Our liberal movement in theology, chiefly as shown in recollections of the history of Unitarianism in New England

Front matter

N.URE&CO

S.KING ST. WES

TORONTO

Contents

I. ANTECEDENTS

II. NEW ENGLAND UNITARIAN ISM 22

III. CHANNING 43

II New England Unitakianism

T^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.

Each of these periods, again, is best known by the name of some representative man : the first by that of Dr. Charming ; 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. Charming never desired to be known as a Uni tarian, and had a strong distrust of all denominational or 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

THREE PERIODS.

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. Arid 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.

The three dates which we may assign as the be ginning of these periods are the years 1815, 1836, and I860. 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 UNITAKIANISM.

was discharged, in a review by Mr. George Eipley 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 sixtyseven 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 Unitarianism 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 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 :

SOME UNITARIAN PREACHERS. 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 latest 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 Nbyes, 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 Charming, 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 Uiiitarianism 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 Stan- 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 lew 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 Eepresentatives ; his cousin Judge Crancb, 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 Simmer, 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 brightened by his radiance ; these, with Bryaut 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 Congregationalists, 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 wlwle 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 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 CONGBEGATIONALISTIC 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 Unitarianism. It is that, historically, it is the liberal wing of the great Congregational lody 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.1 Of these, again, thirty-eight were founded before the year 1700, including that first organized by the refugees in Leyden in 1602, eighteen years before the colony landed on Plymouth Eock ; and eighty more — that is, one

1 See " Year Book of the Unitarian Congregational Churches."

hundred and eighteen in all, or more than one third of the entire number — were established before the war of the Eevolution. Tims 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 unitarian 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.

ITS EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 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.

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.

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 Eobert Boyle — the " Latitude-men about Cambridge." The free-thinking of the Eevolutionary 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.

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 arid 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

ITS LITERARY ANTECEDENTS. 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.

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.

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 Kice, 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 Eice 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 livin^

o°

THE OLD PARISH SYSTEM. 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.