Its four pages contained four columns each, but the third of these pages was given to secular news and advertis.e.m.e.nts. The first page was devoted to general religious subjects, the second discussed those topics which were of special interest to Unitarians, while the fourth was given to literary miscellanies. Almost nothing of church news was reported, and only in a limited way was the paper denominational. It was a general religious newspaper of a kind that was acceptable to the liberals, and it defended and interpreted their cause when occasion demanded. The paper was started wholly as an individual enterprise by its publisher, Rev. David Reed, who acted for about five years as its editor. He had the encouragement of the leading Unitarians of Boston and its vicinity; and, when such men as Channing, Ware, and Norton wished to speak for the Unitarians, its columns were open to them. Among the other early contributors were Kirkland, Story, Edward Everett, Walker, Dewey, Furness, Palfrey, Gannett, Noah Worcester, Greenwood, Bancroft, Sparks, Alexander Young, Freeman, Burnap, Pierpont, Noyes, Lowell, Frothingham, and Pierce.

In his prospectus the publisher spoke of the growth of the spirit of free religious inquiry in the country; and he said that in all cla.s.ses of the community there was an eagerness to understand theological questions, and to arrive at and practice the genuine principles of Christianity. His ideal was a periodical that should present the same doctrines and temper as The Christian Disciple, but that would be of a more popular character. "The great object of The Christian Register," he said to his readers, "will be to inculcate the principles of a rational faith, and to promote the practice of genuine piety. To accomplish this purpose it will aim to excite a spirit of free and independent religious inquiry, and to a.s.sist in ascertaining and bringing into use the true principles of interpreting the Scriptures."

For a number of years The Christian Register conformed to "the mild and amiable spirit" in which it began its career, rarely being aroused to an aggressive att.i.tude, and seldom undertaking to speak for Unitarianism as a distinct form of Christianity. When the liberals were fiercely attacked, it spoke out, as, for instance, at the time when the Unitarians were charged with stealing churches from the orthodox.[20] Otherwise it was mild and placid enough, given to expressing its friendly interest in every kind of reform, from the education of women to the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, thoroughly humanitarian in its att.i.tude, not doctrinal or controversial, but faithfully catholic and tolerant. It was a well-conducted periodical, represented a wide range of interests, and was admirably suited to interpret the temper and spirit of a rational religion. It is now the oldest weekly religious newspaper published in this country. As the leading Unitarian periodical, it is still conducted with notable enterprise and ability.

Another periodical also deserves mention in this connection, and that is the North American Review, which was begun by William Tudor, one of the members of The Anthology Club, in May, 1815. While it was not religious in its character, it was from the first, and for more than sixty years, edited by Unitarians; and its contributors were very largely from that religious body. The same tendencies and conditions that led the liberals to establish The Monthly Anthology, The Christian Disciple, and The Christian Examiner, gave demand amongst them for a distinctly literary and critical journal.

They had gained that form of liberated and catholic culture which made such works possible, and to a large extent they afforded the public necessary to their support. Mr. Tudor was succeeded as the editor of the review by Professor Edward T. Channing, and then followed in succession Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, Alexander H. Everett, John Gorham Palfrey, Francis Bowen, and Andrew P. Peabody, all Unitarians. Among the early Unitarian contributors were Nathan Hale, Joseph Story, Nathaniel Bowditch, W.H.

Prescott, William Cullen Bryant, and Theophilus Parsons. For many years few of the regular contributors were from any other religious body, not because the editors put restrictions upon others, but because those who were interested in general literary, historical, and scientific subjects belonged almost exclusively to the churches of this faith.

[Sidenote: Results of the Division in Congregationalism.]

The controversy which began in 1805 continued for about twenty years. The pamphlets and books it brought forth are almost forgotten, and they would have little interest at the present time. They gradually widened the breach between the orthodox and the liberal Congregationalists. It would be difficult to name a decisive date for their actual separation. The organization of the societies, and the establishment of the periodicals already mentioned, were successive steps to that result. The most important event was undoubtedly the formation of the American Unitarian a.s.sociation, in 1825; but even that important movement on the part of the Unitarians did not bring about a final separation. Individual churches and ministers continued to treat each other with the same courtesy and hospitality as before.

That the breach was inevitable seems to be the verdict of history; and yet it is not difficult to see to-day how it might have been avoided. The Unitarians were dealt with in such a manner that they could not continue the old connection without great discomfort and loss of self-respect. They were forced to organize for self-protection, and yet they did so reluctantly and with much misgiving. They would have preferred to remain as members of the united Congregational body, but the theological temper of the time made this impossible. It would not be just to say that there was actual persecution, but there could not be unity where there was not community of thought and faith.

When the division in the Congregational churches came, one hundred and twenty-five churches allied themselves with the Unitarians,--one hundred in Ma.s.sachusetts, a score in other parts of New England, and a half-dozen west of the Hudson River. These churches numbered among them, however, many of the oldest and the strongest, including about twenty of the first twenty-five organized in Ma.s.sachusetts, and among them Plymouth (organized in Scrooby), Salem, Dorchester, Boston, Watertown, Roxbury, Hingham, Concord, and Quincy. The ten Congregational churches in Boston, with the exception of the Old South, allied themselves with the Unitarians. Other first churches to take this action were those of Portsmouth, Kennebunk, and Portland.

Outside New England a beginning was made almost as soon as the Unitarian name came into recognition. At Charleston, S.C., the Congregational church, which had been very liberal, was divided in 1816 as the result of the preaching of Rev. Anthony Forster. He was led to read the works of Dr.

Priestley, and became a Unitarian in consequence. Owing to ill-health, he was soon obliged to resign; and Rev. Samuel Gilman was installed in 1819.

Rev. Robert Little, an English Unitarian, took up his residence in Washington in 1819, and began to preach there; and a church was organized in 1821. While chaplain of the House of Representatives, in 1821-22, Jared Sparks preached to this society fortnightly, and in the House Chamber on the alternate Sunday. When he went to Charleston, in 1819, to a.s.sist in the installation of Mr. Gilman, he preached to a very large congregation in the state-house in Raleigh; and the next year he spoke to large congregations in Virginia.[21] More than a decade earlier there were individual Unitarians in Kentucky.[22] On his journey to the ordination of Jared Sparks, Dr. Channing preached in a New York parlor; and on his return he occupied the lecture-hall of the Medical School. The result was the First Congregational Church (All Souls'), organized in 1819, which was followed by the Church of the Messiah in 1825. In fact, many of the more intelligent and thoughtful persons everywhere were inclined to accept a liberal interpretation of Christianity.

Although the Congregational body was divided into two distinct denominations, there were three organizations, formed prior to that event, which have remained intact to this day. In these societies Orthodox and Unitarian continue to unite as Congregationalists, and the sectarian lines are not recognized. The first of these organizations is the Ma.s.sachusetts Congregational Charitable Society, which was formed early in the eighteenth century for the purpose of securing "support to the widows and children of deceased congregational ministers." The second is the Ma.s.sachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers, also formed early in the eighteenth century, although its records begin only with the year 1748. It was formed for consultation, advice, and counsel, to aid orphans and widows of ministers, and to secure the general promotion of the interests of religion. The convention sermon has been one of the recognized inst.i.tutions of Ma.s.sachusetts, and since the beginning of the Unitarian controversy it has been preached alternately by ministers of the two denominations. The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America was formed in 1787. The members, officers, and missionaries of this society have been of both denominations; and the work accomplished has been carried on in a spirit of amity and good-will. These societies indicate that co-operation may be secured without theological unity, and it is possible that they may become the basis in the future of a closer sympathy and fellowship between the severed Congregational churches.

[Sidenote: Final Separation of State and Church.]

From the beginning the liberal movement had been more or less intimately a.s.sociated with that for the promotion of religious freedom and the separation of state and church. Many of the states withdrew religion from state control on the adoption of the Federal Const.i.tution. In New England this was done in the first years of the century. Connecticut came to this result after an exciting agitation in 1818. Ma.s.sachusetts was more tenacious of the old ways; but in 1811 its legislative body pa.s.sed a "religious freedom act," that secured individuals from taxation for the support of churches with which they were not connected. The const.i.tutional convention of 1820 proposed a bill of rights that aimed to secure religious freedom, but it was defeated by large majorities. It was only when church property was given by the courts to the parish in preference to the church, and when the "standing order" churches had been repeatedly foiled in their efforts to retain the old prerogatives, that a majority could be secured for religious freedom. In November, 1833, the legislature submitted to the people a revision of the bill of rights, which provided for the separation of state and church, and the voluntary support of churches. A majority was secured for this amendment, and it became the law in 1834. Ma.s.sachusetts was the last of all the states to arrive at this result, and a far greater effort was required to bring it about than elsewhere. The support of the churches was now purely voluntary, the state no longer lending its aid to tax person and property for their maintenance.

Thus it came about that Ma.s.sachusetts adopted the principle and method of Roger Williams after two centuries. For the first time she came to the full recognition of her own democratic ideals, and to the practical acceptance of the individualism for which she had contended from the beginning. She had fought stubbornly and zealously for the faith she prized above all other things, but by the logic of events and the greatness of the principle of liberty she was conquered. The minister and the meeting-house were by her so dearly loved that she could not endure the thought of having them shorn of any of their power and influence; but for the sake of their true life she at last found it wise and just to leave all the people free to worship G.o.d in their own way, without coercion and without restraint.

Although the liberal ministers and churches led the way in securing religious freedom, yet they were socially and intellectually conservative.

Radical changes they would not accept, and they moved away from the old beliefs with great caution. The charge that they were timid was undoubtedly true, though there is no evidence that they attempted to conceal their real beliefs. Evangelical enthusiasm was not congenial to them, and they rejected fanaticism in every form. They had a deep, serious, and spiritual faith, that was intellectual without being rationalistic, marked by strong common sense, and vigorous with moral integrity. They permitted a wide lat.i.tude of opinion, and yet they were thoroughly Christian in their convictions. Most of them saw in the miracles of the New Testament the only positive evidence of the truth of Christianity, which was to them an external and supernatural revelation. They were quite willing to follow Andrews Norton, however, who was the chief defender of the miraculous, in his free criticism of the Old Testament and the birth-stories in the Gospels.

The liberal ministers fostered an intellectual and literary expression of religion, and yet their chief characteristic was their spirituality. They aimed at ethical insight and moral integrity in their influence upon men and women, and at cultivating purity of life and an inward probity. In large degree they developed the spirit of philanthropy and a fine regard for the rights and the welfare of others. They were not sectarian or zealous for bringing others to the acceptance of their own beliefs; but they were generous in behalf of all public interests, faithful to all civic duties, and known for their private generosity and faithful Christian living. Under the leadership of Dr. Channing the Catholic Christians, as they preferred to call themselves, cultivated a spirituality that was devout without being ritualistic, sincere without being fanatical. The churches around them, to a large degree, kept zealously to the externals of religion, and accepted physical evidences of the truthfulness of Christianity; but Channing sought for what is deeper and more permanent.

His preference of rationality to the testimony of miracles, spiritual insight to external evidences, devoutness of life to the rites of the church, characterized him as a great religious leader, and developed for the Catholic Christians a new type of Christianity. Whatever Channing's limitations as a thinker and a reformer, he was a man of prophetic insight and lofty spiritual vision. In other ages he would have been canonized as a saint or called the beatific doctor; but in Boston he was a heretic and a reformer, who sought to lead men into a faith that is ethical, sincere, and humanitarian. He prized Christianity for what it is in itself, for its inwardness, its fidelity to human nature, and its ethical integrity. His mind was always open to truth, he was always young for liberty, and his soul dwelt in the serene atmosphere of a pure and lofty faith.

[1] Josiah Quincy, History of Harvard University, I. 230, Chapter XII; Christian Examiner, VII. 64; x.x.x. 70.

[2] Jedidiah Morse, True Reasons on which the Election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard College were opposed at the Board of Overseers.

[3] III. 251, March, 1806.

[4] Richard Eddy, Universalism in America, II. 87; Oscar F. Safford, Hosea Ballou: A Marvellous Life Story, 71.

[5] O.B. Frothingham, Boston Unitarianism, 161.

[6] Josiah Quincy, History of the Boston Athenaeum, 1. "In the year 1803 Phineas Adams, a graduate of Harvard College, of the cla.s.s of 1801, commenced in Boston, under the name of _Sylva.n.u.s Per-se_, a periodical work ent.i.tled The Monthly Anthology or Magazine of Polite Literature.

He conducted it for six months, but not finding its proceeds sufficient for his support, he abandoned the undertaking. Mr. Adams, the son of a farmer in Lexington, manifested in early boyhood a pa.s.sion for elegant learning. He adopted literature as a profession; but, after the failure of his attempt as editor of The Anthology, he taught school in different places, till, in 1811, he entered the Navy as chaplain and teacher of mathematics. Here he became distinguished for mathematical science in its relation to nautical affairs. In 1812 he accompanied Commodore Porter in his eventful cruise in the Pacific, of which the published journal bears honorable testimony to Mr. Adams's zeal for promoting geographical and mathematical knowledge. He again joined Porter in the expedition for the suppression of piracy in the West Indies, and he died on that station in 1823, much respected in the service."

[7] In October, 1888, this society gave up its organization, and the sum of $1,265.10 was given to the American Unitarian a.s.sociation for the establishment of a publishing fund.

[8] Unitarian Biography, I. 40, Memoir by Henry Ware, Jr.

[9] William Allen, Memoir of John Codman, 81.

[10] Thomas Belsham, 1750-1829, was a dissenting English preacher and teacher. In 1789 he became a Unitarian, and was settled in Birmingham. From 1805 to his death he preached to the Ess.e.x Street congregation in London. He wrote a popular work on the Evidences of Christianity, and he translated the Epistles of St. Paul. He was a vigorous and able writer.

[11] Memoir of W.E. Channing, by W.H. Channing, I. 380.

[12] Among the controversial works printed in Boston at this time was Yates's Vindication of Unitarianism, an English book, which was republished in 1816.

[13] The entrance to the vestry of Federal Street Church was on Berry Street, hence the name given the conference.

[14] Christian Examiner, I. 248.

[15] American Unitarian Biography, Life of Henry Ware, I. 241.

[16] James Walker, Christian Examiner, X. 129; John G. Palfrey, Christian Examiner, XI. 84; The Divinity School of Harvard University: Its History, Courses of Study, Aims and Advantages.

[17] Letters on the Ministry, Ritual, and Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church, addressed to Rev. William E. Wyatt, D.D., in Reply to a Sermon, Baltimore, 1820.

[18] Comparative Moral Tendency of Trinitarian and Unitarian Doctrines, addressed to Rev. Samuel Miller, Boston, 1823.

[19] H.B. Adams, Life and Writings of Jared Sparks, I. 175.

[20] Dr. George E. Ellis, in Unitarianism: Its origin and History, 147.

The most prominent instance was that of the First Church in Dedham, and this was decided by legal proceedings. "The question recognized by the court was simply this: whether the claimants had been lawfully appointed deacons of the First Church; that is, whether the body which had appointed them was by law the First Church. The decision of the court was as follows: 'When the majority of the members of a Congregational church separate from the majority of the parish, the members who remain, although a minority, const.i.tute the church in such parish, and retain the rights and property belonging thereto.'

This legal decision would have been regarded as a momentous one had it applied only to the single case then in hearing. But it was the establishment of a precedent which would dispose of all cases then to be expected to present themselves in the troubles of the time between parishes and the churches gathered within them. The full purport of this decision was that the law did not recognize a church independently of its connection with the parish in which it was gathered, from which it might sever itself and carry property with it." It was in accordance with the practice in New England for at least a century preceding the decision in the Dedham case, and the decision was rendered as the result of this practice.

[21] H.B. Adams, Life and Writings of Jared Sparks, gives a most interesting account in his earlier chapters of the origin of Unitarianism, especially of its beginnings in Baltimore and other places outside New England.

[22] James Garrard, governor of Kentucky from 1796 to 1802, was a Unitarian. Harry Toulmin, president of Transylvania Seminary and secretary of the state of Kentucky, was also a Unitarian.

VI.

THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN a.s.sOCIATION.

The time had come for the liberals to organize in a more distinctive form, in order that they might secure permanently the results they had already attained. The demand for organization, however, came almost wholly from the younger men, those who had grown up under the influence of the freer life of the liberal churches or who had been trained in the independent spirit of the Divinity School at Harvard. The older men, for the most part, were bound by the traditions of "the standing order":[1] they could not bring themselves to desire new conditions and new methods.

The spirit of the older and leading laymen and ministers is admirably ill.u.s.trated in Rev. O.B. Frothingham's account of his father in his book ent.i.tled Boston Unitarianism. They were interested in many, public-spirited enterprises, and the social circle in which they moved was cultivated and refined; but they were provincial, and little inclined to look beyond the limits of their own immediate interests. Dr. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, minister of the First Church in Boston, one of the earliest American students of German literature and philosophy, and a man of rational insight and progressive thinking, may be regarded as a representative of the best type of Boston minister in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a sermon preached in 1835, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his settlement, Dr. Frothingham said that he had never before used the word "Unitarian", in his pulpit, though his church had been for thirty years counted as Unitarian. "We have," he said, "made more account of the religious sentiment than of theological opinions." In this att.i.tude he was in harmony with the leading men of his day.[2]

Channing, for instance, was opposed to every phase of religious organization that put bonds upon men; and he would accept nothing in the form of a creed. He severely condemned "the guilt of a sectarian spirit,"

and said that "to bestow our affections on those who are ranged under the same human leader, or who belong to the same church with ourselves, and to withhold it from others who possess equal if not superior virtue, because they bear a different name, is to prefer a party to the church of Christ."[3] In 1831 he described Unitarianism as being "characterized by nothing more than by the spirit of freedom and individuality. It has no established creed or symbol," he wrote. "Its friends think each for himself, and differ much from each other."[4] Later he wrote to a friend: "I distrust sectarian influence more and more. I am more detached from a denomination, and strive to feel more my connection with the Universal Church, with all good and holy men. I am little of a Unitarian, and stand aloof from all but those who strive and pray for clearer light, who look for a purer and more effectual manifestation of Christian truth."[5]

Many of the Unitarians were in fullest sympathy with Channing as to the fundamental law of spiritual freedom and as to the evils of sectarianism. A considerable number of them were in agreement with him as to the course pursued by the Unitarian movement. Having escaped from one sect, they were not ready to commit themselves to the control of another. Therefore they withheld themselves from all definitely organized phases of Unitarianism, and would give no active support to those who sought to bring the liberals together for purposes of protection and forward movement. Under these circ.u.mstances it was difficult to secure concert of action or to make successful any definite missionary enterprise, however little of sectarianism it might manifest. Even to the present time Unitarianism has shown this independence on the part of local churches and this freedom on the part of individuals. Because of this att.i.tude, unity of action has been difficult, and denominational loyalty never strong or a.s.sured.