Unitarianism in America: A History of its Origin and Development

by George Willis Cooke

Literary Tastes of Unitarian Ministers.

In studying any considerable list of Unitarian ministers, and taking note of their personal tastes and their avocations, it will be seen that a large number of them were lovers of literature, and ardently devoted much of their time to literary pursuits. Not only was there a decidedly literary flavor about their preaching, but they were frequent contributors to The Christian Examiner and The North American Review; and they wrote poems, novels, books of travel, essays, and histories. They were conspicuous in historical and scientific societies, in promoting scientific investigations, in advancing archaeological researches, in every kind of learned inquiry. Their intellectual interests were so catholic and so vigorous that they were not contented with parish and pulpit, and in some cases it would seem that the avocation was as important as the vocation itself.

Dr. Channing would be named as the man who has done most to give direction to the currents of Unitarian thought on theological problems, but he was also conspicuously a philanthropist and reformer. He was less a theologian, in the technical sense, than one who taught men to live in the spirit. His spiritual insight, humanitarian sympathies, and imaginative fellowship with all forms of human experience gave his writings a literary charm and power of a high order. He was a great religious teacher and inspirer, a preacher of unsurpassed gifts of spiritual interpretation, and a prophet of the truer religious life.

The Unitarian leaders who were influenced by the transcendental movement, of which the most prominent were Parker, Hedge, Clarke, and C.C. Everett, interpreted theology in the broadest spirit. Parker was essentially a preacher and reformer. It was the one conspicuous aim of his life to liberate religion from the intellectual thraldom of the past, and to bring it into the open air of the world, where it might be informed of daily experience and gain for itself a rightful opportunity. He was therefore literary, imaginative, ethical, practical. He wrote for The Dial, and established The Massachusetts Review, he was one of the most widely heard of popular lecturers, and he was a leader in the most radical of the reforms prominent in his day. Parker made all wisdom subservient to his religion, treated a wide range of subjects in his pulpit, and brought religion into immediate contact with human life.

Frederic H. Hedge did more than any other man to give Unitarianism a consistent philosophy and theology. His Reason in Religion and Ways of the Spirit have had a profound influence in shaping the thought of the denomination, and have led all American Unitarians to accept his view of the universality of incarnation and the consubstantiality of man and God. He was wise as an interpreter, and by no means wanting in originality, a brilliant essayist, a philosophical historian, and a student of high themes. His Prose Writers of Germany, Hours with the German Classics, Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, and Atheism in Philosophy show the range of his interests and his ability as a thinker.

James Freeman Clarke may be selected as a typical Unitarian minister, who wrote poetry, was more than once an editor, often appeared on the lecture platform, was a frequent contributor to the leading periodicals, wrote several works of biography and history, gave himself zealously to the advocacy of the noblest reforms, and produced many volumes of sermons that have in an unusual degree the merit of directness, literary grace, suggestiveness, and spiritual warmth and insight. His theological writings have been widely read by Unitarians and those not of that fellowship. His Self-culture has been largely circulated as a manual of practical ethics. His Ten Great Religions and its companion volume opened the way in this country for the recognition of the comparative study of religious developments. Not content with so wide a range of studies, he wrote Thomas Didymus, an historical romance concerned with New Testament characters, How to find the Stars, and Exotics, a volume of poetical translation. He was a maker of many books, and all of them were well made. His theology was all the more humane, and his preaching was all the more effective, because he was interested in many subjects and had a real mastery of them.

Charles Carroll Everett was a philosophical thinker and theologian, and the younger generation of Unitarian ministers has been largely influenced by him. His theological work was done in the lecture-room, but it was of first-rate importance. He was a profound thinker, a vigorous writer, and an inspiring teacher. He was an able theologian, philosophical in thought, but deeply spiritual in insight. His work on The Science of Thought shows the depth and vigor of his thinking; but his volumes on The Gospel of Paul, Religions before Christianity, Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, suggest the breadth of his inquiries and the richness of his philosophical investigations. In his position as the dean of the Harvard Divinity School he accomplished his best work, and there his great ability as theologian and philosophical thinker made itself amply manifest.

Another group of men largely influenced by the transcendental movement included David A. Wasson, John Weiss, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Longfellow, Cyrus A. Bartol, Octavius K Frothingham, and William J. Potter. Here we see the literary tendency showing itself distinctly and to much advantage. The first four of these men wrote exquisite hymns and spiritual lyrics, and all of them were contributors to periodical literature or writers of books. Weiss was a literary critic of no mean merit in his lectures on Greek and Shakespearean subjects; and his volumes on American Religion and Immortal Life were purely literary in their method. However deficient were Johnson's books on the religions of India, China, and Persia, from the point, of view of the science of religion, they have not yet been surpassed as interpretations of the inner spirit of Oriental religions. Bartol was a master of an incisive literary method in the pulpit, that gives to his Radical Problems, The Rising Faith, and Principles and Portraits a scintillating power all their own, with epigram and flash of wit on every page. Frothingham published many a volume of sermons; but his biographies of Parker, Gerrit Smith, Wasson, Johnson, Ripley, Channing, and his volume on the History of Transcendentalism in New England, as well as his Boston Unitarianism, and Recollections and Impressions, indicate that his literary interests were quite as active as his theological.