Unitarianism in America: A History of its Origin and Development Part 28

[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 a.s.serted; 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 cla.s.sical 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 s.h.i.+p-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 emanc.i.p.ated, 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 a.s.sociation. 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 Th.o.r.eau's Journals; J.L.

Sibley, librarian; John Albee, poet and essayist; and William Cus.h.i.+ng, 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 citizens.h.i.+p, 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 unsurpa.s.sed 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 G.o.d.

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 Cla.s.sics, Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, and Atheism in Philosophy show the range of his interests and his ability as a thinker.

James Freeman Clarke may be selected as a typical Unitarian minister, who 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 n.o.blest 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 fellows.h.i.+p. 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. Wa.s.son, 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 surpa.s.sed 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, Wa.s.son, 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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, Friends.h.i.+ps 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 scholars.h.i.+p 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 emanc.i.p.ation, sympathetic interest in all that is human, combined with scholars.h.i.+p 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 Hamps.h.i.+re; 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 pa.s.sionate 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 G.o.d, 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.