Thus far we have followed the story of the Unitarian movement on the Continent from its organized beginnings about 1565, and in England from the gathering of the first avowedly Unitarian church in 1774. The movement in America, however, did not begin to take a form distinct from orthodoxy until something like two centuries and a half after the first antitrinitarian churches were organized in Poland and Transylvania, and not until well over forty years after Lindsey began to preach in London. It would be natural to expect, therefore, that American Unitarianism would as a matter of course prove to be simply an outgrowth of these earlier movements across the Atlantic; yet this does not appear to have been the case.
It is true that two Polish Socinians are said to have been among the earliest immigrants from England to the new colony of Georgia; but no trace has been discovered of them or of their influence there. In fact, the only American church in which anything like direct Socinian influence may have been felt is one organized in 1803 on the frontier of the wilderness in central New York by two liberal exiles from Holland— a church which later on adhered to the Unitarian movement. No Socinian books were in the libraries of Harvard or Yale before the nineteenth century, and there is almost no evidence that such books reached America at all until the Unitarian movement had become well launched here.
Nor, close as was the connection between the mother country and the colonies, was American Unitarianism to any large extent an importation of that in England. Though the Episcopal King's Chapel in Boston had followed Lindsey's example in revising its Prayer Book in 1785, and though Priestley soon after his arrival in America had organized two Unitarian churches of the English sort in Pennsylvania, yet the liberal American churches shrank from going as far as these had gone, and were little influenced by them. Only one English antitrinitarian work was reprinted in America in the eighteenth century, and that was the only mildly Arian Humble Inquiry by Emlyn. Few if any English Unitarian books were in the Harvard library before 1800, and the works of Priestley and Lindsey were as yet read only by the most daring; for, as we shall see, few of the New England clergy had any sympathy with their views. The roots of American Unitarianism go much further back into English religious history; so that the English and the American movement are related to each other not as mother and daughter, but as aunt and niece, since both trace descent from a common English ancestry early in the eighteenth century. This, however, is not to deny that the aunt had some influence in finally shaping the character of the niece.
The Unitarian movement in America, then, was largely native to American soil; and as the Socinianism of Poland and the Unitarianism of Transylvania sprang up in the Reformed churches, and as English Unitarianism first developed mainly in the Presbyterian churches, so in New England it was in the Congregational churches that American Unitarianism first arose. Indeed, many of the older Unitarian churches of Massachusetts still retain their original Congregational name.
These New England churches had had a twofold origin. The Pilgrim church at Plymouth and its neighbors in that colony were Separatists. Their earliest members had sojourned in Holland when Socinianism was just coming to make some impression there, and they must have imbibed some of the Dutch spirit of religious toleration; and while they would doubtless have opposed Socinian doctrines with heart and soul, yet from their first settlement in 1620 they showed a tolerant spirit which made progress easy when the time should be ripe. The churches of Boston, Salem, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in general, on the other hand, were founded by Puritans of the period when the Puritan party still remained within the Church of England. Yet the great distance from the mother country practically forced these churches too to enter a separate existence almost from the start, and thus the churches of both colonies were Congregational by 1629.
The belief of these churches, was Calvinism of the strictest sort, and it was long before the slightest tendency toward Unitarian views could have been detected. For many years only church members had the right to vote, and heresy laws, aimed, however, at Catholics and Episcopalians, Baptists and Quakers, existed until the time of the American Revolution. In fact, universal belief in the doctrines of the Westminster Confession was so much taken for granted that it was not demanded even upon joining the church, and members were usually admitted upon assenting to a simple, undogmatic covenant, or promise to lead a Christian life. The covenant of the church at Salem, the first Congregational church to be formed in America, may serve as an example: "We covenant with the Lord, and one with another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed word of truth." The result was that when the old beliefs gradually fell away, it was not necessary for the churches to make any change. The same covenant could still be used as before, and in some of the churches it is used to this day; while in many of them the change was so gradual that it is impossible to say just when they ceased to be orthodox and became Unitarian. It was not until heresies became a source of real danger that creeds were imposed upon members, in order to keep the churches pure in doctrine.
Strict in belief as the churches had been, they were not able long to keep their first intensity of faith. Within a generation beliefs began to grow lax, as some of the early liberal books from England were received and read, and as people compared the teachings of Calvin with those of the Bible. Thus in 1650 William Pynchon, one of the founders of Springfield, published a little book protesting against Calvin's doctrine of the atonement. The General Court was scandalized, and ordered that the book be burned in the market place at Boston, and that a refutation be published by one of the ministers. Pynchon was called to account and, though he may have escaped the heavy fine imposed, he soon afterwards thought it safer to return to England. A little later it was complained that there were Arminians and Arians in the colony. Calvinism was beginning to break down.
It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that the matter began to look serious. Echoes of the controversies in the Church of England over the doctrine of the Trinity were reaching Massachusetts, and the works of Sherlock and South, Whiston and Clarke, Tillotson and Emlyn found many readers, and influenced not a few. The Arian controversy at Exeter and in Ireland was also heard of with solemn apprehension. Cotton Mather, leader of the Puritan clergy, lamented that Whiston and Clarke were being so much read; and the North Church at Boston took measures to guard its pulpit from Arminians, Arians, and Socinians. Two of the clergy were suspected, and charged with being unsound on the Trinity or the atonement. Graduates at Harvard proposed to prove that the Trinity is not taught in the Old Testament, and appeared to have the sympathy of the faculty. English Arians were in correspondence with the Massachusetts clergy, and their books and views kept slowly spreading. Sermons of the time were often in defense of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, or the doctrines of Calvin, which were considered in danger. "Arminianism" was found to be in the air — a vague term, applied to any manner of departure from strict Calvinism; and before 1750 over thirty ministers were known as having become unsound in the faith.
A little before the middle of the eighteenth century occurred a religious movement which caused the beginning of a split in the churches. The Great Awakening, one of the most remarkable revivals of religion in Christian history, began in western Massachusetts under the preaching of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, who must still be reckoned as perhaps the greatest theologian America has produced, although later generations have insisted on remembering him chiefly for the lurid way in which he preached the terrible fate of "sinners in the bands of an angry God." The revival spread far and wide, continued for several years, and excited attention even in England. The consequence was that in 1740 the Rev. George Whitefield, a young English revivalist of the most extraordinary eloquence, was invited to come to New England to preach. Everywhere he went he preached to crowds too great for the churches to hold them, and on Boston Common, it was estimated, to more than 20,000 at one time. Together with all the good that resulted from it (from 25,000 to 40,000 were said to have been converted), the revival was marked by great emotional excitement, intense fanaticism, narrow bigotry, and extreme Calvinism. These things became worse under preachers who followed Whitefield. People of education and refinement were scandalized, and many of the leading clergy felt bound to oppose the revivalists and their methods. It was no wonder, for Whitefield had spoken of the New England clergy as "dumb dogs, half devils and half beasts, spiritually blind, and leading people to hell." He so bitterly attacked Harvard and Yale Colleges for their growing liberality, that when he made a second visit four years later they opposed him as uncharitable, censorious, a slanderer, deluder, and dreamer, and did not invite him to preach before them again. The pulpits of many churches also were closed to him, and for this he bitterly criticized their ministers.
This reaction from the Great Awakening cost Edwards his pulpit; while many independent thinkers in pulpit and in pew set their faces against the strict Calvinism which he and Whitefield had sought to revive. There was as yet no controversy about the Trinity, but the orthodox doctrine of the atonement was increasingly criticized, "Armininianism" was on the increase and there was a growing demand for more simplicity, reason, and tolerance in religious beliefs. The works of the English liberals, both Anglican and Presbyterian, were widely read and in good repute; and though to counteract their influence Edwards wrote two of his most powerful works, he could not stem the tide that kept steadily undermining Calvinism. In 1756 an anonymous "Layman" at Boston had Emlyn's Humble Inquiry reprinted, and challenged any one to disprove its Arian teachings from the Scriptures if he could. It was the first antitrinitarian book published in America. In the following year liberals in New Hampshire went so far as to revise their catechism and soften down its Calvinism. From now on until the Revolutionary War the doctrine of the Trinity was more and more called in question. Of course there was as yet no Unitarianism in America, or hardly even in England; but Arian views were becoming fairly common. As early as 1758 the Rev. John Rogers of Leominster was dismissed from his pulpit for disbelieving in the divinity of Christ, and several replies to Emlyn's book had been sent forth. Ten years later orthodox ministers were complaining that the divinity of Christ was even being laughed at as antiquated and unfashionable, and was neglected or disbelieved by a number of the Boston ministers, and that the heresy was rapidly spreading.
Out of this ferment of religious thought before the Revolution four names rise above others as leaders in our movement's Arians, not Unitarians, yet rightly to be regarded as the advance heralds of the Unitarian movement, and hence deserving especially to be remembered. First of these is Dr. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Church, Boston, for sixty years, 1727–1787. As a patriot he was ardent for the cause of the colonies, and as a minister he had led the opposition to Whitefield and his revivalism. His favorite authors were the English liberals, he corresponded with English Arians, and he was one of the first in America to preach against the doctrine of eternal punishment. A bolder thinker and writer was Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, minister of the West Church, Boston, from 1747 to 1766, for his outspoken stand against all oppression called "the father of civil and religious liberty in Massachusetts and America." Even at the beginning of his ministry he was known for so much of a heretic that the Boston ministers would not assist in ordaining him, and they never admitted him to their Association. He went his way little heeding, corresponded with English Arians and read their books, with pungent phrases held up the doctrines of Calvinism to scorn, expressed his doctrinal views without disguise or timidity, opposed the use of creeds on principle, preached against the Trinity in 1753, and two years later urged in print the strict unity of God. As he was the first preacher in America to come out squarely in speech and in print against the doctrine of the Trinity, and as his people heartily supported him, and as all his successors in the pulpit held similar views, it may fairly be said that the West Church was the earliest church in America to abandon Trinitarianism.
Another minister who during his unparalleled pastorate of almost seventy years at Hingham had great influence in spreading liberal views in a quiet way was Dr. Ebenezer Gay. Although he did not come out boldly like Mayhew, who had studied under him and been influenced by his intimate friendship, he strongly opposed the use of creeds, and is said to have ceased to believe in the Trinity by soon after the middle of the century. The same is said of his neighbor, the Rev. Lemuel Briant of North Braintree (now Quincy). Briant had graduated from Harvard at seventeen, was a bold and fearless thinker, expressed himself with vigor, and was an intimate friend of Mayhew. While yet in his twenties he preached against Calvin's doctrine a sermon of great boldness, which made him a marked man, and brought upon him many attacks. He was charged with being not only Arminian but Socinian, and his opponents had a council of churches called to consider the complaints against him; the final result of which was that his church, after investigating the case for themselves, supported him strongly. This was in 1753, and is the first clear case of a church formally taking the liberal position. Though the doctrine of the Trinity was not involved in this action, the church at Quincy ever afterwards remained on the liberal side.
Though the conservatives regarded them with grave apprehension, the liberal views of these and other ministers were well known, and no particular attempt was made to conceal them. They were simply the progressives in the Congregational Church, in which there was as yet not the remotest thought of a division, though liberal views were progressing rapidly and spreading far. The American Revolution for a time checked the progress of the movement by diverting men's thoughts from question of theology to those of patriotism, though even then, with orthodox vigilance against heresy for a time relaxed, influence came from an unexpected quarter. For Priestley and Price,7 the latter a strong Arian, and the former by now a decided Unitarian, were outspoken in behalf of the colonies, and so to a less marked degree were Lindsey and many of the liberal English Dissenters; and along with their political writings their religious works were brought over from England, and were the more attentively read as being the words of friends of America. Although they went too far for most of the New England liberals, on a few of them they produced a lasting impression; and thus they advanced the outposts of the liberal movement yet further.
Thus far, as we have noted, none of the Congregational ministers or churches was Unitarian, or would have been at all willing to go further than Arianism. Hence it happened that the first American church to take a distinct position and make its belief and form of worship positively Unitarian was not Congregational but Episcopal. King's Chapel, Boston, established in 1686 as the first Episcopal church in New England, found itself at the end of the Revolution without a minister, or any hope of securing one from England. It therefore invited a young layman, James Freeman, in 1783 to conduct its worship, and to preach when inclined. The views of Samuel Clarke were widespread in America, and the Athanasian Creed had never been popular here, so that from the start Freeman was given leave to omit it. It was at about this time that an Episcopal clergyman of Salem, when asked why he still read the Creed if he did not believe it, replied, "I read it as if I did not believe it." Indeed, when the American Episcopal Church came to organize after the Revolution, it was at first proposed thoroughly to revise the Prayer Book, omitting among other things both the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds; and there was for a time a prospect that this would become the liberal Church of America.
It was not long before Freeman began to feel uneasy about other parts of the liturgy, especially those relating to the Trinity. He reported his difficulties to his people, and proposed to resign. They asked him rather to preach a series of sermons on the subject, and the result of his doing so was that most of them accepted his views. An English Unitarian minister, William Hazlitt, who was at that time visiting Boston, gave him much light, and showed him a copy of Lindsey's revised Prayer Book; and not long afterwards the proprietors of the Chapel voted to follow Lindsey's example, and omitted from their liturgy all references to the Trinity, and all prayers to Christ. Thus in 1785 King's Chapel, though it did not become Unitarian in name, became in fact a Unitarian church nearly a generation before other liberal churches in New England would own that name or adopt really Unitarian views. Freeman had not meant to withdraw from the Episcopal Church, a considerable number of whose clergy sympathized with him; but he could now find no bishop willing to seem to approve his course by ordaining him, and hence he had to be ordained as a minister by his own congregation in 1787. Upon this, other Episcopal clergymen in New England went as far as they were able toward excommunicating him, and thus his relations with their church came to an end. He later had an active correspondence with Priestley, Lindsey, and Belsham, and circulated their works; but though some of the more liberal ministers sympathized with him, he had little immediate effect upon the liberal movement in the Congregational churches.
At almost the same time a clear movement toward Unitarian views was taking place at Salem. This town was largely devoted to commerce with India, and most of the men in the three oldest parishes were connected with the foreign trade. Their contact with high-minded men in the Orient made them disbelieve Calvin's doctrine that human nature apart from Christ is totally depraved, and thus they were prepared for more liberal teaching. In this direction they readily followed the lead of their ministers. Of these, the Rev. John Prince of the First Church, like Priestley much given to scientific experiments, read and circulated English Unitarian books. Like him, Dr. Thomas Barnard of the North Church avoided controverted doctrines in his pulpit; but when one of his orthodox parishioners observing this said to him, "Dr. Barnard, I never heard you preach a sermon on the Trinity," he promptly replied, “No; and you never will. The Rev. William Bentley (Freeman's college classmate) of the East Church was more outspoken. From the beginning of his ministry in 1783 he sympathized with the views of Priestley and other English Unitarians, and he openly preached them in 1791, earlier than any one else in New England except Freeman; and his church was practically Unitarian almost as early as King's Chapel. The influence of English Unitarianism was also felt in Maine. In 1792 the rector of the Episcopal Church at Portland, having become convinced by the writings of Priestley and Lindsey, sought to reform its liturgy as Freeman had done; and when influential persons opposed this, the majority of the congregation withdrew with their rector and formed a separate Unitarian church, which continued for several years, as did a similar movement at Saco.
At Boston the movement proceeded more slowly. While the ministers there had generally given up much of their Calvinism, they liked the teaching of Priestley perhaps even less; for they were not Unitarians, as the term was then understood, but Arians, since they still looked upon Christ as a divine being far above man, inspired of God, sinless, and an object of religious faith. However, the doctrines of the Trinity and the deity of Christ were being called in question more and more. The trinitarian doxology was falling out of use. Emlyn's book was again reprinted, and made new converts. Dr. Belknap of the Federal Street Church issued in 1795 a hymnbook which omitted all trinitarian hymns. Confessions of faith, and doctrinal examinations of ministers at their ordination, began to be opposed and disused. There was no religious controversy, for the liberals would not allow themselves to be drawn into one, and they themselves avoided preaching on disputed points; yet by the end of the century only one minister at Boston, only two in Plymouth County, and only three in eight of those east of Worcester remained trinitarian; while at Harvard College all the talented young men were said to be Unitarians, and orthodox views were said to be generally ridiculed. It began to look as though Massachusetts Congregationalism were to become a simple, undogmatic form of faith, which laid little stress upon creeds, and left each person free to be as liberal as be pleased, while all together strove to cultivate reverent, positive Christian character.
The conservatives, however, were not willing to have it rest thus, but wished to lay strong emphasis upon the doctrines which their fathers had held. Even before the Revolution warning voices had begun to be raised against departing from the old faith, and from about 1790 they had grown more frequent. A new revival of Calvinism broke out, like a belated echo of the Great Awakening, and with much the same sort of result. For its fresh insistence upon the Trinity and the deity of Christ only made many realize how far they had departed from these doctrines, as the former revival had made them realize how far they had departed from the sterner doctrines of Calvin. The liberal cause now gained strength faster than ever before, and feeling fresh assurance the liberals began to reprint more English books to spread liberal views, to print new ones of their own, and to introduce hymnbooks without the familiar trinitarian hymns and doxologies. In another quarter also the early Universalist were attacking the doctrine of eternal punishment, and their leader, the Rev. Hosea Ballou, published in 1805 a Treatise on the Atonement which was (unless we except the brief reference in Mayhew's book) the first by an American writer to deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Liberal views of Christianity seemed everywhere to be in the air.
The movement also spread into Connecticut, although here it was soon checked because the churches there, unlike those in Massachusetts, were organized into "consociations," which had the power of deposing a minister whose beliefs were not considered sound, even though his own congregation might wish to keep him. Hence when the Rev. John Sherman of Mansfield, who had adopted the views of Priestley and Lindsey, made them known to his people, he was practically forced to leave them although they desired him to stay. This led him to publish in that same year (1805) a book on One God in One Person Only, which was the first full defense of Antitrinitarianism to come from an American writer. Removing to the western frontier the next year, he became the first minister of the liberal church at Oldenbarnevelt, N.Y., which has been already referred to. Five years later his friend, the Rev. Abiel Abbot of Coventry, also fell under suspicion of heresy, and was similarly forced from his parish. With one exception, that of Brooklyn (1817), these are the only churches in Connecticut in which Antitrinitarianism gained any footing at the time when it was rapidly spreading in Massachusetts; and those who felt oppressed by the strict orthodoxy of the Congregational churches mostly sought the freer fellowship of the Episcopal Church.
In Pennsylvania, Unitarianism started quite independently of the liberal movement among the Congregationalists in Massachusetts. In 1783 the Rev. William Hazlitt, an English Unitarian minister who had strongly sympathized with the colonists during the late war, came to America hoping to find a settlement. It was he that encouraged Freeman in the action he took at King's Chapel. Though he failed to find a pulpit, and had at length to return to England, he preached at various places from Maryland to Maine, including Philadelphia, where he found a number of English Unitarians living and in 1784 reprinted a number of Priestley4s tracts. These doubtless helped pave the way for a church there. When Priestley reached America in 1794, though he was heartily welcomed as a distinguished man of science and friend of America, his religious opinions were dreaded, and he was nowhere invited by the ministers to preach save at Princeton. Even from the liberals at Boston no word of welcome came to him in his exile. He found, however, many not connected with the existing orthodox churches who would have welcomed Unitarian preaching. He was thus invited to establish a church at New York, and for a time he cherished a scheme for getting ministers sent out from England to gather congregations there and at Philadelphia. Upon settling at Northumberland he founded a church in 1794, which must be called the first in America both to hold the Unitarian faith and to bear the Unitarian name. Many English Unitarians came to America soon after the Revolution, and there was a considerable group of them at Philadelphia, where they had made an unsuccessful attempt to settle a minister of their faith in 1792. In 1796, however, while Priestley was visiting there he encouraged them to organize a church which should hold services with lay preachers. The members were all English Unitarians, mostly young men, and they maintained lay services with some interruption until they were able, in 1812, with the aid of English friends, to erect the first Unitarian church building in America. Their first regular minister was not settled until 1825.
In New England after the Revolution liberal tendencies in the Congregational churches kept steadily growing. Thus at Worcester in 1785 the liberals in the First Church withdrew and formed a new society with Aaron Bancroft, then an Arian, as their minister. At Taunton in 1792 the orthodox withdrew and formed a new church because the First Church was controlled by liberals. In Plymouth a similar division took place in 1800. At Fitchburg two years later his strong Calvinism caused the dismissal of the Rev. Samuel Worcester, later to become a leading opponent of the Unitarians. Nevertheless in most places the liberals could not easily be identified as such, for they had engaged in no controversy, had formed no party, and had neither platform, policy nor leader. Though they no longer adhered to the old Calvinism of their fathers, they agreed upon hardly any new position except disbelief in the Trinity. Generous toleration of difference in beliefs existed; and although, in order to keep liberal views from spreading further, some of the churches now began to require their members to assent to orthodox creeds, except for a few such instances as have been named above, the two wings of the Congregational Church still lived together in harmony as of old. This was the situation at the end of the eighteenth century; but the nineteenth century was still very young when this peace was destroyed by a period of sharp controversy of the conservatives against, the liberals, which was to divide the Congregational Church, and to force the Unitarians to form a separate denomination. That unhappy story will form the theme of the next chapter.
The last chapter told how during more than half a century the Congregational churches of Massachusetts were slowly and almost imperceptibly growing more liberal in belief. During much of the time the conservatives noted this fact with growing apprehension, though they were able to point to little or nothing definite enough to furnish a point for attack; for the liberals were content to let the old beliefs fade away without notice, and preferred to confine their preaching to the essentials of practical Christianity as shown in life and character. It was not until 1805 that an event took place which convinced the conservatives that their fears that the churches were becoming honeycombed with heresy were but too well founded; and this event took place not in any church, but in Harvard College.
The college had been founded by the Puritans in 1636 primarily to train up educated ministers for their churches; and among its endowments was one given in 1721 for a professorship in divinity. The donor, a liberal English merchant named Thomas Hollis, whose intimate friends and advisers had been on the liberal side of the Salters’ Hall controversy, had provided that the incumbent should be “of sound and orthodox” belief; while a supplementary legacy for the same chair required explicit acceptance of a conservative creed. In 1803 this chair fell vacant, and for more than a year no election was had because the liberals and the conservatives, being evenly balanced, could not agree upon a candidate. The liberals favored the Rev. Henry Ware of Hingham; while the orthodox, charging that he was a Unitarian, opposed him. The opposition was led by Dr. Jedidiah Morse of Charlestown, who had for fifteen years been the sole public defender of the doctrine of the Trinity in the vicinity of Boston, and who now insisted that a Calvinist should be chosen. At length the liberals gained the majority and elected Ware in 1805. This showed that the liberal party were now in control of the college, and the fact was soon further emphasized by the appointment of a liberal president and several liberal professors.
The orthodox, thoroughly aroused at finding their worst fears realized, and seeing that henceforth their young ministers were to be under not orthodox but liberal teachers, now opened what might be called a “thirty years’ war,” which was to end in one hitherto united church being divided into two sects bitterly opposing each other. Dr. Morse founded the Panoplist magazine, in which he carried on an aggressive warfare against the liberals, attacking them incessantly, and urging them, if they disbelieved in the Trinity, to come out and say so openly. Though their views had long been well enough known, and had not been concealed, they did not accept his challenge. Dr. Morse next exerted himself to establish at Andover a theological seminary which should remain forever orthodox, for its constitution required the professors every five years to renew their subscription to a creed which was perpetually to remain “entirely and identically the same, without the least alteration, addition, or diminution.” The Andover Seminary was opened for instruction in 1808, and henceforth became the chief place for the training of orthodox ministers; while in 1821 an orthodox college was also founded at Amherst to offset the liberal tendencies of Harvard.
Already in 1802 the conservative ministers, led by Dr. Morse, though in the face of strong opposition, had sought to strengthen the cause of orthodoxy by forming a General Association on the basis of the Westminster Catechism, thus excluding liberals. This was really the beginning of the split between them. Two years later an unsuccessful attempt was made to force the liberals out of the ministers’ state convention. In 1807 when Samuel Willard of Deerfield, having been refused ordination by one council on account of his liberal views, was ordained by another, he and his church were outcast by all their orthodox neighbors. In 1808, when John Codman was settled over the Second Church in Dorchester, he began by announcing that he would not exchange pulpits with men of liberal views. This was the first move in Massachusetts toward that “exclusive policy” which had already been urged in Connecticut two years before, and which ere long became general among the orthodox, and has largely continued down to this day. At Boston the next year the orthodox took a strong aggressive step by organizing the Park Street Church, whose minister, by preaching a sermon “On the Use of Real Fire in Hell,” won for the location of his church the name of “Brimstone Corner.”
In individual congregations also lines were being more closely drawn. Some of the churches tried to shut out heresy by adopting elaborate confessions of faith for their members to accept, and thus paved the way for sad divisions a little later. In case of contest the side outvoted would sometimes separate from the majority. Thus at New Bedford in 1810 the conservatives withdrew and formed a new church. At Sandwich, where the minister, having grown strongly Calvinistic, was dismissed from his parish by a small liberal majority in 1811, he organized a new church among his followers. In 1813 a liberal minority withdrew from Codman’s Dorchester church and organized a new one. Other such instances occurred within the few years following.
At the same time, liberal views were spreading faster than ever in the Congregational churches, and English Unitarian books were reprinted in Boston in increasing number, and were widely read. The Rev. Noah Worcester, a country minister of New Hampshire, influenced by Emlyn and other English writers, published in 1810 a little book called Bible News, which was Arian. For this his brother ministers bitterly attacked him, maligned his personal character, and caused him to lose his pulpit; but he at once found friends among the liberal ministers of Boston, served the liberal cause well, and later won enduring fame as the founder of the peace movement in America.
As for the liberal ministers, although by 1812 there were at least a hundred of them, only Freeman at King’s Chapel and Bentley at Salem were really Unitarian in belief. Of the rest only one or two had ever preached a sermon against the Trinity; and while they had generally ceased to hold that doctrine, yet they had not reached any wide agreement as to other points. They knew indeed that they had pretty well outgrown their Calvinism, and they acknowledged only the authority of Scripture; but their main emphasis was on the practical virtues of Christian life, and their main opposition was to narrowness of spirit and bondage to creeds, while for the rest they advocated Christian charity, open-mindedness, and tolerance. They were most of them Arian in belief, and so strongly opposed to what was then known as Unitarianism that when it had been charged that Professor Ware was a Unitarian, the charge was indignantly resented as a calumny. In fact, they did not regard themselves as heretics at all, for they knew that their views were widely held both in the Church of England and among the English Dissenters. The Congregational Church was still broad enough to bold both conservatives and liberals; and of the nine old congregations at Boston eight had grown liberal, while the ninth remained orthodox by only the narrowest margin.
All the while that things were in this uncertain state, Dr. Morse in the Panoplist kept calling on the liberals to admit that in important respects they had departed far from the faith of their fathers. They stedfastly refused to accept his challenge, for they disliked controversy, and they had no mind to champion special doctrines or to be set off into a separate party. They stood on their rights as free members of Congregational churches, and did not feel under any obligation to report to Dr. Morse or ask his leave.
But now something unexpected occurred which forced the issue. Three years earlier Belsham in London had published a life of Lindsey. It contained a chapter on the progress of Unitarianism in New England, quoting letters from Dr. Freeman and others giving an inside view of the liberal movement at Boston, and reporting that most of the Boston clergy were Unitarian. Dr. Morse at length discovered the book in 1815 and promptly reprinted this chapter, giving it the title, American Unitarianism. It created a tremendous sensation, and ran through five editions in as many months. Dr. Morse’s charge seemed to be proved true: the liberals were Unitarians after all. The Panoplist followed up the exposure in a severe review, charging that the liberals were secretly scheming to undermine the orthodox faith, and were hypocrites for concealing their true beliefs; and that the orthodox ought therefore at once to separate from those who, since they denied the deity of Christ, could not be considered Christians at all.
The name Unitarian stuck, as Dr. Morse meant that it should, for it was then an odious name, and it has stuck ever since; but it was not fairly given. For the writers of the letters referred to had used it simply to denote disbelief in the Trinity; while as then commonly understood it meant such beliefs as those of Priestley and Belsham, who held that Jesus was in all respects a fallible human being, together with certain philosophical views which were abhorrent to the Boston liberals. The Panoplist, however, insisted that they were Unitarians in Belsham’s sense of the word. The liberal ministers of Boston were outraged at such misrepresentation of their views, and they felt that the slander must not be let pass without responsible denial. The answer was soon forthcoming in the form of an open letter to the Rev. Samuel C. Thacher of the New South Church, from his friend, the Rev. William Ellery Channing. Though Channing was but thirty-five, he had been for a dozen years the beloved and honored minister of the Federal Street Church, and of late had come to be regarded as the leader of the Boston liberals; and he was destined at length to be the most distinguished of all American Unitarians. Though a semi-invalid, he had a remarkable charm of voice, manner, and character. In his earlier ministry he had been a moderate Calvinist, had been on friendly terms with Dr. Morse, and had preached the sermon at Codman’s ordination; but he had never believed the doctrine of the Trinity, and had never made a secret of his views. He held that Christ, though less than God, was far above man, a sinless being, and the object of religious trust and love. In short, he was an Arian.
Always shrinking from controversy, Channing could yet speak out strongly when he must; and in this letter he now indignantly denied the Panoplist’s charges. He admitted that his brethren disbelieved in the Trinity, and in that sense alone were Unitarians; though they preferred to call themselves liberal Christians, or rational Christians, or catholic Christians; while they were wholly out of sympathy with the views of Priestley and Belsham, and were nearer to the Calvinists than to them. Most of them were Arians, some were not clear as to their views, and hardly one could accept Belsham’s creed, though to believe with him was no crime. Their views had not been concealed: Dr. Morse and others had long known them. But the disputed doctrines had been kept out of their pulpits as unprofitable, and had been treated as though they had never been beard of. Such was his answer; and in conclusion he urged that it would be a great wrong to Christianity, and a great injustice to individuals, to create a division in the church by shutting any out of it as not Christians simply because they held more liberal views of scripture teaching than did the others.
The controversy was continued on the orthodox side by Dr. Worcester of Salem, whose two brothers had already suffered persecution in New Hampshire for their Arianism, and who was himself doubtless still smarting over his own dismissal from his Fitchburg church. Three letters were published on each side, and several other writers also took a hand in the discussion. Dr. Worcester picked flaws in Channing’s letter, pressed the Panoplist’s charges, and urged that the differences between the orthodox and the liberals were too serious to be longer ignored, and that the two must part company. Channing replied that in the essential part of Christian faith, which was that Jesus is the Christ, they were agreed, and that any minor differences did not vitally matter. The controversy ran for half a year, and ended in the opening of a permanent breach between the two wings of Massachusetts Congregationalists. The orthodox were made more than ever determined in their attitude; while the Unitarians (as they were henceforth known) began to abandon their policy of reserve and to speak out plainly also against other doctrines of Calvinism, and their views spread accordingly.
Before and during this controversy Dr. Morse and his strict Calvinist friends were steadily trying to get the Massachusetts churches to form “consociations,” with power to depose heretical ministers as Sherman and Abbot had been deposed in Connecticut. But both liberals and moderate Calvinists resisted this plan as dangerous to liberty of conscience, so that after some years’ effort the scheme was dropped. In an increasing number of churches, however, creeds were adopted to keep heretics from becoming members, and in a few cases where the orthodox could not control the situation as they wished, they withdrew and formed separate churches. More and more of the orthodox ministers also refused to include in their list of monthly pulpit exchanges any who were suspected of being Unitarians; so that while there was still, indeed, but a single denomination of Congregationalists, its two wings were steadily drawing further apart. Thus things went on for a few years, with the orthodox getting further away from the liberals, though with hope of reconciliation not yet wholly despaired of, until two events occurred which proved decisive. These were Channing’s Baltimore sermon in 1819, and the decision of the Dedham case in 1820. We must speak of these in turn.
After the controversy of 1815 the orthodox kept treating the Unitarians in the Church with such increasing narrowness, and kept attacking their beliefs with such increasing bitterness, that at length Channing, peaceable as he was, felt bound to strike a telling blow in return. The opportunity to do so came in 1819, when he was asked to preach the sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks as minister of the church lately established at Baltimore, the first extension beyond New England of the liberal movement in Massachusetts. In this sermon he boldly took the aggressive against the orthodox, taking up the distinguishing doctrines of Unitarians one by one, showing that they were supported by both Scripture and reason, and holding up to pitiless attack the contrasted doctrines of orthodoxy in all their nakedness. Probably no other sermon ever preached in America has had so many readers and so great an influence. It put the orthodox at once on the defensive. They complained that Channing had misrepresented their beliefs and had injured their feelings by his harsh statements. Professor Moses Stuart of Andover wrote a whole book to defend the doctrine of the Trinity against Channing’s attack, though in it he admitted that he did not know clearly what the doctrine meant; and he even brought upon himself from a Presbyterian source the charge that he too was tending toward Unitarianism. Channing himself said no more, but Professor Andrews Norton of Harvard renewed the attack upon the Trinity with such effect that the orthodox withdrew on this point, and were content to lay their emphasis henceforth upon the deity of Christ.
Professor Leonard Woods of Andover now came to the defense of the other doctrines which Channing had attacked, and debated them back and forth with Professor Ware of Harvard for three years, in a printed controversy which ran to over eight hundred pages. This “Wood’n-Ware controversy,” as it was called, was carried on in fine spirit on both sides, and it made clear that even the orthodox had drifted further away from the old doctrines than they had yet acknowledged or realized. Nevertheless they continued to pursue more widely than ever their policy of exclusion of Unitarians and separation from them; while the Unitarians, who had had their views so clearly stated and so ably defended by Channing, now first fairly realized where they stood, and rallied to their standard with enthusiasm. The division between the two wings had become practically complete.
In the unhappy division that took place at this time, congregations were split in two, and even families were divided against themselves. But the question now arose, whose should be the church property when Unitarians and orthodox drew apart? This was the question involved in the Dedham case. In order to understand the matter, one must remember that in the Massachusetts towns there had long been two religious organizations. The “parish,” or “society,” consisted of all the male voters of the town organized to maintain religious worship, which they were bound by law to support by taxation. The “church” on the other hand consisted only of those persons within the parish (generally a small minority) who had made a public profession of their religious faith, and had joined together in a serious inner circle for religious purposes, and were admitted to the observance of the Lord’s Supper. The church members were on the whole (though not exclusively) more devout and more zealous than the rest of the members of the parish, and a large majority of them were usually women. Now by law a minister must be elected by vote of the whole parish which supported him; but by natural custom it had come to be generally expected that he must also be acceptable to the church, even if not nominated by it. For generations church and parish had generally agreed; though if they did not, means were provided for settling the matter through a mutual council. But when the controversy arose between the orthodox and the Unitarians, disagreements became frequent and often serious; and in many cases it happened that while the majority of the church members wished to settle a conservative from Andover, the majority of the parish would prefer a liberal man from Harvard, and usually no way of compromise could be found.
This was the situation at Dedham, where the pulpit fell vacant in 1818, and the parish voted two to one to settle a liberal man, while the church by a small majority voted against him. As the parish refused to yield, a majority of the church withdrew and formed a new church, taking with them the church property, which was in this instance nearly enough to support the minister. A lawsuit followed, to determine which was the real church, and which might hold the property, the majority of the church who seceded from the parish, or the minority who stayed in it. The case was bitterly fought, and the Supreme Court of the state at length decided in 1820 that seceders forfeited all their rights, and that even the smallest minority remaining with the parish were still the parish church, and entitled to the church property; indeed, that if even the whole church should secede it must still leave the church property behind it. This legal decision, which would of course apply to any similar cases arising elsewhere, aroused among the orthodox a storm of indignation so deep and bitter that it has hardly subsided after a hundred years. They declared that the judge, being a Unitarian, was prejudiced in favor of his own party; and for many years they continued to cry out against the injustice of the decision, and against what they insisted was “plunder” of their churches.
The orthodox losses as the result of the divisions that took place were indeed severe. In eighty-one instances the orthodox members seceded, nearly 4,000 of them in all, thus losing funds and property estimated at over $600,000, not to mention the loss of churches which went to the liberal side without a division; and they had to build new meetinghouses for themselves. They called themselves “the exiled churches”; but while there were cases in which the liberal majority oppressed the minority and meant to force them out, the latter most frequently seceded because they were not permitted, though often but few in number, to impose a minister of their choice upon the large majority of those who attended the church and supported it by their taxes, but to whom he was not acceptable. Nor were the losses all on one side. There were at least a dozen cases, first and last, in which it was the liberals that seceded, rather than listen to the preaching of doctrines which they believed to be untrue and harmful. There were happily many others in which there was no division. Of these the larger number remained orthodox, but thirty-nine became liberal without division, and often so quietly and gradually that no one could have told when the invisible line was crossed. Among these latter were twenty out of twenty-five original churches, including all the most important ones. In only three of the larger towns of eastern Massachusetts did the parish remain orthodox, and at Boston only the Old South. In several cases the whole church withdrew in a body; in others only one or two members were left. At the end of the controversy a few over a third of the Congregational churches of Massachusetts were found to have become Unitarian.
Although churches kept on separating until as late as 1840, the greater number of divisions took place in the years immediately following the Baltimore sermon and the Dedham case decision. The Unitarians were thenceforth, against their wish, a separate denomination from the rest of the Congregationalists. They found themselves consisting of 125 churches, mostly within twenty-five miles of Boston, though with a few distant outposts at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston. In eastern Massachusetts they had for the time won a sweeping victory. The ablest and most eloquent ministers, the leaders in public life, in education, in literature, were theirs, as were the great majority of those of wealth, culture, and high social position. In fact, they had quite too much prestige for their own good, since they now seemed as a church to have little more to strive for. The truth is that it was not so much Unitarian doctrines as Unitarian freedom that had attracted many of them. Hence, while broad in spirit, strongly opposed to sectarianism, and liberal, though vague, in their beliefs, they were yet conservative in almost everything else. But they were generally reverent in temper and were earnestly devoted to pure morals and good works. The consequence of all this was that they now settled back complacently, and showed far less zeal in promoting, their cause than did the orthodox; fondly believing that without any particular effort on their part Unitarianism would ere long sweep the whole country as it had already swept eastern Massachusetts.
The orthodox, on the other hand, were for a time stunned, and in acute fear of losing the whole struggle, in which the Unitarians had made steady gains since 1815. Their champion, Dr. Morse, had gone; their organ, the Panoplist, had suspended publication. A strong recruit for their cause, however, now came from Connecticut, where the spread of Unitarianism had thus far been so successfully prevented. Dr. Lyman Beecher, known as the most successful revivalist of his time, and as a powerful and eloquent preacher of tremendous earnestness, had with eager interest long watched the battle from afar when in 1823 he came to Boston to hold revival meetings. He soon revived the fainting spirits of the orthodox. They began to make fresh converts, and many of the wavering were won back from the Unitarian camp. Thus the orthodox reaction began.
When those ministers and churches that had accepted Unitarian beliefs found themselves quite excluded from religious fellowship with those that held to the old beliefs, it became a serious question what they should do. Shut out from the orthodox organizations, should they form a new denomination, or should they go on separately with no attempt to hold together or to act together for the interests they had in common? The older leaders were much disposed to go on as they were, and were opposed to forming a new denomination; for they had of late seen quite too much of the evils of sectarianism, and they wished no more of them. The younger men had less fear and more zeal, realizing that, if they were to do anything at all to help spread Christianity in the newer parts of the country, they must unite for the purpose; while if they did nothing in the matter they would be simply abandoning the new field wholly to orthodoxy and to beliefs which they felt to be untrue and hurtful. In that case, liberal Christianity might become extinct within a generation.
Since the beginning of the century, indeed, four or five organizations had been formed to promote the spread of Christianity in various ways, in which, though they were quite unsectarian, only the liberals had taken part; and half a dozen publications, notably The Christian Register, weekly (1821), and the Christian Examiner, quarterly (1824), had been founded, in which the liberals had expressed their views, and had carried on controversy with the orthodox. But now that separation had come it was felt that something more was needed. It was ten or twelve young ministers lately graduated from the Harvard Divinity School that took the lead in the matter, and after long discussion and much opposition joined with a few laymen who shared their views, and in the vestry of Dr. Channing’s church organized the American Unitarian Association,7 “to diffuse the knowledge and promote the interests of pure Christianity.” Dr. Channing gave only passive approval to the move, and declined to be President of the new Association. Boston Unitarians generally were lukewarm. During its first year only sixty-five of them joined the Association, and only $1,300 was raised to carry on its work. Yet it set to work with energy and skill, began publishing Unitarian tracts and circulating them in large numbers, and sent a scout into the West who came back reporting many promising fields where Unitarian churches would be heartily welcomed. Missionary preachers were sent afield, a missionary to the city poor was employed, a Sunday-school Society was organized (1826), and especial efforts were made to spread Unitarian literature. Yet so afraid were the churches of losing some of their liberty in the bonds of a new sect, that for twenty-five years only from a third to a half of them would contribute to the work of the Association, which thus had only from $5,000 to $15,000 a year to spend. Its work could grow but slowly until the timid conservatism of an older generation could be replaced by the missionary earnestness of a younger one.
Dr. Beecher’s revival meetings at Boston in 1823 had revived orthodoxy for a time; but it was still on the defensive, and now the Unitarians had organized for aggressive effort. Beecher was glad therefore to accept a call to a church just established in Hanover Street, which had been organized on a basis designed to prevent it from ever calling a liberal minister. Coming to Boston to live in 1826 he at once began a revival which lasted. five years. It often crowded his church, and it stirred up the drowsy Unitarians to unaccustomed activity. He took a bold aggressive stand, attacking Unitarian beliefs as unscriptural, and the results of them as unfavorable to true religion. Some years before this a Presbyterian clergyman preaching at Baltimore had declared that Unitarian preachers were “most acceptable to the gay, the fashionable, the worldly minded, and even the. licentious”; and another in New York had charged that religion and morals had alarmingly declined, and vice had increased at Boston since the spread of Unitarianism there, and he had insinuated that even the Unitarian ministers were men of loose morals and little piety. Dr. Beecher did not venture to go so far as this; but he and those that followed his leadership repeatedly charged that the effect of Unitarianism was to make its followers less earnest in their religion, less faithful in their religious habits, and less strict in their moral standards. It was declared that they had been steadily giving up one doctrine of the Christian faith after another, until little was now left. As their views of the inspiration of the Bible were changing, it became common to call Unitarians infidels; while it was often charged, and as often denied, that by accepting the doctrine of the Universalists they were encouraging men to sin by taking away their fear of eternal punishment.
Perhaps the charge that hurt the Unitarians most, and had the most truth in it, was that whereas the orthodox were deeply in earnest about their religion, zealous, self-denying, and full of missionary spirit, the Unitarians were lukewarm, often indifferent to their church, lax in religious observances, and opposed to missions. Indeed, the first Treasurer of the American Unitarian Association felt these things so keenly that he resigned his office in discouragement and went back to orthodoxy. This became the occasion of a pamphlet controversy which attracted much attention on both sides. Although the Unitarians preferred to meet the passionate zeal of the orthodox with easygoing self-confidence, they could not remain silent under such attacks as these. They returned blow for blow, calling attention to the most repulsive doctrines of Calvinism, until at length Dr. Beecher was driven to admit that he too had abandoned various doctrines held sacred by the fathers, and in his “new Calvinism” had thus taken the same steps which the earlier liberals had taken two generations before.
Dr. Channing in particular felt compelled again to come to the defense of Unitarianism in a dedication sermon preached at New York in 1826, in which he compared the effect of the doctrines of Unitarianism with those of orthodoxy, held that Unitarian Christianity was most favorable to piety, and likened the orthodox doctrine of the atonement to a gallows erected at the center of the universe for the public execution of a God. This sermon created a sensation second only to that at Baltimore, and was never forgiven him by the orthodox. The controversies that filled the next six or eight years now became more bitter than ever before. To keep these alive and push them vigorously Dr. Beecher helped found a new periodical, the Spirit of the Pilgrims, to take the place of the Panoplist. Quarrels became angry and personal. Charges of bigotry, and unfairness, insincerity, hypocrisy, and falsehood, were freely made on each side, and many things were said in the heat of controversy of which the authors ought to have been, and no doubt afterwards were heartily ashamed. Bitterness was aroused which still survived after two generations. A church dedication, an ordination, or an anniversary was seized upon as the occasion for one side or the other to proclaim its views. Whatever might be said or printed was closely scanned for some point of attack; the worst things that could be found said by some hasty spirit on one side would be held up in triumph for criticism by the other in the pamphlet war that would follow. The parties often misunderstood and sometimes misrepresented each other, and would spend page after page in picking at petty flaws and inconsistencies, until at length peaceable souls grew disgusted with the whole business and resolved to cease from the fruitless strife. For the whole sad quarrel had done much harm and little good to those who engaged in it, and to true religion. The only clear result of it all was that the orthodox became more fixed in their orthodoxy, and the Unitarians more convinced of the truth of their heresy.
The fiercest quarrels of all arose over divisions in local parishes. Of these, that at Groton in 1826 was perhaps the most noted. The aged minister of the parish asked for a colleague, and an orthodox candidate was heard. The church, consisting of only some thirty voting members out of a parish of three hundred, called him by a vote of seventeen to eight; but the parish, which had grown liberal by three to one, would not approve the choice. The question was whether so small a minority should be allowed to impose upon so large a majority a minister who was distasteful to them. The orthodox withdrew, with much bitterness of feeling and complaint of injustice, and formed a new church. In the heated contest over this case Dr. Beecher took a leading part. In the First Parish at Cambridge the minister, the venerable Dr. Abiel Holmes (father of Oliver Wendell Holmes), joined the orthodox reaction which Dr. Beecher was leading so vigorously, and ceased to exchange with liberal ministers as he had previously been accustomed to do. Two-thirds of the church supported their minister in this action, but three-quarters of the much larger parish insisted that exchanges be continued as before. Neither party to the controversy would yield or compromise, and it ended with the dismissal of Dr. Holmes in 1829. At Brookfield in 1827, when a liberal majority of the parish settled a Unitarian minister, all the male members of the church but two withdrew, excommunicated those two and claimed the church property; but the two members remaining organized a new church, went to law, and recovered the property, as in the Dedham case. At Waltham in 1825 every member, male and female, of the church seceded from the parish, took their minister with them, and formed a new church and society. There were many other cases similar to these, though less conspicuous.
These controversies had not died down before a yet more heated one arose over the subject of exclusiveness; for as the orthodox regained strength and confidence they grew increasingly exclusive against the Unitarians, until they at length denied them the privilege of their turn in preaching the annual sermon before the state convention of Congregational ministers to which both belonged. Indeed, there were thought to be signs that they meant to close against the Unitarians everything in church and state. A young orthodox preacher aroused much attention in 1828 by asserting that though Unitarians formed no more than a fourth of the population of the state, they monopolized public offices, controlled nine-tenths of the political power, and influenced legislation and court decisions in their own interest and against the orthodox; and he called upon orthodox voters to remember these things when voting at elections. Once more, and for the last time, Channing now entered the lists in a memorable sermon before the Legislature (1830) on Spiritual Freedom. He charged that orthodoxy was using all its power in the way of bigotry and persecution to suppress freedom of thought in religion by raising the cry of heresy, and that this was in effect a new Inquisition; and he uttered a strong protest against such a spirit. The orthodox replied that these charges were not true, and that it was they that had cause to complain of being ridiculed by the Unitarians; that they were given no share in public offices and honors, and no positions at Harvard University. Professor Stuart called upon Channing to withdraw his charges or prove them. Channing himself made no reply, but one of the younger ministers published a whole volume of evidence that for a generation the orthodox had tried in every way to oppress the liberal party in their churches. Here the matter rested, for the fires of controversy had nearly burnt themselves out. Most had grown weary of it and disgusted with it. The final act was at Salem in 1833, where an orthodox minister in a public address attacked Unitarians with personal abuse of a violence hitherto unknown, calling them “cold-blooded infidels.” But the controversy had lost its leader with the departure of Dr. Beecher from Boston in 1832, followed by the suspension of the Spirit of the Pilgrims the next year. The separation of Church and State in Massachusetts in 1834 removed the occasion for further controversy over the property rights of churches. Moreover, the orthodox were becoming involved in a doctrinal controversy within their own body, so that probably every one concerned was glad of an excuse to cultivate peace.
The separation of the two bodies was now complete beyond hope of reconciliation. The last exchange of pulpits had taken place. The two denominations went their different ways, the Unitarians with about one hundred and twenty-five churches, the orthodox with some four hundred. The orthodox had moved further than they fully realized from the teachings of Calvin; and the Unitarians further than they realized from their original ground. Without being aware of it, they were already depending much more on reason in religion than on the Bible, and in their views of the nature of Christ had gone far toward the position of Priestley and Belsham. But though they had Dow settled their final account with orthodoxy, they had even more serious accounts to settle with themselves. Those will form the subject of the next chapter.
When their long controversy with the orthodox had at last come to an end, the Unitarians found themselves but poorly equipped for carrying on an efficient and healthy life as a religious denomination with a distinct mission of its own. Their organization for promoting their common interests, though now ten years old, was still weak and inefficient, and had fallen far short of winning the support of all their churches. Nor had the progress of their thought gone much beyond the stage of merely dropping a few of the most objectionable doctrines of Calvinism. In their churches were many who were there merely because they were opposed to orthodoxy, but who had no positive and strong convictions in religion, and no earnest devotion to its principles. Many who had been bold defenders of Unitarianism so long as it was attacked, relapsed into inactivity now that the war against it seemed to be over, thinking that its work was done, and that liberal religion would henceforth spread fast enough of itself, without any personal effort of theirs. Most of the rank and file, and many of even the leaders, were content to settle down and enjoy in peace the liberty they had won, with no desire for further progress in thought or in organization. This chapter will try to show how the denomination was gradually roused out of this torpor, at length began to think and act for itself, and after struggling for thirty years at last found itself, realized its mission, and began to gird itself for its proper work in the religious life of America.
The American Unitarian Association had been formed as a volunteer organization of a few individuals, who hoped in time to enlist the support of the whole denomination in a common cause; but they were long disappointed in this hope. At a period when the orthodox churches were full of reviving life and missionary zeal, and were giving generously for their own work though comparatively little for outside causes, the Unitarians, while giving with great liberality for hospitals, colleges, and all manner of charitable and philanthropic work, were giving pitifully small sums to spread their own religious faith.1 In the first year of the Association only four of the churches contributed to its funds; and though the number of these steadily increased, after fifteen years scarcely more than a third of the churches known as Unitarian were doing anything for the organized work of their denomination. Several of the largest and wealthiest of the Boston churches gave it nothing at all. They shrank from sacrificing the least of their freedom by joining any organization, they did not care to build up a new denomination, and they disliked even a denominational name. As late as 1835 the minister of the First Church in Boston stated that the word Unitarian had never yet been used in his pulpit.
It was nearly ten years before the Association was able to employ a paid Secretary. Nevertheless those that believed in it kept faithfully ahead, and its work and influence grew steadily if slowly. For fifteen years or so its efforts were devoted mainly to spreading the faith through printed tracts. These were issued generally once each month, and were circulated at the rate of 70,000 or more a year, and they were eagerly read by multitudes who had never heard Unitarian preaching. Whenever the funds allowed, preachers were sent on missionary journeys through the West and South. The West was now rapidly filling up with settlers, of whom many had gone from New England and longed for liberal churches such as they had left behind them. It was estimated that two millions of people in the West had outgrown orthodox beliefs, and were in danger of falling quite away from religion, although they were ready to give hearty welcome and strong support to liberal Christianity. Year after year the missionary preachers sent out from New England would come back reporting how eager people in the West and South were to hear Unitarian preaching, how easily churches might be established in scores of thriving new towns, and how great an opportunity there was to liberalize the whole of the new country, if only preachers could be had and a little aid be given at the start. But alas, there were hardly more ministers than were needed in New England, and most of these were reluctant to do pioneer work on the frontier of civilization; while the funds of the Association were too scanty to support them even had they been willing to be sent. The missionary spirit was incredibly sluggish, and the eastern Unitarians seemed to think that the West and South, if left to take their own course, would of themselves soon become as liberal as Massachusetts. Yet despite all this laziness the denomination did steadily grow. A whole series of new churches sprang up in such important centers as Cincinnati, Louisville, Buffalo, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Mobile, and Syracuse; and by 1840 the one hundred and twenty churches with which the denomination started out in 1825 had increased to two hundred and thirty. Local auxiliaries were formed in more and more of the churches, contributions slowly increased, a permanent fund began to accumulate, and the fear of belonging to a denomination was slowly outgrown.
If the new denomination was slow in settling down to its proper work, it was yet slower in adopting any principles of thought really different from those of orthodoxy. At the end of the Unitarian controversy the Unitarians had, it is true, changed their beliefs as to God, Christ, the atonement, and human nature; yet these might after all be regarded as mere matters of detail. They might still have remained no more than a liberal wing of the old church, as indeed many of them would have preferred to do. In fact, some of them were already beginning to fear that doctrinal changes might go too far, and that liberty in religion might bring with it more dangers than blessings. They were quite satisfied to let reform of doctrines stop where it was, and to build a new fence about an orthodox Unitarianism, in place of the old one about orthodox Calvinism from which they had lately escaped. Though they claimed the right of interpreting the Scriptures by reason, they were inclined to submit to Scripture authority almost more slavishly than the orthodox themselves.
Now all this happened because of the philosophy that both Unitarians and orthodox had long accepted. Both believed with John Locke that all our knowledge is gained through the physical senses. Even the knowledge of God and of religious truth came to us thus. We were justified in believing in God and in a future life, therefore, solely because Jesus, who taught these doctrines, wrought miracles which men could see, and which proved his teachings to be true. This was the chief reason why one should accept the Christian religion and follow the precepts of Jesus at all. It thus became of the greatest importance for us implicitly to accept the Bible and its miracles, since otherwise the foundation of our religion would be gone.
At the time of which we are speaking, however, there were beginning to be some, especially of the younger men, who were growing more and more dissatisfied with these views of truth, and were wishing to carry the reform of theology further than merely the reform of a few orthodox doctrines. The religion of the day seemed to them dead and mechanical. They had been much influenced by the writings of some of the German philosophers of the past generation, and even more by the English writings of Coleridge and Carlyle. Soon they were given the nickname Transcendentalists. Transcendentalism was working among many of the younger generation in New England like a sort of ferment, and it showed its influence in various ways. They became rebellious against external authority and old traditions of thinking and doing. Impatient with the continued existence of ignorance, poverty, intemperance, slavery, war, and other social ills, they threw themselves eagerly into all sorts of reforms and philanthropies that promised improvement popular education, normal schools, temperance reform, the antislavery movement, woman's rights, nonresistance, communism, vegetarianism, spiritualism, mesmerism, phrenology some wise and some foolish, but all of them earnestly espoused. They established at Brook Farm in 1841 a cooperative experiment which combined education with agriculture, and became famous though it lasted but six years. They published a magazine called the Dial which in its four years' existence broke new paths in literature. They were the first in America to welcome modern criticism of the Bible. Their movement was a New England Renaissance. Channing, though not identified with it, was in spirit a precursor of Transcendentalism; and most of its adherents were Unitarians.
It is the effect of Transcendentalism upon the religion of the Unitarians that most concerns us here. It spread rapidly among the younger ministers. Its leaders declared that we are not dependent upon miracles, nor upon Jesus, nor upon the Bible, for our knowledge of religious truths; for man is a religious being by nature. Religious truths do not have to be proved by miracles or by reasoning; they do not come to us from the outside; they arise spontaneously within us, and God reveals them to our own souls directly. Hence we do not have to go to past ages and ancient prophets for our religion, or to try to reason it out to ourselves, or to follow the usual religious traditions. We need only to keep our souls open to what God would teach us now in our religious intuitions.
While such thoughts as these had been entertained for some time by a handful of the younger ministers, the first to attract much attention to them by public utterance was Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Divinity School Address. Emerson is generally remembered today simply as an American man of letters; but for a number of years be was himself a Unitarian minister. He was descended from eight generations of Puritan ministers, and his father, the Rev. William Emerson, had been minister of the First Church in Boston, and one of the liberals of his time, though he died before the division of the churches occurred. After leaving the Divinity School, Emerson was for three years and a half minister of the Second Church in Boston, from which he resigned in 1832 because he did not feel that be could conscientiously celebrate the Lord's Supper with the meaning then attached to it. Though he still continued for some years to preach more or less often, he was never settled over another church, but became more and more a lecturer and writer.
In the summer of 1838 Emerson, now rapidly coming into fame for his work on the lecture platform, was invited to preach the sermon before the graduating class of the Divinity School. Only a small roomful were present, but the address they heard began a new era in American Unitarianism. He brought his young hearers the message of Transcendentalism as applied to religion. He complained that the prevailing religion of the day had little life or inspiration in it because it was forever looking to persons and events in the past history of Christianity, rather than listening to hear what God has to say to men today; and be urged them not to exaggerate the person of Jesus, nor to attach importance to miracles, as the main elements in religion, but to seek the truths of religion within their own souls, and to preach to men what God reveals to them there. Thus religion should be no longer cold and formal, but a vital personal experience.
There were those that appreciated the message of Emerson's address at once. Theodore Parker was one of these, and he wrote of it, It was the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened to. Others among the younger ministers were glad to have so earnestly and clearly said in public what they had been vaguely feeling and thinking to themselves. Few who read Emerson's address today will find in it anything to shock them, or even much to attract attention for its novelty. But the older heads at once saw what was involved in his message, and were filled with consternation that young men about to enter the ministry should have been given advice which, it was felt, was in danger of undermining their whole Christian faith. The address could not be allowed to pass unrebuked. Emerson's successor at the Second Church made haste to say in the Christian Register that Emerson was not a representative of the denomination nor of many in it, and that he was no longer considered a regular minister. The Christian Examiner called the address "neither good divinity nor good sense." Professor Henry Ware, Jr. felt bound to preach in the College chapel at the opening of the next term a sermon to counteract teachings which he considered denied the personality of God, and made worship impossible. Unitarian ministers's meetings debated whether Emerson were Christian, pantheist, or atheist; and writers in various newspapers attacked him.
After a year had passed Professor Andrews Norton, who had been one of the champions of the liberal party in the controversy of twenty years before,2 girded on his armor afresh, and in an address before the alumni of the Divinity School attacked Emerson's views as "the latest form of infidelity." He solemnly gave warning that since miracles are the foundation of Christianity, whoever denies them strikes directly at its root; nothing is left of it without them. For one to pretend to be a Christian teacher and yet to disbelieve in them is treachery to God and man; and he ought to leave the ministry. To all these attacks Emerson made no reply, refusing to be drawn into controversy. But the Rev. George Ripley, one of the younger men, answered Norton at length and with great ability; while a briefer reply was modestly made by another young minister named Theodore Parker, who was soon to become the storm center of a much fiercer controversy which was not merely to concern a few of the ministers, but was seriously to disturb the peace of the whole denomination for a quarter of a century. Of him we have next to speak.
Theodore Parker was born in 1810, the eleventh and youngest child of a farmer in Lexington, where his grandfather bad been captain of a company at the first battle in the American Revolution. As his father was poor, Theodore fitted himself for Harvard College while working on the farm and teaching school. He could not attend the college classes, but while he kept on teaching he took all the regular studies and passed the examinations, though for want of money to pay the tuition fee he could not graduate. While teaching in Boston at this time he listened to Dr. Beecher's preaching for a year, but it served only to confirm him in the Unitarian faith in which he had been brought up. After he had finished his course at the Divinity School he became minister of a country church at West Roxbury. In this quiet little place he was known as a faithful parish minister, remarkable chiefly for his immense reading, his prodigious memory, his wide and profound scholarship, and his mastery of many foreign languages. He had been preaching here a year when he heard Emerson's famous address, and it was three years more before he was unexpectedly lifted out of his obscurity by a sermon which he preached in 1841 at the ordination of a minister at South Boston.
Parker took for the theme of his sermon The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity, and it speedily brought down upon him far worse opprobrium than had fallen upon Emerson. Parker was already known as one of the Transcendentalists, and on this account some of the ministers had already refused to exchange with him. He still believed in miracles, to be sure, and that Jesus was a perfect man; but in this sermon he insisted that Christianity does not need miracles to prove it true. It stands on its own merits. The permanent element in it is the teaching of Jesus, and the truth of that is self-evident apart from miracles; it does not rest on even the personal authority of Jesus, indeed it would still remain true though it were proved that Jesus never lived at all. On the other hand, the forms and doctrines of Christianity are transient, changing from year to year. All this, putting in concrete form what Emerson had said more abstractly, and saying for people at large what Emerson had said only for ministers, was in itself far enough from the views then held by most Unitarians; but it was made still worse by the fact that in what he said he used language which seemed sarcastic and even irreverent. Many of the Unitarians present were deeply grieved and shocked by what he said.
Still in spite of all this it is quite possible that the matter might soon have blown over and been forgotten, had not some orthodox ministers interfered. Three of them being present took notes of the most extreme things Parker had said, and at once came out in print inquiring of the Unitarian clergy in general whether they meant to endorse such views, or to regard the man who had uttered them as a Christian; while one of them even demanded that he be prosecuted for the crime of blasphemy. Perhaps they hoped in this way to win the more conservative Unitarians back to orthodoxy by showing them what Unitarianism was coming to. Although it was none of their business, they practically insisted that the Unitarians should either disown Parker or else confess active sympathy with his views. The Unitarians at once accepted the challenge, and made haste to treat him almost as a heathen and a publican. Some of his brother ministers refused henceforth to speak to him on the street, or to shake hands with him, or to sit beside him at meetings. Some of them called him unbeliever, infidel, deist, or atheist, and tried to get him deprived of his pulpit. It was then the custom for ministers to exchange pulpits with one another each month, but the pressure against him became so strong that soon but five ministers could be found in Boston who would exchange with him; for it was felt that exchanging would mean an approval of his opinions which they were unwilling to give. The ministers in the country, however, treated him more considerately, continuing to exchange with him and to give him their friendship. There were laymen, too, who thought him not fairly treated; and believing in the right of free thought and free speech, inasmuch as he was denied a hearing in Boston pulpits they arranged for him in the next two years to give in Boston series of lectures or sermons in a public hall. In these he restated and expanded the views he had expressed in his South Boston sermon.
It was the Boston ministers who, since they felt most responsible for him, treated him in a way that would now be thought most illiberal. Some twenty five of them had long been united in a Boston Association of Congregational (Unitarian) Ministers, who used to meet together each month and to deliver in turn a "Thursday Lecture" in the First Church. Parker was one of these. The other members now felt greatly disturbed that Parker should still be known as a member of their Association, and they considered bow they might get rid of him. It was debated whether to expel him from membership outright; but they shrank from doing this, for it was precisely what they had complained of the orthodox for doing to them a generation before. Then they tried to get him to resign; but this he was unwilling to do, feeling that a vital question of principle was involved. While all respected him for his character, and many of them still esteemed him as a friend, they entirely disapproved of his religious views. Furthermore he was frequently aggressive in manner, sarcastic in speech, and vehement in denunciation of those whose views differed from his own, and these characteristics alienated from him many of his fellow ministers who might have stood by him. Even Dr. Channing, who continued to the end to be his friend, was doubtful whether he should be called a Christian. Yet so long as his own congregation were satisfied with him there was no way to turn him out of the Unitarian ministry. The result was that the ministers simply gave him the cold shoulder, made him feel unwelcome at their meetings, and after a little devised a scheme to keep him from delivering the Thursday Lecture; so that in a year or two they had so far frozen him out that he seldom attended the Association, and had little more to do with most of its members. Though be was never expelled from the Association or from the Unitarian ministry, in the Unitarian Year Book his name was never included in the list of ministers and churches except in 1846 and 1848, and in the printed list of members of the Boston Association it never appeared at all.
There were a few of the ministers, however, who though they did not agree with Parker's views did believe more than the rest in religious freedom, and acted accordingly. Thus the Rev. John T. Sargent exchanged with Parker in 1844, but for doing so he was so sharply called to account by the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches which employed him that he felt bound in self-respect to resign his pulpit. James Freeman Clarke also exchanged with him the next year, whereupon fifteen families emphasized their protest by seceding from his church and organizing a short-lived one of their own. Parker was now so fully shut out of Boston pulpits by their ministers that a group of laymen determined that, whether the clergy would or no, he should have a chance to be heard in Boston. In the face of strong opposition they secured a large hall for him to preach in, and as the congregation steadily increased it soon organized as the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, and settled Parker as its minister. Though most of the newspapers and all the magazines threw the weight of their influence against him, he won a tremendous bold on the common people, and so long as he preached there he was by far the most influential minister in Boston, week after week crowding Music Hall with its three thousand people, who had come to hear not sensations or popular oratory, but plain, earnest, fearless discussion of the most serious themes.
Parker's work was henceforth that of one disowned and opposed by most of his own denomination. As his thought grew clearer he became more radical, though never less religious; and as time went on, he threw himself ever more fully into work for the great social reforms of the day, unweariedly preaching Sundays and lecturing far and wide week days for temperance, prison reform, and the elevation of woman, and against capital punishment, war and, most of all, slavery. Thus he wore himself out. After twelve years of this incessant labor his health began to fail. The orthodox exulted, and daily at one o'clock they offered their united prayers that the great infidel, as they deemed him, might be silenced and his influence come to naught. He sought relief in travel in Europe, but it was too late. He died in 1860 at Florence, where his grave is in the English Cemetery. Then Unitarians began to appreciate and acknowledge that a great prophet had fallen. His influence among them steadily increased; and in the next generation he had come to be admired and praised by them as second only to Channing among all their leaders.
The discussion which Parker had set going among the Unitarians went steadily on after he had ceased to have any part in it; nor did it cease after his death. But what had begun mainly as a controversy over miracles and the importance of believing in them gradually broadened out into the general question as to what was essential to Christianity, and who are to be regarded as Christians. This Radical Controversy, as it came to be known, lasted for twenty years, until it was at length swallowed up and largely forgotten in the much more serious questions raised by the Civil War. What Emerson and Parker had said in public and without apology, many others had with hesitation been thinking to themselves. As time went on these radicals as they were soon called, most of them younger men, became more numerous, and disbelief in miracles and denial of them progressed steadily. The new critical study of the Bible gave the movement a fresh impulse, and the preaching of many found a new emphasis and took on a new tone. For some time attention was so much centered on Parker that little heed was paid to what was going on in these other minds; but graduates of the Divinity School were anxiously scanned to discover whether they were departing from the true faith, complaint was expressed in public that men supposed to be Transcendentalists were narrowly treated by those who made belief in miracles practically a test of one's Christianity, and some were discouraged from continuing in the ministry. By and by the new views bad spread so widely that the conservatives began to feel seriously alarmed, and the income of the American Unitarian Association seriously fell off because givers feared their money might be used to support radicalism. At length the officers of the Association took official notice of what they could no longer ignore. In their annual report for 1853 they ascribed the slow growth of the denomination in part to radicalism, and in order to defend Unitarians against the charge of infidelity and rationalism still being made by the orthodox, they set forth a long statement of the beliefs they held, and declared the divine origin and authority of the Christian religion to be the basis of their efforts. A resolution to the same effect was unanimously adopted. Similar action was taken the same year by the Western Unitarian Conference meeting at St. Louis. In fact, throughout this whole middle period most of the Unitarians seemed to be creeping timidly along, steadying themselves by holding on to orthodoxy with one hand, highly sensitive to orthodox criticism, and pathetically anxious to be acknowledged by the orthodox as really Christian despite all differences between them. Thus in this same year at a convention at Worcester it was objected to a proposed monument to Servetus for the three hundredth anniversary of his martyrdom, that "it would offend the orthodox"! Nevertheless the orthodox showed little sign of becoming more friendly. Unitarianism had not yet found itself, and was not yet ready to go its own way alone.
The denomination had in truth come pretty much to a standstill, and seemed to be at once aimless, hopeless, and powerless. At the Autumnal Conventions (held at various places from 1842 to 1863), though the time was bristling with important questions in which the churches should have taken an active interest, the ministers discussed little but parochial subjects, and no fresh note was sounded, and no fresh inspiration given. Addressing the ministers in 1854 James Freeman Clarke rightly said that they were "a discouraged denomination." Unitarianism seemed to have gone to seed. The orthodox took note of this, and joyfully proclaimed that Unitarianism was dying, which at the time seemed to be the case; and they kept on repeating the statement many years afterwards, even when it had ceased to be true.
The growth of the denomination was very slow. Early in the forties the Association, instead of spending its funds mainly in the publishing of tracts, began to pay more attention to missionary work, and gave aid to many young or feeble churches. Still, in the fifteen years which elapsed between the height of the Parker controversy and the outbreak of the Civil War, though a few new churches a year were added, so many feeble ones died that there was a net gain of only about a score. There were several causes for this slow growth. In the first place, the Unitarians had still to use a good deal of their strength in defending themselves against the attacks of the orthodox, and they suffered much from the prejudice against them which existed and hindered their growth in quarters where they were not well known. Moreover, many of the most active spirits in the denomination devoted themselves much less to spreading their own faith than to furthering great reforms. More than in most other denominations the ministers took an active part in the antislavery movement, and it was warmly debated in their meetings; while the temperance and other reforms absorbed the energies of some to the cost of their church work.
The most serious obstacle, however, to united effort for the common cause was radicalism. Emerson's philosophy and Parker's theology made more and more converts, and were adopted by some of the ablest and most brilliant of the ministers. By 1860 there were said to be twenty five of them who shared Parker's views. These might have done the denomination great service, had they been fraternally treated; but instead, the conservative majority opposed them and in large measure alienated them from it, and some of them were practically driven from the ministry. Naturally they could not do much to build up a denomination which seemed determined to put free thought and free speech under the ban. Nor, on the other hand, would the conservatives support the Association heartily so long as it was equivocal in its attitude toward radicalism. By 1859 the number of contributing churches had shrunk to forty. At meeting after meeting requests for aid to new or feeble churches had to be refused because the Association had nothing to give, and many of these churches were thus starved to death. Hence missionary enterprise languished for want of support; and some of the ablest ministers went over to the Episcopal Church, where one of them became a bishop.
Considering how badly hampered it had been for lack of funds, the work of the Association was nevertheless intelligently and efficiently carried on; and in spite of all the discouraging features of this period, still there was more life, and more progress was achieved, than was apparent on the surface or realized at the time. When resources and spirits were at about their lowest ebb at the beginning of 1854, a special effort resulted in raising many thousands of dollars to spread the faith by publishing Unitarian books, in place of the tracts that had so long been issued. Much good came of this, and the churches's contributions doubled that year. At the same time enthusiasm for foreign missionary work was kindled. A generation before a good deal of interest had been felt in Unitarian work then being carried on in Calcutta, and for several years it received American support. Now again, in 1854, in consequence of reports that great opportunities were opening there, the Association appointed the Rev. C. H. A. Dall as their missionary in India. His work succeeded and be planted several churches and schools there, working with the greatest devotion until his death in 1886; but no suitable successor was found to continue his labors. The following year (1855) a providential chance seemed to open for a mission also among the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota, where work was carried on for about two years.
Unprecedented emigration from New England to the Western states was now going on, and as the funds of the Association slowly increased it became possible to assist in organizing more new churches. Such important points as Milwaukee, Detroit, and San Francisco were now occupied, as were many smaller places; and the first settled minister and the first church building in Kansas were Unitarian. The Meadville Theological School, established in northwestern Pennsylvania in 1844, from that time on furnished a steady stream of young men for pioneer work in the Mississippi basin; and the Western Unitarian Conference, organized in 1852, did much to further missionary work throughout the West. In the South, however, there was little growth on account of slavery, and the churches already established there had such difficulty in keeping their pulpits filled that some time before the beginning of the Civil War several of them had passed out of existence. The most rapid growth of course was still in Massachusetts. Taking the whole country together, though many churches planted in small towns bad proved to be but short lived, the number of strong new ones founded at important centers much more than made good the loss; so that the denomination in 1860 was distinctly stronger and healthier than in 1845.
Yet when all has been told, it must still be said that in 1859 out of two hundred and fifty churches only a hundred contributed regularly to the work of the denomination; while a hundred others (and among them some of the largest and wealthiest) had never contributed at all. The Secretary of the Association in his report the next year said that Boston Unitarians saw no reason for diffusing their faith, but treated it as a luxury to be kept for themselves, as they kept Boston Common. As a rule they had done little for Unitarian missions, and it was reported that they did not wish to make Unitarians too common. Many had also come to feel that the liberalizing work of the denomination was now done, and could better be left to others; or else they were simply waiting to see what step was to be taken next.
What that next step should be, and how it could be taken unitedly, was made clear through the Civil War. During some years previous to that the tense feeling between radicals and conservatives had been relaxing. The fears of the latter had not been realized, and they were becoming more kindly in their feeling toward the former. The laymen had never felt much concern in the controversy anyway; while the ministers, meeting together in their May conferences in Boston, and in the Autumnal Conventions elsewhere, gradually learned to respect one another's religious views even if not agreeing with them. It was realized that after all they were all of the same family, had many great interests in common, and would be ready to rally to the same cause when one should present itself great enough to outweigh their differences.
That cause was found, for the time, not in religion, nor even in social reform, but in patriotism. The Unitarian ministers and churches threw themselves with great zeal into the tasks presented by the war. Some sixty of the ministers served in the army as chaplains or otherwise. Dr. Henry W. Bellows of New York organized and led the work of the Sanitary Commission, and Dr. William G. Eliot of St. Louis formed and directed a Western Sanitary Commission, both of which throughout the war did a work similar to that of the Red Cross at a later period, and were largely supported by Unitarians; whereas the orthodox churches, criticizing these movements for not being sufficiently religious in character for churches to undertake, gave their preference to the Christian Commission, corresponding to the religious war work in later times carried on by the Young Men's Christian Association. The Unitarian Association also prepared especially for army use books and tracts which were circulated among the soldiers in very large numbers, and met with an unparalleled success. The result was that the interest of the churches in the work the Association was doing was greatly increased, churches began giving to it that had never given before, and contributions steadily rose all through the war.
Although the war-time missionary work nearly ceased, the reaction of war work upon the denomination was very marked. The Autumnal Conventions in 1862 and 1863 were the largest, most enthusiastic, and most united that had been known. The churches began to realize that there were great things to be done for the welfare of the world, and that they were called upon to bear their full part in doing them. The war was teaching the great value of organization for effective work, and the need of an efficient organization of the churches (the Association had never been more than an organization of contributing individuals) was discussed already in the second year of the war. The Autumnal Convention was not called together in 1864, but instead a special meeting of the Association was held at the end of that year. A united and enthusiastic spirit was shown. It was reported that the Association was receiving far more calls than its funds could meet, and the calls were increasing. Unprecedented missionary opportunities were opening, for the war had had a remarkable liberalizing effect on the country, not least in matters of religion. It was at first proposed to undertake to raise regularly henceforth at least $25,000 a year for the work of the Association, instead of the bare third of that amount irregularly given during the past twenty years; but the amount was soon amended to $100,000. This further led to a proposition to call a general convention of all Unitarian churches in the country to take measures for the good of the denomination. The idea was received with enthusiasm, and both motions were unanimously carried. American Unitarianism in getting a new and wide vision of its mission had at last found itself. The organization of a National Conference soon followed, as the next chapter will relate.
The effects of the meeting referred to at the close of the preceding chapter began at once to appear. Some, indeed, having little faith that the plan so enthusiastically proposed could actually be carried out, held back from doing anything to realize it; while some even derided it as chimerical. But in the main the denomination fell in splendidly behind its leaders. The feeling was widespread that the whole country was now as ready to accept liberal Christianity as eastern Massachusetts had been fifty years before, and that Unitarians needed only to seize the opportunity which the time offered them in order to establish in America a genuine Broad Church. Whereas in 1864 the Association had received for its general work only $6,000, and that from only fifty of the churches, and in the previous year only half as much as even this, the new appeal for $100,000 for largely increasing the work of the denomination met with a response beyond all expectation. The old givers largely multiplied their gifts, while many churches now contributed for the first time. Well before the annual meeting of the Association in May the whole sum had been considerably oversubscribed.
When therefore the national Convention of the churches met early in April in New York, the apathy and discouragement which had for twenty years hung over the denomination like a pall had already given way to buoyant enthusiasm and eager hope. The very time was propitious. The Civil War was evidently drawing to a close; indeed, it was but three days after the adjournment of the Convention that Lee’s army surrendered at Appomattox, thus virtually ending the war. It was the first time that an attempt had been made to organize all the churches of the denomination for a common purpose, for, as has been said, the Association had been only an organization of a comparatively small number of individuals; and although churches often gave to it, they had no direct voice in planning its work. Moreover, while the Association had been largely officered and managed by ministers, the Convention invited and received cooperation from the ablest laymen.
A few of the extreme churches on either wing declined to take part in the Convention, but the attendance surpassed the fondest hopes. Over two hundred churches were represented by nearly four hundred delegates. Enthusiasm was deep and strong; for they realized that they had come together, as the call said, “for the more thorough organization of the Liberal Church of America; for the more generous support of” its various lines of work. John A. Andrew, the famous “War Governor” of Massachusetts, was chosen president; but Dr. Bellows of New York was the guiding spirit of the meeting. The Convention promptly settled down to work and heard reports of work done or to be done; and on the second day it permanently organized as the National Conference of Unitarian Churches.2 In the way of practical work it was resolved that $100,000 annually should be raised by the churches for the work of the denomination; that $100,000 be at once raised for the endowment of Antioch College; that the theological schools at Cambridge and Meadville be more amply endowed; and that missionary work in the West be generously supported.
Active measures were at once taken for carrying these resolutions into effect. Antioch College in Ohio had been founded in 1852 on a nonsectarian basis. Its first president had been Horace Mann, a distinguished Massachusetts Unitarian, and Unitarians had from the beginning contributed to it generously, since it gave good promise of becoming as liberal an influence in the West as Harvard had been in New England. It was now in serious financial straits, and in danger of utter failure; but in less than two months after the Conference the entire sum asked for had been subscribed, and the college was saved. It was an important step toward religious freedom in American education, for there were as yet but three or four colleges in the country quite free from denominational control; and only a few years previously a distinguished chemist had failed of election to a chair at Columbia College in New York for the sole reason that he was a Unitarian. One of the most fruitful of the new plans was also to establish churches in college towns in order to reach students who might go forth and spread liberal religion widely. The first of these was at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1865, followed the next year by one at the newly founded Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, and later by others to the number of some twenty in all.
Steps were at once taken to revive the churches in the South that had been closed during the war. A missionary was also sent to California, and within the next four or five years five new churches were planted in important towns on the Pacific Coast. Over a hundred ministers were sent into new territory for longer or shorter periods of missionary preaching, and in less than four years the number of churches had increased thirty per cent. Within a year the churches of the Western Conference had doubled in numbers and strength, support of the Sunday-school Society had largely increased, and the Association had received important legacies. Whereas the denomination had for many years before the close of the war made little progress, within eighteen months from the calling of the New York convention over forty churches and nearly forty ministers had been added to the roll. Unitarianism in America had almost at a bound come to realize itself as a national movement instead of merely “a Boston notion,” and to be united for aggressive work.
All these reports of progress brought great cheer to the second meeting of the National Conference, held in 1866 at Syracuse, where further plans for organizing the denomination were matured. Of these the most important was to divide the whole country into districts, each with its local conference, which should draw neighboring churches together for closer fellowship and united work. Four such already existed, and fourteen more were now organized, which did much to unite the churches in sympathy, and especially in missionary work and the raising of money. A gesture was also made toward cultivating acquaintance and good feeling with liberal spirits in other denominations, and to this end the Conference voted to change its name so as to read, “Unitarian and other Christian Churches.” But although for a time a little progress seemed to be made in this direction, nothing permanent was achieved. Carrying out the plans made at the first meeting, the Conference now raised on the spot an endowment for a new chair at the Meadville school; and a new newspaper, “The Liberal Christian,” was soon established in New York.
The next two years continued to be a time of rapid development. Unitarian theater meetings were held in most of the large cities of the country from Boston to San Francisco, and were attended by large crowds who eagerly listened to Unitarian views of religion. Week after week for four years the largest theater in Boston was crowded for such services; and as a result of these meetings, Young Men’s Christian Unions were organized in a number of cities. A new School for the Ministry was opened in Boston in 1867, to prepare men of incomplete education for rough and ready missionary work. The local conferences had a stimulating effect, and the individual churches were roused to great local activity. Large sums were raised for philanthropies, and generous aid was given toward elevating the condition of those lately freed from slavery in the South.
This high tide of enthusiasm and united work, however, did not long remain at its first level. Reaction from the exultation over the ending of the war set in, and after a year the contributions for the general work of the Association fell back to less than $50,000. Worse than this, dissensions were again developing within the denomination. The radical controversy, which seemed to have died out during the war, reappeared in a new shape. It was now not so much a question of miracles, for perhaps half the denomination now sympathized with Parker on that point, and a hundred of the ministers looked up to him as one of the best of Christians; but when the National Conference came to organize it became necessary to define who might belong to it, for it was felt that it should be unmistakably a Christian conference. At first a persistent attempt was made by conservatives to set up a creed as a condition of membership in the Conference. This attempt failed, but the constitution adopted did refer to Jesus Christ as Lord and as son of God; and these expressions contained the seeds of thirty years’ trouble, for they were taken to imply beliefs which the radicals felt they could not with good conscience accept. Dissatisfaction over the matter steadily increased during the year, and it was well organized when the Conference met at Syracuse the next year, where the radicals proposed to amend the constitution so as to base its action rather on unity of spirit than on uniformity of belief, and to avoid the objectionable expressions. The subject was earnestly debated through a whole session, but the radicals were overwhelmingly defeated.
It was said on the conservative side that the radicals ought to leave the denomination, and this some of them now proceeded to do. Before the next spring they had taken steps to form the Free Religious Association on a basis that should allow them the freedom which they felt that the National Conference had refused to grant. This new Association was organized in 1867 with much enthusiasm. About half its original members had been Unitarian ministers, and Emerson’s name was first on the list; yet not all were radicals, nor were all Unitarians, for half-a-dozen religious elements were represented in it. It offered hospitality to every form of religious thought, and cultivated sympathy with other religions than Christianity; but though it held annual conventions and issued various publications, it did not attempt to form new organizations, still less a new denomination. Indeed, though a very few of its members withdrew from the denomination, many of them still remained in the National Conference to agitate for broader freedom. For a quarter of a century it exercised an important influence in broadening religious sympathies, and it still continues its existence; but its mission was largely accomplished in its first twenty-five years.
While the extreme conservatives were satisfied with the result of the vote at Syracuse, many others felt that the Conference had taken too narrow ground, thus unjustly excluding from it some deeply religious and conscientious men. Nearly a hundred of the ministers either had joined the Free Religious Association or were in sympathy with it. The result was that at the next meeting of the Conference in New York in 1868, with a larger attendance than ever before, an amendment was almost unanimously adopted which was calculated to ease the consciences of the radical members of the Conference. It was now the turn of the conservatives to feel aggrieved, for they interpreted this action as a virtual surrender of the Conference’s allegiance to Christianity, by yielding to the radicals nearly all that they had asked for. As radicalism was steadily spreading, and the majority of the recent graduates of the Divinity School and even a few from Meadville were given to it, the conservatives now began to agitate more than ever for some means of excluding from the denomination those who could not accept their definition of Christianity.
The American Unitarian Association took broad ground, wishing to include both wings of the denomination, and recognizing both conservatives and radicals without prejudice. But the conservatives insisted that unless it would withhold recognition and aid from radicals, it would not deserve the support of the denomination, and they urged churches to cease contributing until the question was settled. As no satisfaction was given them., they early in 1870 proposed the forming of an Evangelical Unitarian Association, with a creed for its basis. Had this been formed, the denomination would have been split in two; but by the great majority it was strongly and successfully opposed.
The leader in this “new movement,” as it was called, was the Rev. George H. Hepworth, a popular preacher of Boston, whose enthusiasm had launched the theater services and the new School for the Ministry. Removing to New York he had many requests from his hearers for some authorized statement of what Unitarians believed. As he and his friends were anxious both to exclude radicals from the denomination and to stand well in the eyes of the orthodox, they began an insistent agitation to get some such statement adopted, and they urged the Association at its meeting in 1870 to take steps in this direction. But Unitarians have ever been suspicious of anything that might be taken as a binding creed, and the motion was heavily defeated. At the National Conference in the autumn the attempt was renewed; and as the subject had for months been earnestly discussed in pulpit and in print, the very large number of delegates gathered in suppressed excitement. Mr. Hepworth moved to substitute for the amendment adopted at the last Conference a new one reaffirming allegiance to Jesus Christ. After being earnestly debated for a day and a half, it was finally carried by a vote of eight to one, while the minority were hissed. Thus the door was again shut against the radicals.
Cleavage between the two wings of the denomination now became sharper than ever, and the radical minority, though steadily increasing in number, naturally felt little enthusiasm about taking part in denominational enterprises. For twelve long years nothing was done to make them feel themselves welcome members of their own denomination. On the contrary, in what was known as the Year Book Controversy, the situation was emphasized anew. The President of the Free Religious Association had in 1873 asked that his name be removed from the list of ministers in the Unitarian Year Book, on the ground that he was no longer a Unitarian Christian. Upon this, the editor ventured to inquire of several other ministers supposed to believe as he did whether they wished their names to be retained. One of these was the Rev. William J. Potter of New Bedford, Secretary of the Free Religious Association. He replied that he did not call himself a Christian in the doctrinal sense of the word, but he placed upon the editor the responsibility of deciding whether to omit the name. The editor therefore omitted his name along with the others. As the case became public it attracted wide attention and severe criticism; for it was felt by many that a man of admitted Christian character had been virtually excluded from the denomination simply because he would not describe himself by a certain name. The conservatives applauded the action, while the liberals regretted it; but after full discussion in print and in debates it was approved at meetings of both the Association and the National Conference. Protests and criticisms continued to be made over what was felt by many to have been an act of narrow injustice, but it was not until 1883 that the omitted names were restored to the list of ministers, at first halfheartedly, and only in a supplementary list.
Time slowly did its work. Those who had been the strongest bulwarks of conservatism passed away, or ceased to be active, or softened in their feeling; while the younger men coming forward had most of them grown up in a liberal atmosphere. At length, at the National Conference in 1882, the liberal spirit prevailed, and with but one dissenting voice an amendment was adopted opening the door again to those who had felt themselves excluded by the action taken in 1870. Thus the cause for which Parker’s name had long before been omitted from the Year Book had, after forty years, won in the struggle for spiritual freedom. His name had now for some years been spoken with much respect and honor by leaders in the denomination as one of its great prophets; and the Association in 1885 finally set the seal of approval upon him by publishing a volume of his writings.
Meanwhile the high hopes of a very rapid spread of the denomination, and the rosy dreams of $100,000 a year for general missionary purposes, which had been realized for a year or two after the organization of the National Conference, began to be disappointed. The lack of sympathy between conservatives and radicals was to no small degree responsible for this, for the national Association in trying to conciliate both wings of the denomination succeeded in winning the generous confidence of neither; so that many churches in both wings would not contribute to the support of its work liberally and generously, if at all. After the conservative victory at the National Conference in 1870, it is true, contributions for missionary work more than doubled for a single year; but on the whole there was a steady decline from the $100,000 of 1865 to less than a quarter of that sum in 1878. Church extension was steadily carried on, but it was at the cost of steady encroachment upon the capital of the general funds of the Association. This whole period was marked by lack of spirit, of enthusiasm, and of confidence.
Other causes, however, contributed to this end. The period of inflation and extravagance following the Civil War was followed by one of financial depression which affected all enterprises. The great conflagration in Chicago in 1871 and in Boston the following year at once diminished the resources of many of the churches and increased the demands made upon them. The severe financial panic of 1873 laid its heavy hand for several years upon the whole country. Altogether it is surprising that the work of the denomination did not suffer more seriously than it did.
In spite of all these unfavorable conditions, the main body of the churches remained stedfast to their cause. The National Conferences were largely attended, and continued to plan for carrying on the work of the denomination. If the general contributions to the Association fell off, yet large sums were given for special denominational causes. Generous endowments were raised for additional professorships at the Harvard Divinity School and the Meadville Theological School. Large subscriptions were raised for relief of the churches suffering in the Chicago fire, to erect a national church at Washington, and a Channing Memorial church at Newport on the centennial of Channing’s birth, and to raise crushing debts upon important churches in New York, New Orleans, and elsewhere. The denomination also supported important educational work for both the whites and the negroes in the South; prosecuted welfare work among the Indians in the West, and among seamen; continued its successful mission in India, for several years supported Unitarian preaching in Paris, and sent aid to the needy Unitarian Church in Hungary.
At home aid was given to an increasing number of young or feeble churches, and many new churches were founded and many missionary preachers were employed, especially in the West; and a promising beginning was made of work among the Scandinavians of the Northwest. New churches were established in Washington Territory, Southern California, and the Southern States. The work in college towns was much extended. In 1876 a Ministers’ Institute was formed for stimulating scholarly interests among the ministers; and in 1880 a Women’s Auxiliary Conference was organized, which ten years later became the National Alliance of Unitarian and other Liberal Christian Women, and has been of the greatest service in uniting the women of the denomination for effective work. Thus, in spite of all interferences, the progress of organizing and extending the Unitarian movement in America, which began with the National Conference in 1865, made headway. In half a generation not only had many of the older churches gained in strength, but over a hundred additions had been made to the lists of churches and ministers. Nevertheless those unfriendly to Unitarianism still continued to repeat that the cause was dying.
While the work of the American Unitarian Association had from the beginning been designed to cover the whole country, the Western Unitarian Conference, comprising a vast territory, became semi-national in its scope, and ran a more or less independent course, and for much of the time carried on an independent work west of the Alleghanies. Its parallel history therefore deserves particular attention. The Western Conference was organized at Cincinnati in 1852 when as yet there were not a dozen well-rooted churches in the whole West, separated by great distances and connected by scanty means of communication. In scores of promising young towns where orthodox religion had largely lost its hold upon the people and they were in danger of relapsing into irreligion, Unitarian preaching was eagerly welcomed. But ministers were hard to get, and new churches multiplied but slowly, while many prematurely formed soon died for want of competent leadership. The antislavery conflict also interfered with the growth of the movement in the West, and in the Civil War more than half of the ministers went to the front as chaplains or as soldiers; yet at the end of the war the Conference contained some thirty-five churches. In the revival following the organization of the National Conference, the Association kept a missionary Secretary in the West for some years, and many new churches were planted; while from 1875 on the Conference had its own Secretary in the field, and extension went on faster than ever. In due time a Women’s Conference, a Sunday-school Society, and various state conferences were established; a newspaper (Unity), many tracts, and series of Sunday-school lessons, were published; and Unity Clubs and Post-office Missions were formed in many of the churches. The conference had its own missionary funds and missionaries, and with the assistance of the Association denominational work was carried on with great zeal.
Meantime doctrinal changes were going on even more rapidly than in the East. The churches established in the early days of the Conference were generally conservative, and in the Parker controversy they took ground against Parker’s views, though refusing to adopt an authoritative statement of belief. But radical views early appeared, and there was little in either tradition or environment to keep them in check. During the controversy in the National Conference over radicalism, sympathy in most of the churches went with the radicals, and any tendency toward a creed was strongly resisted. In 1875 resolutions were unanimously passed sympathizing with the Free Religious Association as well as with the American Unitarian Association, and a unanimous protest was also made against the action taken by the Association in the Year Book cases. As a further comment upon the conservative position of the National Conference, it was also unanimously resolved that “the Conference conditions its fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all thereto who desire to work with it in advancing the Kingdom of God.” For ten years a steady movement went on to purge the constitutions of state conferences and local churches of everything that might seem to limit perfect freedom of belief.
There were those, however, who saw that unlimited freedom brought with it grave dangers to the cause, and for this reason some ministers had already withdrawn from the Conference. It had been loosely organized, and in many places, in churches composed largely of come-outers, irreparable damage had been done by irresponsible freelances calling themselves Unitarians. As the growth of the churches had not kept pace with that of the population, the Secretary of the Conference became convinced that the trouble was that it had not stood definitely enough for certain fundamental beliefs, and that further mischief might be prevented, and the religious reputation of the Conference be redeemed, if it were to set forth a statement of the central religious beliefs it stood for. He strongly urged this action at the Conference at St. Louis in 1885, though no action was taken; but in the course of the following year the matter developed into what became known as “the issue in the West,” which reached its crisis at the meeting at Cincinnati in 1886.
The Conference was sharply divided on the question. On the one hand were those who felt the time had come for the Conference clearly to indicate in a few simple words that it stood for Christian belief in God; and that without this there was danger that it might be vitally injured, if not overwhelmed, by unbelievers of every sort claiming to be Unitarians. On the other hand were those who felt that even the simplest statement or implication of theological beliefs would in effect be taken as a creed, and used to make certain beliefs obligatory upon the members of the Conference, and that this would be the end of the religious freedom of Unitarianism. It was not a division of believers against unbelievers, for both sides were equally devout, and held practically the same religious beliefs. It was the question whether the Conference should insist first upon the beliefs it stood for, or upon the work it aimed to do; and whether it was willing to shut out any one from joining in that work simply because he did not profess certain beliefs.
The debate on the question was long, earnest, and painful; but at the end it was resolved by a decisive majority that "the Western Unitarian Conference conditions its fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all who wish to join it to help establish Truth, Righteousness, and Love in the world." The decision brought great grief to the conservatives, for the words Christianity, religion, and even God, had been deliberately left out of the constitution, and nothing seemed to be left but truth, righteousness, and love. If even an agnostic or an atheist claimed recognition as a Unitarian, the Conference would not close the door against him. A few weeks afterwards the conservatives resigned from the Conference and organized a Western Unitarian Association, to cooperate with the national Association in its missionary work. It was never much more than an organization on paper, and it did no missionary work of its own; but its leaders maintained their own periodical (The Unitarian), and did what they could to discourage the churches from cooperating with the Western Conference. The controversy rapidly spread east and west, and dragged on for half a dozen years, and it was also taken up vigorously even in the English Unitarian papers. Although the Conference at its next meeting (1887) published a noble statement of the beliefs commonly held by its members, it was repeatedly charged that the Western Conference had adopted an atheistic and non-Christian basis. The charge was so far believed that the national Association, reflecting the sentiment of the eastern churches, for several years refused to cooperate with the Western Conference in missionary work, and maintained its own western agent.
The result of the controversy, in which for a long time neither side would yield any ground, was that there were for some years practically two denominations of Unitarians in the West, working separately, and critical of each other. The forces of the denomination were thus badly divided, and its missionary work severely crippled. In fact, the work in the West never quite returned to its former vigor. In time, however, the two factions came to understand each other better, and in 1892 effective steps were taken to heal the breach. Finally at the meeting of the National Conference in 1894 the constitution was again revised in a way so broad as to satisfy both conservatives and radicals, and it was adopted unanimously by acclamation. With this action the doctrinal differences that had disturbed the peace and hindered the growth of the denomination for over half a century subsided, and have not again arisen; for it is realized that perfect spiritual freedom has been achieved.
From that time on the life of the denomination has been healthy, and its progress in strength, though not rapid, has been steady. Many new churches have been planted in the far West and in the South, as well as on the eastern seaboard; an important missionary enterprise in Japan was undertaken in 1889, and more efficient organization of forces has been steadily won. The forming of the Young People’s Religious Union in 1896 was the beginning of a movement of great and increasing importance; and in 1919 the Laymen’s League took its place beside the Woman’s Alliance and brought undreamed of vigor into the life of the churches. The organization of the International Congress of Free Christians and Other Religious Liberals in 1900, and of the National Federation of Religious Liberals in 1908, have brought the denomination into active sympathy with kindred movements in other lands and other churches.
At the end of the first hundred years of the American Unitarian Association the Unitarian churches of the country are more than twice as numerous and far more than twice as strong and well organized as they were when the National Conference was organized. They are far more united in spirit, more positive and wholesome in their thought, and more hopeful of their future than they then were. Their contributions for common work are now more in a single year than they formerly were for many years together, and their annual circulation of books and tracts has been multiplied by twenty. Their share in the work of education, philanthropy, reforms, and public leadership has always been far out of proportion to their numerical strength. Their thought has been so largely assimilated by other denominations that many churches calling themselves orthodox, and holding themselves quite aloof from Unitarians, are now much farther away from Calvinism than Channing was. Yet on the other hand they see great multitudes whose religion seems to belong rather to the eighteenth century than to the twentieth. Much as has been accomplished to spread the enlightenment and the inspiration of liberal Christianity, there seems as yet no end to the work for them still to do; and at the end of their first century’s history American Unitarians face the future with clearer vision of their opportunity, with stronger faith in their cause, and with firmer confidence in its destiny, than at any time in the past.
We have come to the end of our history. It has been a long story nearly four centuries, almost as long as that of Protestantism itself. We have followed the course of a movement which has profoundly influenced the religious life of Poland and Transylvania, England and America, has furnished important episodes in that of Italy and Switzerland, Germany and Holland, and has left a lasting impression on the thought and tendencies of the Protestant world. The orthodox Protestantism of the twentieth century, in both its teachings and its spirit, is a far different thing from what it would have been if Servetus, Socinus and David, Lindsey, Priestley and Martineau, Channing and Parker had never lived, and if Calvin and Luther had been suffered to rule the thought and life of their followers unchallenged and uncriticized. In so far as the religious life of our time is comparatively free, reasonable, and tolerant, and lays greater stress upon personal character and lives of service than upon the doctrines of theology, the pioneers and prophets of the movement whose course we have been tracing deserve much more credit than has generally been given them.
Now that we have heard the story, what is the real meaning of it all? It has not been merely a long attempt to substitute one set of doctrines for another. That has often been involved in it, it is true; but beneath all this has been something far deeper and more important. For if men are to change their beliefs from one age to another, as they get new light or discover new truth, their minds must be left free in their search, and not be barred in this direction or that; nor can their new beliefs be shared with others unless there is also freedom of speech and of press. Hence the first thing that has characterized this history has been its steady tendency toward perfect spiritual freedom. When creeds or dogmas were opposed, it was not more because they were disbelieved than because they stood in the way of freedom of thought in religion with a "thus far but no further," and because free spirits were unwilling that other men should forbid them to judge for themselves as to the teachings of the Bible or of their own consciences. Unitarianism, then, has meant first of all religious freedom and escape from bondage to creeds; and throughout their whole history Unitarians have steadfastly refused to set up any creed, even the shortest, as a test which must be passed by those who would join them.
Yet freedom may go wild unless it is guided by some wholesome principle. This principle Unitarians have found in the use of reason in religion; and this has been their second main point of emphasis. They have believed that God would most safely and surely lead them into more truth when they most used the faculties he has given them for discerning truth from error. They have therefore seen little cause to follow traditions from the past simply because they were old, unless they could show good reason for being. At first they were content to ask simply whether doctrines could be supported by Scripture; but at length they came to realize that even what the Bible teaches is merely what men of olden time thought and felt and did, and that reason and conscience must decide for us whether their ways must be ours, or whether we must come to fresh convictions, experiences, and principles for our own new time.
Once again, Unitarians were not long in discovering that if they were to claim for themselves the right of full freedom of belief and of teaching in religion, they must of course grant similar freedom to others. It was at first hard for them to accept the consequences of this principle, and for a time they yielded to the temptation to repress or to cast out from their number those who seemed to them to go too far from familiar ways; but they eventually saw that there can be no perfect freedom in religion unless there is perfect mutual toleration. And this was well; for just as truth can be trusted in the long run and in a fair field to stand on its own merits without fear or favor, so it may be trusted that error will in the end be discovered, and will certainly perish of itself.
It is the emphasis on these things, far more than on any mere Unitarian doctrines, that during nearly four centuries have more and more given Unitarianism its distinctive character; and perhaps the most that need be said about those doctrines is that they are the ones that men will be most likely to come to when their minds are left unbiased and free in relation to religion, when they make unhindered use of reason in thinking about religion, and when entire religious toleration is given them. Yet after these points are gained, something still remains. What is religion for, practically, any way, and what is the final test of it? The Unitarian answer has consistently been that the true test of a good religion is not orthodoxy of belief, but that it is to be found in the kind of characters it produces; and that we do not realize its whole purpose until we get beyond thought of ourselves, and give ourselves to the service of others, as all members of one great family of God.
When the Unitarian movement began, the marks of true religion were commonly thought to be belief in the creeds, membership in the church, and participation in its rites and sacraments. To the Unitarian of today the marks of true religion are spiritual freedom, enlightened reason, broad and tolerant sympathy, upright character and unselfish service. These things, which go to the very heart of life, best express the meaning and lesson of Unitarian history. The difference between these two views of religion marks a great revolution, and it has been a costly one. To make it possible Servetus, Gentile, David, and a score or more of others suffered death; Gribaldo, Ochino, Socinus, and the Polish Brethren endured persecution or went into exile. For this Bidle and Emlyn were imprisoned; Lindsey and Priestley had obloquy heaped upon them; and numberless others in great ways or in small have sacrificed or suffered or been outcast for this faith. Without these and what they endured in their cause, we should now be enjoying but little of the liberty that is ours today. How can we better show appreciation of the free faith that inspires and comforts our lives today than by keeping it pure and handing it on stronger than ever to those that shall come after us?
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