The Vickers and Purcell Controversy.
Respectfully presented to all the lovers of truth.
By John B. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati,
Printed for the benefit of Mt. St. Mary's Seminary of the West. Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Holy Apostolic See, Cincinnati and New York. 1868.
The gentleman calling himself the Rev. Thomas Vickers, Minister of the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati, is a living contradiction in terms. According to the statement in the volume before us, he believes in no personal God, declares "the Christ" to be "a theological fiction," and the Bible "a crutch." What there is "reverend" about Mr. Vickers, what sense there is in his claiming the title of minister, or what appropriateness in his professing to belong to a Congregational Society, we are at a loss to divine. What greater absurdity of nomenclature can there be, than calling a pantheistic lecturer against Christianity and Theism by the name of a Congregational minister? Of what use is a church, or a minister, on his principles, or, rather, denial of principles? Nevertheless, in this very absurd and unnecessary character of minister, Mr. Vickers appeared at the laying of the corner-stone of a new temple of German infidelity, denominated, with a ludicrous disregard of common sense, St. John's Church, and made a speech, which occasioned the controversy contained in the little volume under notice. In this speech, Mr. Vickers welcomed and blessed the undertaking of the society of German infidels calling themselves St. John's Church, in the name of the Anglo-American portion of the population of Cincinnati. At the same time, he gave utterance to the most contemptuous scorn of everything which the professedly Christian part of that population holds as sacred and divine in religion. This was, to say the least of it, a piece of cool impertinence on the part of the young gentleman in question. Mr. Vickers, we believe, passed a few years in Germany, studying what he calls "science;" and he appears to have returned with a strong impression on his own mind that he is destined to enlighten the benighted believers in the Christian revelation in Cincinnati with the rays of this German luminary. He is not the first to engage in this experiment. It has been tried before, and we recommend to the attention of the illuminati of Cincinnati the following description of its result, from the pen of Dr. Hedge, of Harvard University. It is extracted from an article in the Christian Examiner:
"Some thirty years ago, a club was formed of young men, mostly preachers of the Unitarian connection, with a sprinkling of elect ladies—all fired with the hope of a new era in philosophy and religion, which seemed to them about to dawn upon the world. There was something in the air—a boding of some great revolution—some new avatar of the Spirit, at whose birth these expectants were called to assist
'Of old things, all are over old:
Of old things, none are good enough:
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.'
"For myself, though I hugely enjoyed the sessions, and shared many of the ideas which ruled the conclave, and the ferment they engendered, I had no belief in ecclesiastical revolutions to be accomplished with set purpose; and I seemed to discern a power and meaning in the old, which the more impassioned would not allow. I had even then made up my mind, that the method of revolution in theology, is not discussion, but development. My historical conscience, then as since, balanced my neology, and kept me ecclesiastically conservative, though intellectually radical. There haunted me that verse in Goethe's bright song, 'The General Confession,' as applicable to ecclesiastical incendiarism as it is to political:
'Came a man would fain renew me,
Made a botch and missed his shot.
Shoulder shrugging, prospects gloomy:
He was called a patriot.
'And I cursed the senseless drizzle,
Kept my proper goal in view:
Blockhead! when it burns, let sizzle;
When all's burned, then build anew.'
Others judged differently; they saw in every case of dissent, and in every new dissentient, the harbinger of the New Jerusalem. 'The present church rattles ominously,' they said; 'it must vanish presently, and we shall have a real one.' There have been some vanishings since then. Ah me! how much has vanished! Of that goodly company, what heroes and heroines have vanished from the earth! Thrones have toppled, dynasties have crumbled, institutions that seemed fast-rooted in the everlasting hills have withered away. But the church that was present then, and was judged moribund by transcendental zeal, and rattled so ominously in transcendental ears, is present still.
"It was finally resolved to start a journal that should represent the ideas which had mainly influenced the association already tending to dissolution. How to procure the requisite funds was a question of some difficulty, seeing how hardly philosophic and commercial speculation conspire. An appeal was made. Would Mammon have the goodness to aid an enterprise whose spirit rebuked his methods and imperilled his assets? The prudent God disclaimed the imputed verdure; and the organ of American Transcendentalism, with no pecuniary basis, committed to the chance and gratuitous efforts and editing of friends, if intellectually and spiritually prosperous, had no statistical success. It struggled, through four years, with all the difficulties of eleemosynary journalism; and then, significantly enough, with a word concerning the 'Millennial Church,' sighed its last breath, and gave up the ghost. I prize the four volumes among the choicest treasures of my library. They contain some of Emerson's, of Theodore Parker's, of Margaret Fuller's, of Thoreau's best things; not to speak of writers less absolute and less famous.
"Meanwhile the association, if so it could be termed, had gradually dissolved. Some of the members turned papists—I should say, sought refuge in the bosom of the Catholic Church. A few of the preachers pursued their calling, and perhaps have contributed somewhat to liberalize and enlarge the theology of their day. Some have slipped their moorings on this bank and shoal of time. One sank beneath the wave, whose queenly soul had no peer among the women of this land. Of one
'A strange and distant mould
Wraps the mortal relics cold.'