Part 36

It has often been assumed that Unitarianism attracts only intellectual persons; but it also appeals to practical business men, legislators, and the leaders of political life. In Maine have been Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin, Governor Edward Kent, and Chief Justice John Appleton. In New Hampshire it has appealed to such men as Chief Justices Cushing, Henry A. Bellows, Jeremiah Smith, and, Charles Doe, as well as to Governors Onslow Stearns, Charles H. Bell, Benjamin F. Prescott, and Ichabod Goodwin; in Rhode Island, Governors Lippitt and Seth Paddelford, Chief Justices Samuel Ames and Samuel Eddy, General Ambrose E. Burnside, and William B. Weeden, historian and economist. Alphonso Taft and George Hoadly, both governors of Ohio, were Unitarians, as were Austin Blair, John T. Bagley, Charles S. May, and Henry H. Crapo, governors of Michigan. Among the prominent Unitarians of Iowa have been Senator William B. Allison and General George W. McCrary. In California may be named Leland Stanford, Horace Davis, Chief Justice W.H. Beatty, and Oscar L. Shafter of the Supreme Court.

What Unitarianism has been in the lives of its men and women may be most conspicuously seen in Boston and the region about it, for there throughout the first half of the nineteenth century Unitarianism was the dominant form of Christianity. Of the period from 1826 to 1832, when Dr. Lyman Beecher was settled in Boston, Mrs. Stowe has given this testimony: "All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarians. All the trustees and professors of Harvard College were Unitarians. All the élite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization, so carefully ordained by the Pilgrim fathers, had been nullified." Of the same period Dr. Beecher wrote, "All offices were in the hands of Unitarians."

These statements were literally true, except in so far as they implied that Unitarians used high positions in order to overthrow the old institutions of Massachusetts and substitute those of their own devising. The calmer judgment of the present day would not accept this conclusion, and it has no historic foundation. The religious development of Boston brought its churches into the acceptance of a tolerant, rational, and practical form of Christianity, that was not dogmatic or sectarian. It took the Unitarian name, but only in the sense of rejecting the harsher interpretations of the doctrine of the Trinity and of election. The members of the Unitarian churches during this period were devout in an unostentatious manner, pious after a simple fashion, loyal Christians without excess of zeal, lovers of liberty, but in a conservative spirit. This simple form of piety enabled the men who accepted it to govern the state in a most faithful manner. They managed its affairs justly, wisely, and in the true intent of economy. Sometimes it was complained that they held a much larger number of offices than was their proportion according to population; but to this John G. Palfrey replied that the people of the state had confidence in them, and elected them because nobody else governed so well.

With the aid of the biography of James Sullivan, judge, legislator, attorney-general, and diplomatist, we may study the constituency of a single church in Boston, the Brattle Street Church. We find there James Bowdoin and John Hancock, rival candidates for the position of governor of the state in 1785. The same rivalry occurred twenty years later between James Sullivan and Caleb Strong, both of the number of its communicants. On the parish committee of this church at one time were Hancock, Bowdoin, and Sullivan, who became governors of the state, and Judges Wendell and John Lowell. Some years later there were included in the congregation such men as Daniel Webster, Harrison Gray Otis, Abbott Lawrence, and Amos Lawrence, who was one of the deacons for many years.

Of the distinguished business men of Boston may be named John Amory Lowell, John C. Amory, Jonathan Phillips (the confidential friend and supporter of Dr. Channing), Thomas Wigglesworth, J. Huntington Wolcott, Augustus Hemenway, Stephen C. Phillips, and Thomas Tileston. Francis Cabot Lowell was largely concerned in building up the manufacturing interests of Massachusetts, especially the cotton industry; and the city of Lowell took his name in recognition of the importance of his leadership in this direction. For similar reasons the city of Lawrence was named after Abbott Lawrence, minister of the United States to Great Britain, who was one of the leading merchants of Boston in the China trade, and was also largely concerned in the development of cotton manufacturing. With these business and manufacturing interests Amos Lawrence was also connected. Nathan Appleton was associated with Francis C. Lowell in the establishment of the great manufacturing interests that have been a large source of the wealth of Massachusetts. Thomas H. Perkins, from whom was named the Perkins Institute for the Blind, was also concerned in the China trade and in the first development of railroads. Robert Gould Shaw was another leading merchant, who left a large sum of money for the benefit of the children of mariners. John Murray Forbes was a builder of railroads, notably active in the financial support of the national government during the civil war, and a generous friend of noble men and interests. Nathaniel Thayer was a manager of railroads, erected Thayer Hall at Harvard College, and bore the expenses of Agassiz's expedition to South America.

A Boston man by birth and training, who knew the defects as well as the merits of the class of men and women who have been named, has given generous testimony to the high qualities of mind and heart possessed by these Unitarians. In writing of his maternal grandfather, Octavius Brooks Frothingham has said: "Peter C. Brooks was an admirable example of the Unitarian laymen of that period, industrious, honest, faithful in all relations of life, charitable, public-spirited, intelligent, sagacious, mingling the prudence of the man of affairs with the faith of the Christian.... As one recalls the leading persons in Brattle Street, Federal Street, Chauncy Place, King's Chapel, the New North, the New South,--men like Adams, Eliot, Perkins, Bumstead, Lawrence, Sullivan, Jackson, Judge Shaw, Daniel Webster, Jacob Bigelow, T.B. Wales, Dr. Bowditch,--forms of dignity and of worth rise before the mind. Better men there are not. More honorable men, according to the standard of the time, there are not likely to be.... He joined the church and was a consistent church member. He was not effusive, demonstrative, or loud-voiced. His name did not stand high on church lists or among the patrons of the faith. His was the calm, rational, sober belief of the thoughtful, educated, honorable men of his day,--men like Lemuel Shaw, Joseph Story, Daniel A. White,--intellectual, noble people, with worthy aims, a lofty sense of duty, a strong conviction of the essential truths of revealed Christianity; sincere believers in the gospel, of enduring principle, of pure, consistent, blameless life and conduct. Speculative theology he cared little or nothing about. He was no disputant, no doubter, no casuist; of the heights of mysticism, of the depths of infidelity, he knew nothing. He was conservative, of course, from temperament rather than from inquiry. He took the literal, prose view of Calvinism, and rejected doctrines which did not commend themselves to his common sense. In a word, he was a Unitarian of the old school.... The Unitarian laity in general, both men and women, had a genuine desire to render the earthly lot of mankind more tolerable. It is not too much to say that they started every one of our best secular charities. They were exceedingly liberal in their gifts to Harvard College, and to other colleges as well--for they were not at all sectarian, as their large subscriptions to the Roman Catholic cathedral proved. Whatever tended to exalt humanity, in their view, was encouraged. They were as noble a set of men and women as ever lived."

This estimate of the Unitarians of Boston during the first half of the nineteenth century is eminently just and accurate. To a large extent these men and their associates in the Unitarian churches gave to the city its worth and its character; and they built up the industries, the commerce, the educational and philanthropic interests, and the progressive legislation of Massachusetts. They were men of integrity and sincerity, who were generous, faithful, and just. They accepted the religion of the spirit, and they gave it expression in daily conduct and character.

F.B. Carpenter, Six Months in the White House, 190.

James Parton, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 711.

Charles W. Upham, Life of Timothy Pickering, IV. 327.

P.L. Ford's edition Jefferson's Works, X.220.

Life of Pickering, IV. 326.

P.L. Ford, The True George Washington, 81.

P.L. Ford, The Many-sided Franklin, 174. See Diary of Ezra Stiles, III. 387.

John Quincy Adams, in reply to a question about the church in Washington, said: "I go there to church, although I am not decided in my mind as to all the controverted doctrines of religion." Years later he said to a preacher in the Unitarian church at Quincy: "I agree entirely with the ground you took in your discourse. You did not speak of any particular class of doctrines that were everlasting, but of the great, fundamental principles in which all Christians agree; and these, I think, are what will be permanent." See A.B. Muzzey, Reminiscences and Memorials of the Men of the Revolution and their Families, 53.

William W. Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story, 57, 93. Joseph Story grew away from Calvinism in early manhood, and accepted a humanitarian view of the nature of Christ. "No man was ever more free from a spirit of bigotry and proselytism," says his biographer. "He gladly allowed every one freedom of belief and claimed only that it should be a genuine conviction and not a mere theologic opinion, considering the true faith of every man to be the necessary exponent of his nature, and honoring a religious life more than a formal creed. He admitted within the pale of salvation Mohammedan and Christian, Catholic and infidel. He believed that whatever is sincere and honest is recognized by God--that as the views of any sect are but human opinion, susceptible of error on every side, it behooves all men to be on their guard against arrogance of belief--and that in the sight of God it is not the truth or falsehood of our views, but the spirit in which we believe which alone is of vital consequence. His moral sense was not satisfied with a theory of religion founded upon the depravity of man and recognizing an austere and vengeful God, nor could he give his metaphysical assent to the doctrine of the Trinity. In the doctrines of liberal Christianity he found the resolution of his doubts, and from the moment he embraced the Unitarian faith he became a warm and unhesitating believer."

For an interesting picture of New England Unitarianism see Recollections of my Mother (Mrs. Anne Jean Lyman), by Mrs. J.P. Lesley. Mrs. Lyman's home was in Northampton, Mass. The Reminiscences of Caroline C. Briggs describe life in the same town and under similar conditions. Also Memoir of Mary L. Ware, Memorial of Joseph and Lucy Clark Allen by their Children, and Life of Dr. Samuel Willard.

Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, 532. In a speech to the overseers of Harvard University in 1845, Josiah Quincy said: "I never did and never will call myself a Unitarian; because the name has the aspect, and is loaded by the world with the imputation of sectarianism." His biographer says: "He regarded differences as of slight importance, especially as to matters beyond the grasp of the human intellect. His catholicity of spirit fraternized with all who profess to call themselves Christians, and who prove their title to the name by their lives." It was precisely this catholicity of spirit that was the most characteristic feature of early American Unitarianism, and not the rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity. However, Josiah Quincy was undoubtedly a Unitarian, both in what he rejected and in what he affirmed, as may be seen from these words recorded in his diary in 1854: "From the doctrines with which metaphysical divines have chosen to obscure the word of God,--such as predestination, election, reprobation, etc.,--I turn with loathing to the refreshing assurance which, to my mind, contains the substance of revealed religion,--in every nation he who feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him."

Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, II. 109.

Ibid., 144.

Thomas C. Amory. Life of James Sullivan.

John Lowell, a son of Judge John Lowell, and a brother of Dr. Charles Lowell of the West Church, was the author of an effective controversial pamphlet entitled Are you a Christian or a Calvinist? Or do you prefer the Authority of Christ to that of the Genevan Reformer? Both the Form and Spirit of these Questions being suggested by the Late Review of American Unitarianism in The Panoplist, and by the Rev. Mr. Worcester's Letter to Mr. Channing. By a Layman. Boston, 1815.

Nathan Appleton's interest in theology may be seen in his book entitled The Doctrine of Original Sin and the Trinity, discussed in a Correspondence between a Clergyman of the Episcopal Church, in England, and a Layman of Boston, United States, published in Boston in 1859. "I was brought up," he said in one of these letters, "in the strictest form of Calvinistic Congregationalism; but since arriving at an age capable of examining the subject, and after a careful study of it, I have renounced what appear to me unworthy views of the Deity, for a system which appears to me more worthy of him, and less abhorrent to human reason." "I can say," he wrote in another letter, "that the Unitarian party embraces the most intelligent and high-minded portion of the community. It is my opinion that the views of the Unitarians are the best and only security against the spirit of infidelity which is prevailing so extensively amongst the most highly educated and intelligent men in Europe." See Memoir of Nathan Appleton, by Robert C. Winthrop.

John Murray Forbes: Letters and Recollections, edited by his daughter, Sarah Forbes Hughes.

Boston Unitarianism, 93, 94, 101, 127.

XVIII.

UNITARIANS AND EDUCATION.

The interest of Unitarians in education has always been very great, but it has not been in the direction of building and fostering sectarian institutions. As a body, Unitarians have not only been opposed to denominational colleges, but they have been leaders in promoting unsectarian education. Freedom of academic teaching and the scientific study of theology may be found where Unitarianism has no existence, and yet it is significant that in this country such mental liberty should have first found expression under Unitarian auspices. From the first, American Unitarianism has been unsectarian and liberty-loving, taking an attitude of toleration, free investigation, and loyalty to truth. That it has always been faithful to its ideal cannot be maintained, and yet its history shows that the open-mindedness and the spirit of freedom have never been wholly ignored.