Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

One instance of this is the opposition to investigation. A Mediums' National Defence Association was in open operation before 1890. A leading Spiritualist paper suggested in 1876, that the would-be inquirer should be "tied securely hand and foot, and placed in a strong iron cage, with a rope or small chain put tightly about his neck, and fastened to an iron ring in the wall." Early in 1897, some young men who claimed to have exposed an impostor, before a large audience in the Spiritualist Temple in Boston, were prosecuted by his admirers on the charge of having disturbed public worship.

V. During the last quarter of the century, free love has been much less prominent than before in Spiritualistic teachings; but the only Americans who were able to proclaim liberty without encouraging self-indulgence, prior to 1870, were the logical and scholarly Transcendentalists. Theodore Parker, for instance, is to be reckoned among the followers of Hegel rather than of Schelling; for he tried by hard study and deep thought to build up a consistent system of religion and morality by making deductions from a few central principles which he revered as great primary intuitions, held always and everywhere sacred. His faith in his ideas of God, duty, and immortality was very firm; and he did his best to live and think accordingly. He began to preach in 1836, the year of the publication of Emerson's first book, but soon found his work hindered by an idolatry of the Bible, then prevalent even among Unitarians. Familiarity with German scholarship enabled him to teach his people to think rationally.

His brethren in the Unitarian ministry were alarmed; and a sermon which he preached in Boston against the mediatorship of Jesus made it impossible for him to occupy an influential pulpit. The lectures which he delivered that year in a hall in the city, and published in 1842, won the support of many seekers for a new religion. They voted that he should "have a chance to be heard in Boston"; and on February 16, 1845, he preached in a large hall to what soon became a permanent and famous congregation.

Thither, as Parker said, he "came to build up piety and morality; to pull down only what cumbered the ground." His main purpose to the last was to teach "the naturalness of religion," "the adequacy of man for his functions" without priestly aid, and, most important of all, that superiority of the real Deity to the pictures drawn in the orthodox creeds, which Parker called "the infinite perfection of God." He was singularly successful in awakening the spirit of religion in men who were living without it, but the plainness with which he stated his faith, in sermons which had a large circulation, called out many attacks. Prayers were publicly offered up in Boston, asking that the Lord would "put a hook in this man's jaws, so that he may not be able to preach, or else remove him out of the way and let his influence die with him." No controversy hindered his labouring systematically for the moral improvement of his hearers, who sometimes amounted to three thousand. His sermons are full of definite appeals for self-control and self-culture; and his personal interest in every individual who could be helped was so active that he soon had seven thousand names on his pastoral visiting list. Appeals for advice came from strangers at a distance, and were never neglected.

Not one of the great national sins, however popular, escaped his severe rebuke; and he became prominent as early as 1845 among the preachers against slavery. He was active in many ways as an abolitionist, but was not a disunionist. He seldom quitted his pulpit without speaking for the slave; and every phase of the anti-slavery movement is illustrated in his published works. Pro-slavery politicians were as bitter as orthodox clergymen against him; and he describes himself as "continually fired upon for many years from the barroom and pulpit." His resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law caused him to be arrested and prosecuted, in company with Wendell Phillips, by the officials of the national Government.

Desire to awaken the people to the danger that lay in the growth of the national sin made him begin to lecture in 1844. Invitations flowed in freely; and he said, after he had broken down under the joint burden of overwork and of exposure in travelling: "Since 1848, I have lectured eighty or a hundred times each year, in every Northern State east of the Mississippi,—once also in a slave State and on slavery itself." This was his favourite subject, but he never missed an opportunity of encouraging intellectual independence; and he found he could say what he pleased. The total number of hearers exceeded half a million; among them were the most influential men in the North; and he never failed to make himself understood. No one else did so much to develop that love of the people for Union and Liberty which secured emancipation. His works have no such brilliancy as Emerson's; but they burned at the time of need with a much more warm and steady light. No words did more to melt the chains of millions of slaves. No excess of individualism made him shrink back, like Emerson, from joining the abolitionists; or discredit them, as Thoreau did, by publicly renouncing his allegiance to Massachusetts in 1854, when that State stood foremost on the side of freedom.

The account of a solitary life in the woods, which Thoreau published that year, has done much to encourage independence of public opinion; and Americans of that generation needed sadly to be told that they took too little amusement, especially out of doors, and made too great haste to get rich. Their history, however, like that of the Swiss, Scotch, and ancient Athenians, proves that it is the industrious, enterprising, money-making nations that are best fitted for maintaining free institutions. As for individual independence of thought and action, the average man will enjoy much more of it, while he keeps himself in comfortable circumstances by regular but not excessive work, than he could if he were to follow the advice of an author who prided himself on not working more than "about six weeks in a year," and on enduring privations which apparently shortened his days.

Thoreau's self-denial was heroic; but he sometimes failed to see the right of his neighbours to indulge more expensive tastes than his own. The necessary conditions of health and comfort for different individuals vary much more than he realised. Many a would-be reformer still complains of the "luxury" of people who find physical rest or mental culture in innocent ways, not particularly to his own fancy. Such censures are really intolerant. They are survivals of that meddlesome disposition which has sadly restricted freedom of trade, amusement, and worship.

We have had only one Emerson; but many scholarly Transcendentalists have laboured to construct the new morality needed in the nineteenth century. Parker's work has peculiar interest, because done in a terrible emergency; but others have toiled as profitably though less famously. The search after fundamental intuitions has led to a curious variety of statements which agree only in the assumption of infallibility; but the result has been the general agreement of liberal preachers in teaching a system of ethics at once free from superstition, bigotry, or asceticism, and at the same time vigorous enough to repress impure desire and encourage active philanthropy. Theology has improved in liberality, as well as in claiming less prominence. Thus the clergy have come into much more friendly relations with the philosophers than in the middle of the century. Our popular preachers quote Emerson; but really they follow, though often unconsciously, the methods of Hegel and Kant. This increases their sympathy with Parker, who has the advantage over Emerson of having believed strongly in personal immortality. His works are circulated by the very denomination which cast him out. The most popular preachers in many sects openly accept him and Emerson among their highest authorities. Transcendentalism has become the foundation of liberal Christianity.

This agreement is not, however, necessary and may not be permanent. Hegel's great success was in bringing forward the old dogmas with new claims to infallibility. When some of his disciples showed that his methods were equally well adapted for the destruction of orthodoxy, Schelling gave his last lectures in its defence. The singular fitness of traditions for acceptance as intuitions has been proved, late in the century, by the Rev. Joseph Cook in Boston as well as by many speakers at the Concord School of Philosophy. The reactionary tendency is already so strong that it may yet become predominant. We must not forget that Shelley called himself an atheist, or that among Hegel's most famous followers were Strauss and Renan. Who can say whether unbelief, orthodoxy, or liberal Christianity is the legitimate outcome of this ubiquitous philosophy?