country for the recognition of the comparative study of religious
developments. Not content with so wide a range of studies, he wrote Thomas
Didymus, an historical romance concerned with New Testament characters, How
to find the Stars, and Exotics, a volume of poetical translation. He was a
maker of many books, and all of them were well made. His theology was all
the more humane, and his preaching was all the more effective, because he
was interested in many subjects and had a real mastery of them.
Charles Carroll Everett was a philosophical thinker and theologian, and the
younger generation of Unitarian ministers has been largely influenced by
him. His theological work was done in the lecture-room, but it was of
first-rate importance. He was a profound thinker, a vigorous writer, and an
inspiring teacher. He was an able theologian, philosophical in thought, but
deeply spiritual in insight. His work on The Science of Thought shows the
depth and vigor of his thinking; but his volumes on The Gospel of Paul,
Religions before Christianity, Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, suggest the
breadth of his inquiries and the richness of his philosophical
investigations. In his position as the dean of the Harvard Divinity School
he accomplished his best work, and there his great ability as theologian
and philosophical thinker made itself amply manifest.
Another group of men largely influenced by the transcendental movement
included David A. Wasson, John Weiss, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Longfellow,
Cyrus A. Bartol, Octavius K Frothingham, and William J. Potter. Here we see
the literary tendency showing itself distinctly and to much advantage. The
first four of these men wrote exquisite hymns and spiritual lyrics, and all
of them were contributors to periodical literature or writers of books.
Weiss was a literary critic of no mean merit in his lectures on Greek and
Shakespearean subjects; and his volumes on American Religion and Immortal
Life were purely literary in their method. However deficient were Johnson's
books on the religions of India, China, and Persia, from the point, of view
of the science of religion, they have not yet been surpassed as
interpretations of the inner spirit of Oriental religions. Bartol was a
master of an incisive literary method in the pulpit, that gives to his
Radical Problems, The Rising Faith, and Principles and Portraits a
scintillating power all their own, with epigram and flash of wit on every
page. Frothingham published many a volume of sermons; but his biographies
of Parker, Gerrit Smith, Wasson, Johnson, Ripley, Channing, and his volume
on the History of Transcendentalism in New England, as well as his Boston
Unitarianism, and Recollections and Impressions, indicate that his literary
interests were quite as active as his theological.
The literary tastes of Unitarian ministers are indicated by the large
number of them who have written poetry that passes beyond the limits of
mediocrity. The names of John Pierpont, Andrews Norton, Samuel Gilman,
Nathaniel L. Frothingham, the younger Henry Ware, W.B.O. Peabody, William
Henry Furness, William Newell, William Parsons Lunt, Frederic H. Hedge,
James F. Clarke, Theodore Parker, Chandler Robbins, Edmund H. Sears,
Charles T. Brooks, Robert C. Waterston, Thomas Hill, and others, have been
lovingly commemorated in Alfred P. Putnam's Singers and Songs of the
Liberal Faith. Hymns of nearly all these men are in common use in many
congregations, and some of their work has found a place in every hymnal.
No one can read the sermons of Thomas Starr King without feeling their
literary grace and finish of style, as well as their intellectual vigor.
His lectures marked his literary interest, which shows itself in his
Christianity and Humanity and his Substance and Show. Especially does it
appear in his delightful book on The White Hills, their Legends, Landscape,
and Poetry. In his day, Henry Giles was widely known as a lecturer; and his
numerous volumes of literary interpretation and criticism, especially his
Human Life in Shakespeare, were read with appreciation. In his District
School as it was, and My Religious Experience at my Native Home, Warren
Burton described in simple but effective prose a kind of life that has long
since passed away. His educational lectures and books helped on the cause
of public school education, a subject in which he was greatly interested.
Unitarian ministers have also made many contributions to local and general
history. The history of King's Chapel by Francis W.P. Greenwood may be
mentioned as a specimen of the former kind of work; but Greenwood also
published several volumes of sermons, as well as biographical and literary
volumes. A History of the Second Church in Boston, with Lives of Increase
and Cotton Mather, was published by Chandler Robbins. The theological
history of Unitarianism was ably discussed by George E. Ellis in A
Half-century of the Unitarian Controversy. He devoted much attention to the
history of New England, gave many lectures and addresses on subjects
connected therewith, published biographies of Anne Hutchinson, William
Penn, Count Rumford, Jared Sparks, and Charles W. Upham. His volumes on The
Red Man and the White Man in North America, The Puritan Theocracy, and
others, show his historical ability and his large grasp of his subjects.
Joseph Henry Allen published an Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement
since the Reformation, in the American Church History series. In Our
Liberal Movement in Theology, and its Sequel, he critically and
appreciatively treated of the history of Unitarianism in New England, and
of the men who were most important in its development. His taste for
historical studies appeared in his Christian History in its Three Great
Periods, a work of admirable critical judgment, sobriety of statement, and
concise presentation of the essential facts.
Alvan Lamson produced a book of critical value in The Church of the First
Three Centuries, which treats of the origin of the Trinitarian beliefs
during that period. A work of a similar character was done by Frederic
Huidekoper, in whose books were included the results of many years of
minute research, and of critical investigation into the origins of
Christianity.
Books of a widely different nature were written by Artemas B. Muzzey in his
Personal Recollection of the Men in the Battle of Lexington, and
Reminiscences of Men of the Revolution and their Families. He published
several volumes of sermons, as well as a number of educational works.
Somewhat of a theologian and an ardent student and expounder of philosophy,
William R. Alger has made himself widely known by his books on The Genius
of Solitude, Friendships of Women, and The School of Life. His fine
literary judgments, his artistic appreciations, and his richness of
sentiment and imagination show themselves in these attractive volumes. He
has also published a Life of Edwin Forrest, with a Critical History of the
Dramatic Art. His Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life is a
work of ripe scholarship and great literary merit, and is everywhere
recognized as an authority.
[Sidenote: Unitarians as Historians.]
In the chapter on historians, in his American Literature, Professor Charles
F. Richardson enumerates seventeen writers, twelve of whom were Unitarians.
It was in Cambridge and Boston, amongst the graduates of Harvard College,
that American historical writing began, and that it attained its greatest
successes. The same causes that had given the Unitarians pre-eminence in
other directions made them especially so in this, where wide learning and
sound criticism were of importance. Wealth, leisure, intellectual
emancipation, sympathetic interest in all that is human, combined with
scholarship and plodding industry, gave the historians an unusual equipment
for their tasks.
It may be justly said that historical writing in this country began with
Jeremy Belknap, the predecessor of Dr. Channing in the Federal Street
Church. When settled in Dover, he wrote his History of New Hampshire; and
after his removal to Boston he produced a biography of Watts and two
volumes of American Biographies. He first voiced the historical interest
that was awakened by the establishment of national independence, and the
desire to know of the past of the American people. His chief service to
historical studies, however, was in the formation of the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
Hannah Adams was not only a Unitarian, but the first woman in this country
to enter upon a literary career. Her View of Religious Opinions, first
issued in 1784, afterwards changed to a Dictionary of Religions, was the
earliest work attempting to give an account of all the religions of the
world. It was followed by her History of New England, and by her History of
the Jews. She also took part in the religious controversies of the day, her
contest with Dr. Jedediah Morse being one of the minor phases of the
struggle between the Unitarians and the Orthodox Congregationalists; and
her Evidences of Christianity, as well as her letters on the Gospels, were
written from the Unitarian point of view. Her books had no literary value,
but in their time they helped to foster the growing interest in American
subjects.
Alexander Young, minister of the New South Church in Boston, rendered
valuable service to historical investigations by his Chronicles of the
Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth and his Chronicles of the First
Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, works that were scholarly,
accurate, and judicious. Perhaps his most important service was the editing
of the Library of Old English Prose Writers, in nine volumes, which
appeared from 1831 to 1834, and included such works as Sidney's Defence of
Poesie and Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial. Of his historical works, O.B.
Frothingham has justly said that "they showed extensive and accurate
knowledge, extraordinary zeal in research, singular impartiality of
judgment, great activity of mind, a strong inclination towards ethical as
distinguished from speculative subjects, a passionate love of books and
elegant letters."[1]
Of the greater historians, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Hildreth, Sparks,
Palfrey, Ticknor, Parkman, Higginson, Parton, and Fiske were Unitarians.
Three of these men were sons of Unitarian ministers, and four of them
prepared for that profession or entered upon its duties. It is not
desirable that any attempt should be made here to estimate their historical
labors, for their position and their achievements are well known.
It would be interesting to give an account of the Unitarian connections and
sympathies of these writers, but the materials are not at hand in the case
of most of them. One or two illustrations will suffice for them all,
indicating their religious tastes and preferences. In 1829 Prescott made a
careful examination of the evidences for belief in Christianity, and his
biographer says that "the conclusions at which he arrived were, that the
narratives of the Gospels were authentic; and that, even if Christianity
were not a divine revelation, no system of morals was so likely to fit him
for happiness here and hereafter. But he did not find in the Gospels or in
any part of the New Testament the doctrines commonly accounted orthodox,
and he deliberately recorded his rejection of them." At a later time he
stated his creed in these words: "To do well and act justly, to fear and to
love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves--in these is the essence of
religion. To do this is the safest, our only safe course. For what we can
believe we are not responsible, supposing we examine candidly and
patiently. For what we do we shall indeed be accountable. The doctrines of
the Saviour unfold the whole code of morals by which our conduct should be
regulated."[2] Prescott was a regular attendant at the First Church in
Boston.
In his biography of George Ticknor, George S. Hilliard says that "the
strong religious impressions which Mr. Ticknor received in early years
deepened as his character matured into personal convictions, the confirmed
and ruling principles of his life. He had been brought up in the doctrines
of Calvinistic orthodoxy, but later serious reflection led him to reject
those doctrines; and soon after his return from Europe he joined Dr.
Channing's church, of which he continued through life a faithful member. He
was a sincere Liberal Christian, and his convictions were firm, but they
were held without bigotry, and he never allowed them to interfere with
kindliness and courtesy." It may be added that Ticknor was an active member
of the church with which he was connected, that in 1822 he took charge of a
class of boys in the Sunday-school, which he kept for eight years. In 1839
and the next year he gave a course of instruction in the history and
contents of the Bible to a class of young girls, for which he prepared
himself carefully.[3]
The influence exerted by the historians in teaching love of country and a
true patriotism may be accounted as very large. That men thoroughly
grounded in principles of religious liberty, in high ideals of justice and
humanity, in the broadest spirit of toleration and freedom of opinion,
should have written our histories, is of no small importance in the
formation of American character. That they have made many Unitarians we
cannot suppose, but that their influence has been large in the development
of a true spirit of nationality we have a right to think. They have
indicated concretely the effects of bigotry and intolerance, and they have
not failed to point out the defects in the practices of the Puritans. In so
far as they have had to deal with religious subjects, they have taught the
true Unitarian idea of liberty of conscience and freedom of opinion. They
have wisely helped to make it possible for many religions to live kindly
side by side, and to give every creed the right of utterance. These ideals
had been developed before our historians began to write, but these men have
helped to make them the inheritance of the whole nation. All the more
effective has been their teaching that it has grown out of the events of
our history, and has not been the voice of a merely personal opinion. But
we owe much to them that they have seen the true meaning of our history,
and that they have uttered it with clearness of interpretation and with
vigorous moral emphasis.
[Sidenote: Scientific Unitarians.]
A considerable number of the leading men of science have been Unitarians.
Notable among the mathematicians were Nathaniel Bowditch, Benjamin Peirce,
and Thomas Hill, who was president of Antioch College and of Harvard
University. Among the astronomers have been Benjamin Gould, Maria Mitchell,
Asaph Hall, and Edward C. Picketing. Of Maria Mitchell it was said that she
"was entirely ignorant of the peculiar phrases and customs of rigid
sectarians." Her biographer says she "never joined any church, but for
years before she left Nantucket she attended the Unitarian church, and her
sympathies, as long as she lived, were with that denomination, especially
with the more liberally inclined portion."[4] James Jackson, the first
physician of the Massachusetts General Hospital, should be named in this
connection. Joseph Lovering, the physicist, and Jeffries Wyman, the
comparative anatomist, are also to be included. And here belongs Louis
Agassiz, who has had more influence than any other man in developing an
interest in science among the people generally. He gave to scientific
investigations the largest importance for scientific men themselves. At the
same time he was a religious man and a theist. "In religion," says his
biographer, "Agassiz very liberal and tolerant, and respected the views and
convictions of every one. In his youth and early manhood, Agassiz was
undoubtedly a materialist, or, more exactly, a sceptic; but in time, and
little by little, his studies led him to belief in a divine Creative Power.
He was more in sympathy with Unitarianism than with any other Christian
denomination."[5]
[Sidenote: Unitarian Essayists.]
A considerable number of essayists, lecturers, and general writers have
been Unitarians. Among these have been Edwin P. Whipple, George Ripley,
Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, John S. Dwight, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Henry
T. Tuckerman, James T. Fields, and Professor Francis J. Child. These
writers represent several phases of Unitarian opinion, but they belong to
this fellowship by birthright or intellectual sympathies. In the same
company may be placed Henry D. Thoreau and John Burroughs, not because they
had any direct connection with Unitarianism, but because the religious
convictions they expressed are such as most Unitarians accept.
To the Unitarian fellowship belong Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child,
Caroline M. Kirkland, Grace Greenwood (Mrs. Lippincott), and Julia Ward
Howe. All the early associations of Margaret Fuller were with Unitarians;
and her brother, Arthur Fuller, became a Unitarian minister. In her maturer
life she was with the transcendentalists, finding in Rev. W.H. Channing and
Emerson her spiritual teachers. Writing of her debt to Emerson, she said,
"His influence has been more beneficial to me than that of any American;
and from him I first learned what is meant by an inward life."[6] She was
a pronounced individualist, an intense lover of spiritual liberty, a friend
of those who live in the spirit. This may be seen in what she called her
credo, a sentence or two from which will indicate her type of thought. "I
will not loathe sects, persuasions, systems," she writes, "though I cannot
abide in them one moment; for I see that by most men they are still
needed." "Ages may not produce one worthy to loose the shoes of the Prophet
of Nazareth; yet there will surely be another manifestation of this word
which was in the beginning. The very greatness of this manifestation
demands a greater. We have had a Messiah to teach and reconcile. Let us now
have a man to live out all the symbolical forms of human life, with the
calm beauty of a Greek god, with the deep consciousness of Moses, with the
holy love and purity of Jesus."[7]
[Sidenote: Unitarian Novelists.]
Among the novelists have been several who were Unitarian ministers,
including Sylvester Judd, William Ware, Thomas W. Higginson, and Edward
Everett Hale. Judd's Margaret was of the very essence of transcendentalism,
besides being an excellent interpretation of some of the phases of New
England character. Ware's historical novels were popular in their day, and
are now worth going back to by modern readers, and especially by those who
do not insist upon having their romances hot from the press. Catherine M.
Sedgwick is another novelist worth returning to by modern readers, and
especially by those who would know of New England life in the early part of
the nineteenth century. She became an ardent Unitarian, and her biography
gives interesting glimpses of the early struggles of that faith in York
City. Other Unitarian women novelists were Lydia Maria Child, Grace
Greenwood, Helen Hunt Jackson, Louisa M. Alcott, and Harriet Prescott
Spofford.
In naming John T. Trowbridge, Bayard Taylor, Bret Harte, William D.
Howells, and Nathaniel Hawthorne as Unitarians, no merely sectarian aim is
in view. In the common use of the word, Hawthorne was not a religious man;
for he rarely attended church, and he had no interest in ecclesiastical
formalities. No man who has written in this country, however, was more
deeply influenced than he by those spiritual ideas and traditions which may
be properly called Unitarian. The same may be said of Howells, who is not a
Unitarian in any denominational sense; but his religious interests and
convictions bring him into sympathy with the movement represented by
Unitarianism.
It may be said of the most popular novels of Edward Everett Hale, such as
Ten Times One Is Ten, In His Name, His Level Best, that they are the best
possible interpretations of the Unitarian spirit; for it is not merely a
certain conception of God that characterizes Unitarianism, nor yet a
particular theological attitude. It is the wish to make religion real,
practical, altruistic.
[Sidenote: Unitarian Artists and Poets.]
Unitarianism has been as friendly to poetry and the other arts as it has
been to philosophy and science. In its early days it fostered the artistic
careers of Washington Allston, the painter, and Charles Bulfinch, the
architect. It has also nurtured the sculptors, William Wetmore Story, who
was also poet and essayist; Harriet Hosmer, whose career shows what a woman
can accomplish in opening new opportunities for her sex; Larkin G. Mead and
Daniel C. French. To these must be added the actors Fanny Kemble and
Charlotte Cushman.
It is as one of the earliest of our poets that Charles Sprague is to be
mentioned, and one or two of his poems are deservedly remembered. Jones
Very was one of the best of the transcendental poets, and a few of his
religious poems have not been surpassed. The younger William Ellery
Channing and Edward R. Sill belong to the same school, and deservedly keep
their places with those who admire what is choice in thought and individual
in artistic workmanship. As a biographer of O.B. Frothingham and as a
member of his congregation, it may be proper to add here the name of Edmund
C. Stedman.
Among our greater poets, Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell,
Stoddard, and Bayard Taylor were Unitarians. As being essentially of the
same way of thinking and believing, Whittier and Whitman might also be so
classed. Though Whittier was a Friend by education and by conviction, he
was of the liberal school that places religion above sect and interprets
dogmas in the light of human needs and affections. If he had been born and
bred a Unitarian, he could not have more sympathetically interpreted the
Unitarian faith than he has in his poems. Whitman had in him the heart of
transcendentalism, and he was informed of its inmost spirit. To the more
radical Unitarians his pleas for liberty, his intense individualism, and
his idealistic conceptions of nature and man would be acceptable, and, it
may be, enthusiastically approved.
William Cullen Bryant early became a Unitarian; and he listened to the
preaching of Follen, Dewey, Osgood, and Bellows. "A devoted lover of
religious liberty," Bellows said of him, "he was an equal lover of religion
itself--not in any precise, dogmatic form, but in its righteousness,
reverence, and charity. He was not a dogmatist, but preferred practical
piety and working virtue to all modes of faith."[8] It would be difficult
to give a better definition of Unitarianism itself; and it was the large
humanity of it, and its generous outlook upon the lives of individuals and
nations, that made of Bryant a faithful Unitarian.
Henry W. Longfellow was educated as a Unitarian, his father having been one
of the first vice-presidents of the Unitarian Association,--a position he
held for many years. Stephen Longfellow was an intimate friend of Dr.
Channing in his college years, and he followed the advance of his classmate
in the growth of his liberal faith. "It was in the doctrine and the spirit
of the early Unitarianism that Henry Longfellow was nurtured at church and
at home," says his brother. "And there is no reason to suppose that he ever
found these insufficient, or that he ever essentially departed from them.
Of his genuine religious feeling his writings, give ample testimony. His
nature was at heart devout; his ideas of life, of death, and of what lies
beyond, were essentially cheerful, hopeful, optimistic. He did not care to
talk much on theological points; but he believed in the supremacy of good
in the world and in the universe."[9]