Unitarianism

by W. G. Tarrant

In the British Isles and colonial centres there are nearly four hundred places of worship, and a similar number of ministers; in many cases the congregations are small, and the list of ministers includes some that are retired and others who are regarded as 'lay-workers' only. There are about five hundred ministers and congregations in the United States. Two or three colleges in England and a similar number in America train students for the ministry, but many join the ranks from other denominations. Women are eligible as ministers, but actual instances are rare. Local unions exist to a fairly adequate extent. In England and America National Conferences meet at intervals; the Unitarian Associations continuously publish literature, send out lecturers, and promote new congregations. There are several periodicals. The most noteworthy in England is the Hibbert Journal, which follows in the line of other reviews of high standard in past years, and which specially illustrates the spirit animating a large and influential section of the body. It is promoted for free and open intercourse between serious thinkers of all schools of theological and social philosophy, and is reported to have a circulation quite beyond that of any similar publication. The 'Hibbert Lectures,' connected with the trust founded in 1847 for the diffusion of 'Christianity in its simplest and most intelligible form,' further exemplify the broad interpretation of this duty. Scholars of different churches have contributed to the series of volumes well known to religious students. The principle followed in general is stated in the oft-quoted phrase—'Free Learning and Free Teaching in Theology.'

It is needful, perhaps, to guard against the inference that the Unitarian movement is only, or in the main, an intellectual one. Since 1833, in consequence of a visit by Dr. Joseph Tuckerman, from Boston, 'Domestic Missions' were founded, to promote the religious improvement of the neglected poor, and to-day this kind of work still goes on with much social benefit in our larger cities. Similar benevolence has marked the American side. Many congregations, too, are composed largely of working-people, and in recent years a Van Mission has carried the Unitarian message into the country villages, mining districts, and other populous parts. These aspects of their activity are apt to be obscured owing to a pardonable disposition of Unitarianism to point to the 'great names' associated with their churches. In the American list, for example, we find Emerson, Longfellow, O.W. Holmes, Bryant, Hawthorne—Whittier and Lowell had close affinities; Bancroft, Motley, Prescott, Parkman; Margaret Fuller, Louisa Alcott; and statesmen, jurists, merchants, and scientists too numerous to set down here. Obviously, the English side cannot rival such a brilliant roll; the élite of society has not been here, as in New England, on the side of the newer theology. Yet English Unitarianism has its eminent names also, alike in literature, science, politics, philanthropy, and scholarship of various kinds; and the body is credited with a civic strength out of proportion to the number of its avowed adherents, while its philanthropies have been of the same broad and enlightened kind as those which enrich the American record.

II. IDEAS AND TENDENCIES

More important to the general public is the question of ideas which now prevail among Unitarians. Our preceding sketch has shown some of the results of the freedom claimed by them in one generation after another. We have now to see in what respects the nineteenth century effected a further change.

In the first third of the century there can be no doubt that Unitarians adhered tenaciously, but with discrimination, to the idea of the final authority of the Bible. In this respect they were like Protestants generally, and though they nevertheless brought 'reason' to bear on their reading of the Scriptures, other Protestants did the same, if to a less degree. Both in the United States and in England this attitude was still common up till nearly the middle of the century, and instances could easily be found later still. The miraculous element was thus retained, though as we have seen as early as in Priestley's case there was a tendency to eliminate some part of the supernatural. That a thoroughgoing belief could be stated in good round terms is evident from the following sentence taken from a book issued by Dr. Orville Dewey (1794-1882), one of the most eloquent pulpit orators of his day. The book is entitled Unitarian Belief, its date is 1839. Referring to the Bible the author says, 'Enough is it for us, that the matter is divine, the doctrines true, the history authentic, the miracles real, the promises glorious, the threatenings fearful.' There is good ground for taking this as a fair example of the ideas prevalent among American Unitarians at that time. Perhaps the statement was made the more emphatic in view of some remarks recently uttered by two young men whose influence, along with more general tendencies, proved fatal to the old doctrine.

One of these young men was James Martineau (1805-1900), who at the age of thirty-one was already known as a writer and preacher far above the average. He was then resident in Liverpool, where he wrote a remarkable little book with the title The Rationale of Religious Inquiry (1886). More than fifty years later he published an even more remarkable book, The Seat of Authority in Religion. There is, indeed, half a century of development between the two books, yet the germinal thought of the second may be detected in the first. The point at issue is where the ultimate appeal should lie in matters of religion. With the keen eye for the weaknesses of his fellow-worshippers which always characterized him, Martineau said, 'The Unitarian takes with him [to the study of the Bible] the persuasion that nothing can be scriptural which is not rational and universal.' This fixed opinion, which he ranks along with the foregone conclusions of other types of theologian, was just that which we have observed in the general course of liberals from Locke onwards. Though in a note Martineau concedes that his words may somewhat strongly accentuate the common opinion, he represents Unitarians as virtually saying, 'If we could find the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement, and everlasting torments in the Scriptures, we should believe them; we reject them, not because we deem them unreasonable, but because we perceive them to be unscriptural. For my own part, I confess myself unable to adopt this language'—not, he says, but that he does think them actually 'unscriptural.' 'But I am prepared to maintain, that if they were in the Bible, they would still be incredible…. Reason is the ultimate appeal, the supreme tribunal, to which the test of even Scripture must be brought.' It abates nothing from the force of these declarations that then, and for some time afterwards, Martineau himself accepted the miracles. The 'old school' perceived the sharp edge of such a weapon, and its wielder was during many years regarded as a 'dangerous' innovator.

The other young writer to whom reference has been made was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), son and grandson of ministers of the liberal Congregational type in New England and himself for a short time minister of the Second Church, Boston. Preferring the freedom of the lecturing platform, Emerson had already withdrawn from the ministry, but in 1838 he gave an 'Address to the Senior Class' in the Divinity School, Harvard, which proved a second landmark in the history of American Unitarianism. Nineteen years before, Channing had decisively pointed out that Unitarianism and orthodoxy are two distinct theologies. In the Divinity School Address, Emerson maintained that the idea of 'supernaturalism' is rendered obsolete by a recognition of the reality of things. Bringing a gift of pungent prose to the service of a poetic imagination, Emerson startled the decorously dignified authorities of the New England pulpit; he 'saved us,' says Lowell, 'from the body of this death.' He pointed from the record of miracles past to an ever-present miracle. To the illumination of 'reason,' which Unitarians had followed so loyally—within the proviso of a special revelation—he brought the light of a mystic intuition. Some of his elders judged it to be 'false fire' perilously akin to the 'enthusiasm' which their predecessors had so often condemned. In daring simplicity he urged that there had been 'noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.' 'The soul knows no persons.' The divine is always latent in the human. Revelation is not ended—as if God were dead!

The shock to the old-fashioned minds was immense. Long and far-sounding debate followed, though Emerson, with provoking self-possession, declined to argue. He simply 'announced.' This oracular attitude certainly affected some of the younger men greatly, but fortunately for the success of the new gospel one of these younger men translated the oracular into a more popular and reasoned form. Three years after Emerson's Address, Theodore Parker (1810-60) completed the Unitarian trilogy by a sermon on The Transient and the Permanent in Theology. It may be said to have done for Emerson's message the kind of service rendered by Huxley to Darwin's. Parker at once became a marked man; most Unitarian pulpits were closed against him, but a large hall accommodated the vast crowds that came to hear him. It is doubtful if such numerous congregations ever listened to a Unitarian before or since. He continued an arduous work for some fifteen years, but it wore him out before his time. He was an erudite scholar and a prolific writer. Discarding the claims of Christianity to be the only 'divine revelation,' he based his clear and always optimistic theism on the broad facts of human experience. Ardently interested in social and political questions, he poured satire without stint on the religious defenders of slavery, and himself dared all risks along with the foremost abolitionists. Such a man could not but count for much; and though his radical views in theology greatly disturbed for many years the conservatives in the body—for Unitarianism itself had by this time a well-defined conservative type—they could not fail to permeate the minds of the masses.

Of Emerson's own life-work this is hardly the place to speak at large, but in connection with the development of that 'Religion of the Spirit' in which Dr. Martineau sees the culmination of the theological progress of Unitarianism, Emerson's share must be allowed to be a large one. When Dean Stanley visited America he is said to have reported that he had heard sermons from many pulpits, but 'Emerson was the one preacher in them all.' It is certain that at one time the style, if not also the thought, of Emerson was extensively copied by the preachers, not always to the gain of solidity. A degree of jauntiness appears in the worse specimens of these imitations, and Lord Morley's criticism that Emerson himself was too oblivious of the dark side of human suffering and guilt would doubtless apply to much of the Unitarian eloquence at one time inspired by his witching voice.

This, however, is but one side of the American message in the nineteenth century; evidence abounds that a 'Christocentric' type of teaching, with adhesion to much of old material of the Gospels, held its own till a generation ago, and its peculiar accent is not without echoes to-day. On the whole it is probable that, as at the beginning of the century, the 'liberals' in New England Congregationalism were somewhat shocked at some of the daring views of the Priestleyan Unitarians in England, so even towards its close the general position of thought was more conservative there than was the rule here. Certainly, also, there was a deep, tender tone manifested even where opinion was most radical among the American Unitarians, and of this no better proof can be cited than the large number of hymns of a high order both of thought and expression which have been written among them. They serve to show that a frank acceptance of the evolutionary philosophy by no means necessarily entails the decay of devout personal piety or the loss of beautiful ideals. Among the American hymnists the following are specially eminent, and their productions are often to be found in 'orthodox' collections: Samuel Longfellow (brother to H.W.L.), Samuel Johnson, W.C. Gannett, J.W. Chadwick, and F.L. Hosmer.