YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

PIONEERS OF RELIGIOUS
LIBERTY IN AMERICA

PIONEERS OF RELIGIOUS
LIBERTY IN AMERICA

Being the Great and Thursday
Lectures delivered in Boston
in nineteen hundred and three

BOSTON
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION
1903

Copyright 1Q03
American Unitarian Association

TO
JANE NORTON GREW
AND
HENRIETTA GODDARD FITZ
WHO MADE THESE LECTURES
POSSIBLE

PREFACE.
Two hundred and seventy-two years ago,
John Cotton, minister of the First Church in
Boston, with the co-operation of his ministerial
associates, established what soon came to be
known as the " Great and Thursday Lecture."
This weekly lecture was in colonial times the
chief social and religious event in Boston. In
1775 it was discontinued; but at the conclusion
of the siege of Boston it was revived, and has
since had a continuous existence. It has been
the occasion for the discussion of public affairs
as well as matters of theological interest. It is
probably a unique institution in American life.
With the aid of two helpful friends, the
American Unitarian Association has been able to
unite with the minister and Standing Committee
of the First Church to carry forward on this
ancient foundation a course of lectures upon
Religious Liberty in America. These lectures
have attracted so much public interest that they
are now published by the Association for larger
circulation.
Samuel A. Eliot.

CONTENTS

FACE

I. William Brewster and the Indepen-
\ DENTS. By Edwin D. Mead ... 3
I. Roger Williams and his Doctrine of
Soul Liberty. By W. H. P. Faunce,
\ D.D., LL.D  49
NlII. Thomas Hooker and the Principle
of Congregational Independency.
i By Williston Walker, D.D. ... 85
IV. William Penn and the Gospel of
THE Inner Light. By Benjamin B.
\ Trueblood, LL.D  125
''V. Thomas Jefferson and the Influ
ence of Democracy upon Religion.
By Thomas R. Slicer, M.A. ... 161
VI. William Ellery Channing and the
Growth of Spiritual Christian
ity. By William W. Fenn . . . 187
VII. Horace Bushnell and Progressive Or
thodoxy. By Washington Gladden,
D.D  227
VIII. HosEA Ballou and the Larger Hope.
By John Coleman Adams, D. D. . . 267

c CONTENTS
PAGE
IX. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the
Doctrine of the Divine Imma
nence. By Francis G. Peabody, D.D. 307
X. Theodore Parker and the Natural
ization of Religion. By James Eells 343
XI. Phillips Brooks and the Unity of the
Spirit. By Samuel A. Eliot, D.D. 369

William Brewster and the Independents

WILLIAM BREWSTER AND THE
INDEPENDENTS.
Puritanism is one of the cardinal words in the
history of the English race. The Puritan move
ment was the new birth of England. It was the
religious and political equivalent of the brilliant
flowering of English genius in the Elizabethan
age. It should have been contemporary with
that ; but it was held back for a generation by
royal and ecclesiastical tyranny, only to come
with the greater energy when it did come. The
new birth of England, it was the birth of New
England. The same great movement planted
New England and created the English Common
wealth. The leaders there and here were actuated
by the same motives and working for the same
great ends. One and the same spirit was in Sir
John Eliot, Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, Milton,
and Vane, and in Bradford, Brewster, Winthrop,
Cotton, Hooker, and Roger Williams. It was
largely accident which determined who should stay
there and who should come here. " New Eng
land," says Maurice, " was a translation into prose
of the dreams which haunted Milton his whole life
long." Massachusetts was a refiige, provided in

4 WILLIAM BREWSTER
the storm and stress, to which thousands more
of Puritans would have come, had their struggle
in England fared worse than it did. The influ
ence of Puritanism upon the English race and
upon the politics of the world was permanent and
profound. " The whole history of English prog
ress since the Restoration, on its moral and spirit
ual sides," says Green in his " History of the
English People," " has been the history of Puri
tanism " ; and Borgeaud, writing in Calvin's city,
describes the Puritan movement under the title
of " The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and
New England." The American republic is the
child of the English Commonwealth. Samuel
Adams, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Lin
coln, and Emerson stand in the apostolic suc
cession to the heroic Puritan group of the seven
teenth century. In Puritanism constitutions, as
we understand the term, written constitutions,
had their birth. The Compact on the " May
flower," the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,
the Agreement of the People, the Instrument of
Government, and Vane's " Healing Question "
were the progenitors of the Constitution of the
United States ; and it is this last, and not the in
stitutions of the mother country, which has pre
scribed political forms and methods to every
English colony during the last century. And,

WILLIAM BREWSTER 5
as Puritan politics has determined the political
usages of the English race from Cromwell's time
to ours, so Puritan religion has shaped its
churches. The vast majority of religious men
of English race to-day belong to churches which
had their genesis or inspiration in the Puritan
movement. The pioneers of religious liberty in America
have all been Puritans. The Puritan has been
a pioneer from the beginning. Puritanism has
meant movement, has meant liberty, has meant
the demand for more light. Its logical polity in
the Church was Independency; and identified
with Independency in some way or other have been
all the eleven pioneers of religious liberty chosen
for treatment in the present course of lectures.
It will be said that Jefferson's antecedents were
not these ; but what Jefferson himself admired in
religion was the simple Congregationalism of the
Baptists, and in politics the New England town
meeting. It will be said that Phillips Brooks
was a bishop. But Phillips Brooks was baptized
in the First Church of Boston ; the blood of
John Cotton was in his veins ; he lost no oppor
tunity to slight the doctrine of apostolic succes
sion ; and his theology, as his successor has well
said, was simply the theology of Horace Bush
nell. In truth, I believe that the radical pioneer

6 WILLIAM BREWSTER
of religious thought and religious liberty can now
rise only in Independency, or there only find his
place ; for in the nature of the case the supreme
authority in every other polity must at some
point or other say, " Thus far and no farther."
The greatest pioneer of religious liberty in
America is not included in the present program.
He was never in New England in the flesh. But
the religious fathers of New England cared little
for the flesh ; and, in spirit, John Calvin was the
greatest force in the Puritanism of New England
and of Old England for three centuries. He is
a force never to be forgotten, but always to be
revered, by the sons of our fathers. I am glad
to see men and magazines speaking to-day of the
" Renaissance of Calvinism." We need such
a renaissance. There are things in Calvin and
Calvinism which we do not want to see have new
birth, and which will not have it; but America
and England certainly need to-day that com
manding consciousness of the sovereignty of God
which made Puritan religion and Puritan politics
potent and sublime. We need to know that any
sovereignty which is not rooted in the divine
sovereignty, or is not in harmony with that, can
not and ought not long endure. We need to
unc^erstand more deeply the relation of that con
ception to all true liberty, equality, and fraternity.

WILLIAM BREWSTER 7
We need to understand more truly than most do
why it was that wherever Calvinism went three
hundred years ago — to Holland to fight under
William the Silent against the Spanish power, to
Scotland with John Knox, to the English Cam
bridge with Thomas Cartwright, or into this
American wilderness with William Brewster and
Thomas Hooker — there went inevitably the
seeds of democracy and of the commonwealth.
It was with Calvin's name upon its lips that
Puritanism was born. In that same conference
at Hampton Court, in 1550, in which John
Hooper, " the first Puritan," declared that " the
usage of generations is not sufficient warrant in
religious matters," he appealed also to " Master
Calvin's way " as the way which it behooved
England to follow in her own reformation.
William Brewster was born four years before
Calvin died. That was a noteworthy year, 1564,
in which John Calvin died and William Shake
speare was born ; in which Michel Angelo died
and Galileo was born, — Galileo, whose life,
ending in 1642, almost exactly covers Brewster's,
which ended in 1644. When Brewster was born
in 1560, Calvinism was pouring into England
with a power which promised to Calvinize
speedily the whole English Church, — which
would have done it but for royal intervention.

8 WILLIAM BREWSTER
Elizabeth had come to the throne two years be
fore ; and the hundreds of English refugees who,
during Mary's reign, had been gathered in little
congregations in Switzerland and along the
Rhine, under Calvin's controlling influence, were
coming home to spread that influence over Eng
land. How great the sum total of religious
leadership in those little congregations appears
sufficiently from the fact that more than half of
Elizabeth's bishops were taken from their
number. It was in East England that Puritanism es
pecially had its home, and above all places in
the University of Cambridge ; for the Puritan
movement at the first was emphatically a scholars'
movement. How deep New England's roots
are in the English Cambridge appears when we
bethink us of the history of the fathers of Plym
outh, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Con
necticut. Brewster and Robinson, Winthrop and
the Massachusetts clergy, Roger Williams, and
Thomas Hooker, — all these were Cambridge
men. It may have been within the very walls of
the university that the agreement was signed
which founded the Massachusetts enterprise.
The half-dozen martyrs of Congregationalism
suffered, three in London, the other three in
Norfolk and Suffolk. Scattered about the east-

WILLIAM BREWSTER 9
€rn counties are the towns and parishes — St.
Edmundsbury ; Norwich ; Groton ; Little Bad-
dow, where Thomas Hooker and John Eliot
taught their school together ; Oates, where Roger
Williams dreamed of toleration in the very spot
afterwards the home of John Locke who made it
law — which are the Meccas of the New Eng-
lander in England.
Where William Brewster was born we do not
know. He succeeded his father as post of
Scrooby in 1589; but how long the father had
been at Scrooby, or whence he came, we do not
know. This we know : that the Brewster family
belonged to the eastern counties, with branches
in Suffolk and in Essex. In due time William
Brewster came to the university at Cambridge ;
and here it was that he was " first seasoned with
the seeds of grace and virtue." It must have
been about 1580 that he came to Cambridge;
and this was when Robert Browne was just be
ginning to preach his gospel of Independency.
"When God would plant New England,"
some one has said, " he sifted the whole Church
to get the Protestants ; he sifted the Protestants
to get the Puritans ; and he sifted the Puritans
to get the Independents." Every one of these
movements in England had its cradle in some
sort in Cambridge. Thomas Bilney, who first

lo WILLIAM BREWSTER
preached Luther influentially in England, who
converted Hugh Latimer, and sealed his faith in
flames at Norwich, was a Cambridge man. So
was Thomas Cartwright who, ten years before
Brewster came to Cambridge, preached Calvinism-
there in Presbyterian form ; and so was Robert
Browne, the author of Independency. The
Pilgrim Fathers and all the early Independents,
who were popularly called Brownists, disparaged
Robert Browne, abominating his " apostasy,"
and seeking to shake off the odium of his name.
" Few of them ever saw his writings," Bradford
says ; and Englishmen like to claim that Fitz
and Rough and others practised Independency
before Robert Browne preached it. Yet Robert
Browne was the real apostle of Independency.
It was he who first preached it with power, and
it was he who gave the doctrine shape. Nor can
I, for one, remembering the long years of hard
ship, the " thirty dungeons," which he endured
for the sake of his vision before being coerced
into silence and conformity, be of those who cast
the stone at him, and say he was no hero. He
stands in the front rank of pioneers of religious
liberty, — our religious liberty here in America.
He was the link between John Calvin and John
Robinson, that revered teacher of Brewster and
the Pilgrim Fathers, who, like Calvin, never in

WILLIAM BREWSTER ii
New England in the flesh, was present at Plym
outh in the spirit as a controlling influence until
he died. It was in Robert Browne's two books,
" Reformation without Tarrying for Any " and
""The Life and Manners of All True Christians,"
which, printed in his exile in Holland, were
stealing into England just as Brewster left Cam
bridge, that Congregationalism, or Independency,
found its first strong statement in the modern
world. The doctrines which brought William
Brewster and the Pilgrim Fathers together at
Scrooby and drove them to Holland and then
to Plymouth were the doctrines expounded by
Robert Browne in these revolutionary books.
What were the doctrines ? Simply these : that,
wherever two or three are gathered together in
purity of doctrine and innocency of life, there
is all that is necessary to constitute a Christian
church ; and that any may preach or teach whom
the others choose to hear. A few words sum up
the theory; but the whole of modern democracy
is in them. The relation of religion to politics
in this world is immediate. When James I.
said, " No bishop, no king," he said a sagacious
thing. He saw well enough at the beginning
what we all see now, — that when " Jack and Tom
and Will and Dick," as he phrased it, have the
right to stand up in the congregation and have

Id WILLIAM BREWSTER
their say about Church matters, they will soon have
their say about State matters, too. Men who can
form a church by simply signing a covenant will
in due time, and that no long time, pass on to
the " Mayflower " Compact, the Fundamental Or
ders, the Agreement of the People, and all the
rest. Town meetings, constitutional conventions,
initiative and referendum, all are involved, and
will be evolved as rapidly as necessary.
The little Scrooby congregation, the " May
flower " company, was the most illustrious and al- .
most the first church in modern history based upon
this principle of Independency. By and by Crom
well and the army came to it ; it was the polity of
the Commonwealth ; it was the common doctrine
of Puritanism in its full development. But Brews
ter and the Pilgrim Fathers grasped it in the be
ginning : they were pioneers ; and they bore the
doctrine hither in the " Mayflower," to be the cor
ner-stone of our religious and political institu
tions. Carlyle compares the " Mayflower," breast
ing the stormy sea and lonely shore, to the " Argo,"
and well tells us that she bore a richer freight.
We may say more than this. We may say that she
was the most significant and reverend ship in
human history, more sacred than the " Santa Ma
ria," and to be in the youth of fame when Nelson's
"Victory" and "Temeraire," and " Constitu-

WILLIAM BREWSTER 13
tions," " Monitors," " Great Easterns," and
" Oceanics " innumerable are hasting to forget-
fulness. It was here on New England soil that
Independency first reached its growth ; and it
was as the " New England way " that it con
quered Cromwell's army and conquered Puritan
E,ngland. It was no accident by which the most
republican, the most American, of the illustrious
leaders of the Commonwealth, the author of " A
Healing Question," should have been Sir Harry
Vane, he of their number who had been a cit
izen of Boston, governor of Massachusetts, and
a member of the household of John Cotton.
The central figure in that " Mayflower " con
gregation was William Brewster. He was the
Father of the Pilgrim Fathers, — " the most emi
nent person in the movement," as says Joseph
Hunter, " and who, if that honor is to be given
to any single person, must be regarded as the
Father of New England." Of all the founders
of New England, he was the man who had had
the largest public experience, who had seen the
most of the world of men and great affairs, who
had been in closest touch with politics and state
craft, who had personally known and seen most
of the glories of the Elizabethan age. We have
noticed that he was born just as Elizabeth's reign
began. He came to the court, to enter the ser-

14 WILLIAM BREWSTER
vice of Sir William Davison, in the same year
that William the Silent was assassinated, and when
the diplomatic negotiations between England and
Holland, in which he was himself to bear an
important part, were of greatest moment. He
died, to round the chronology, in the year (1644)
of Marston Moor and the birth of William
Penn. Few lives, indeed, have spanned a period
more significant. England, in all her history, had
known no moment of such interest as that when
the youthful Brewster came from the University
of Cambridge to the court of Elizabeth. She
had known no such illustrious group of men as
that then in London. Sir William Davison, into
whose immediate service Brewster came, was a
statesman of conspicuous greatness even in that
age of great statesmen, loved and praised by his
eminent associates as the possessor of almost
every public and private virtue. Among his
associates as secretaries of state were the great
Burleigh ; Sir Walter Mildmay, whom Brewster
may well have heard speak often of the " oak "
which he had planted at Cambridge ; and Walsing-
ham, above all others zealous in the interest of
American exploration and colonization. One likes
to imagine William Brewster in warm converse
with Richard Hakluyt as he comes for conference
with Walsingham or another. The talk is of

WILLIAM BREWSTER 15
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who had been lost on his
return voyage from Newfoundland the year before
Brewster came to court; or of Sir Francis Drake,
who had got home to Plymouth from his sailing
round the world three years before that ; or of
Martin Frobisher and his search for the North
west Passage. It was the heyday of the great
Elizabethan seamen ; and the Armada was just
ahead, to go into history before Brewster became
post of Scrooby. It was the heyday of Eliza
bethan genius. It was while Brewster was in
Davison's service that William Shakespeare came
from Stratford to London. He was the youngest
of the brilliant Elizabethan galaxy, four years
younger than Brewster. Sidney was six years
older than Brewster, Spenser seven years, Raleigh
eight years older. All of these men save Sid
ney, to whom Brewster himself transferred the
keys of Flushing in 1585, and who fell the next
year at Zutphen, died — Raleigh on the scaffold —
while Brewster was at Scrooby or at Leyden ; and
the same period witnessed the assassination of
Henry IV. and the deaths of Montaigne, Tasso,
and Cervantes. In 1587 came the execution
of Mary, Queen of Scots, involving Davison's
own fall and Brewster's with him; in 1588,
the Armada. Add to this the great drama in
Holland. It is when we think of the bare, stern.

1 6 WILLIAM BREWSTER
solitary life for the quarter-century at Plymouth
with the contrast of this stirring, brilliant back
ground of momentous political, martial, and lit
erary history, that we grasp the full meaning, the
pathos, tragedy, and heroism of the life of Will
iam Brewster.
That young Brewster should have been re
ceived to the responsible and confidential place
which he occupied in the service of the great Sec
retary of State clearly implies important family
position or influence and high qualification. Brad
ford tells us that Davison " trusted him above all
others that were about him, and only employed
him in all matters of greatest trust and secrecy.
He esteemed him rather as a son than a servant,
and for his wisdom and godliness he would con
verse with him in private more like a friend and
familiar than a master."
Brewster could hardly have been at court more
than a year when he was called upon to accom
pany Davison on his important diplomatic mis
sion to Holland, in connection with the closer
union between England and Holland immedi
ately after the assassination of William. A quarter
of a century later, in his middle life, he was to
come again, as a religious fugitive, among these
scenes which now in youth he visited as a cour
tier, amid the pomp and pageantry of war ; and

WILLIAM BREWSTER 17
in many an evening hour at Amsterdam and
Leyden, in that hard and humble later day, must
he have meditated on the contrast. His service
now with Davison was important and was hon
ored. When the keys to Flushing, which was
surrendered for English occupancy, were given to
Davison by the Dutch authorities, they were by
him committed to Brewster, who, we read, slept
the first night with them under his pillow, and
who transferred them to Sir Philip Sidney when
he arrived a month later to take command. At
Flushing he witnessed the pageant when Leices
ter came, and Essex. The enthusiasm of both
Dutch and English over the alliance was demon
strative and intense. " Whom God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder ! " was the
device upon the banner borne from town to town
as the English lords and warriors moved from
Flushing to Middelburg, to Rotterdam, to Delft,
the Hague, and on to Leyden and Amsterdam.
Davison and Brewster accompanied Leicester on
the whole triumphant journey. At Middelburg
the widow of William the Silent and Maurice,
his youthful son, joined in the welcome. At
Rotterdam they saw the newly erected statue of
Erasmus ; at Delft they stayed in the same palace
where William had just been assassinated ; at the
Hague, Leicester in his speech paid high tribute

i8 WILLIAM BREWSTER
to Davison, declaring that no other Englishman
knew Holland so well or was so highly esteemed
by the Dutch people. At Leyden, which by
and by was to be for a decade the home of
Brewster and the Pilgrims, there was a great
pageant provided, in which scenes were enacted
illustrating the terrible siege of the city, which
had taken place only eleven years before. When
presently Davison returned to England, the States
honored him with a gold chain ; and his apprecia
tion of Brewster appears from the fact that he
commissioned him to wear the chain in England
until they came to court.
In London, Brewster now came into close touch
with Sir Edwin Sandys, whose friendship by and
by, when the negotiations for removing to New
England were in process, was to be of such con
spicuous service. It was at just this time that
Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer entered Dav
ison's service with Brewster. They had studied
together at Oxford, where Richard Hooker, the
"judicious" Hooker, afterwards author of the
"Ecclesiastical Polity," had been their tutor.
Some will remember the amusing account given by
Izaak Walton of the visit of the two young men
to Hooker in his little rectory at Drayton Beau-
champ. Hooker was now in London, masjer of
the Temple, in the midst of his controversy with

WILLIAM BREWSTER 19
Puritanism. The Calvinist Travers was his col
league ; and Fuller tells us that " pure Canter
bury " was in the ascendency at the Temple in
the morning, "Geneva" in the afternoon. It is
impossible that Brewster should not have been
deeply interested in this exciting polemic, the
more as his new friends were such friends of
Hooker, with whom later boih corresponded
about his great ecclesiastical work. It was just
after Brewster retired from London to Scrooby
that Hooker retired to the quiet of Boscomb,
where the first four books of the " Ecclesiastical
Polity " were written. Hooker was the greatest
champion of Episcopacy, as Cartwright, whose
books Brewster presently printed at Leyden, was
the chief EngHsh champion of Presbyterianism ;
and this glimpse of our pioneer Independent in
relations with the leading representatives of the
two other great church polities is an interesting
one. In February, 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots, was
executed at Fotheringay Castle. The part of
Davison in connection with the execution is well
known. It was he who had carried to the Coun
cil the warrant which Elizabeth had signed and
flung upon the floor, and who had seen that the
warrant was carried into effect; and it was he
upon whom the adroit and hypocritical rage of

20 WILLIAM BREWSTER
the queen chiefly spent itself. Brewster re
mained faithfully beside him in his trouble, visit
ing him in the Tower and serving him in all ways
possible ; but Davison still lingered in the Tower
when Brewster left London for Scrooby, where
the Pilgrim history begins. It is a letter to Da
vison concerning Brewster, and Davison's com
ments on it, which throws some light upon the
date when Davison was again in official life ; for
the letter, from Sir John Stanhope, the new Mas
ter of the Posts, is addressed to " Mr. Secretary
Davison." It was written in August, 1590, and
is a defence of the intended gift of the postmas-
tership of Scrooby to some favorite of Stanhope,
at the cost of Brewster, who had succeeded his
father in the office, and who in some way had
earned Sir John's disfavor. The letter is pre
served in the Public Record Office in London,
where I have seen it ; and interesting, indeed, it is
for the New Englander to read the indorsements
on the back in Davison's own hand, bearing wit
ness to Brewster's honor and efficiency, and re
versing the order to dispossess him. The records
show that Brewster acted as post of Scrooby from
January, 1589, to September, 1607.
The Scrooby story is so familiar to every good
New Englander that in this presence it is unnec
essary to rehearse it. What Mecca in England

WILLIAM BREWSTER ai
so sacred to us as " the sundry towns and vil
lages, some in Nottinghamshire, some of Lincoln
shire, and some of Yorkshire, where they border
nearest together," which furnished those flrst little
Independent congregations ! Scrooby, with Baw-
try and Austerfield beside it, is the Bethlehem
of this Holy Land. Yet for two centuries the
knowledge of the place was lost to New England,
as for almost a century the Bible which contained
the Genesis, Exodus, Joshua and Judges of the
Pilgrim history was lost also. By strange coinci
dence it was the same English scholar, Joseph
Hunter, who one year, 1854, revealed Scrooby
and Austerfield, and the next year identified in
London Bradford's Journal. It is Bradford, who
as a youth walked over from Austerfield to the
meetings in Brewster's house, who has bequeathed
to us the story of them, and he who at the last paid
the personal tribute to Brewster which tells us
almost all we know of his biography and his
character. The little Scrooby congregation which Brewster
gathered, we read, " ordinarily met at his house,
which was a manor of the Bishop's." By the
Bishop is meant the Archbishop of York, who
was at this time Archbishop Sandys, father of
Brewster's friend. Sir Edwin. It was a famous
old house, which had associations with Wolsey

22 WILLIAM BREWSTER
and Henry VIII. , and which Leland had vis
ited and written about in 1541. It was Will
iam Brewster's home for nearly twenty years.
"^When he came to it from London, he found that
the region was in religious destitution. Many
people had not heard a sermon for years ; and
many of those who had heard them had heard
wretched ones, from clergy with slight pretensions
to godliness. Brewster, still a faithful member
of the Church of England, devoted himself to
securing good preachers for the neighborhood,
and made large contributions for the improvement
of the churches. But, growing ever more serious
himself, he revolted more and more from the
perfiinctoriness of their life and services ; and in
1606 the little Independent congregation was or
ganized in his own house, with Richard Clifton
as its first teacher, presently to be joined by John
Robinson, coming to the north country from the
eastern counties. In the old manor house, Brew
ster's five children were born. By and by, as the
persecutions thickened, he was the chief organizer
of the flight to Holland. He was one of the
seven thrown into prison at Boston, when the
first effort to escape had failed ; and, when the
second partially succeeded, he and Robinson
stayed behind to help over those who remained,
and were themselves the last to leave England
for Holland.

WILLIAM BREWSTER 23
During the year at Amsterdam and the eleven
years at Leyden, Brewster and Robinson were the
joint shepherds of the flock. " We choose none
for governing elders but such as are able to teach,"
was written from Leyden to London, to point the
distinction between this congregation's way and
the French way. Elder Brewster was able to
teach, and did do it upon occasion in Holland,
as he did regularly during those long years at
Plymouth. He was a scholar, and in Leyden
prepared an English grammar, and helped sup
port himself by teaching English to students in
the university. The Pilgrims' stay in Holland
almost exactly covered the twelve years' truce
between Holland and the Spanish power. They
lived among the tragical traces of the early years
of the great conflict ; > ' eir neighbors remem
bered the terrible time of the siege. Holland
still swarmed with soldiers. There was probably
no morning in the long years at Leyden when
our fathers did not wake to the sound of the
trumpet ; and the near prospect of the renewal
of the conflict was one important consideration
which hastened their removal to New England.
The period was also one of hot religious con
troversy. Arminius, who was born in the same
year as Brewster, died the very year that the Pil
grims came to Leyden, where he had taught the-

24 WILLIAM BREWSTER
ology; and polemics about free will and predes
tination were all about the Pilgrims' ears. The
Synod of Dort, which defined the "five points" of
Calvinism, and which, as its president said, "made
hell tremble," was in session during their last
years in Holland ; and doubtless Robinson and
Brewster came into touch with it. They surely
heartily sympathized with its conclusions ; but we
do not like to believe that they rejoiced in the
execution of Barneveldt and the imprisonment of
Grotius, which followed it so closely.
Brewster's important work in Leyden was that
of publishing. With one Thomas Brewer, he
established in Leyden a secret press, where he
printed and sent into England many books cal
culated to offend the powers that were in Church
and State and to bring down their wrath. Their
wrath was brought down, especially the hot wrath
of James I.; and the score of letters which
passed back and forth between the foreign office
and the English ambassador in Holland before
the press was found and silenced make interesting
reading. They can all be found, with a'fiill list of
the books printed, in Arber's painstaking chapter.
There were books by Cartwright and Robinson
and Travers, and, most mischievous of all, David
Calderwood's "Government of the Scotch Church"
and "Perth Assembly." Here, indeed, were

WILLIAM BREWSTER 25
books to stir James Stuart ! " Judged by the ideas
of his own age," as Arber well says, " Brewster
was nothing less than a theological dynamitard."
Brewster joined with Robinson in conducting
the correspondence with Sir Edwin Sandys and
others in London in the negotiations preceding
the removal from Leyden to New England. Sir
Edwin Sandys was now treasurer and governor
of the Virginia Company ; and Brewster thus
after thirty years comes into touch again with
his old associate in the service of Davison. All
through the negotiations we keep coming upon
words from London showing the suspicion of
the Pilgrims' Independency, which was there
working against them. It was only the shrewd
est diplomacy that saved their project from ship
wreck. " For the discipline of the Church in
the colonies," Lord Bacon had said, — and his
maxims governed the Council, — " it will be
necessary that it agree with that which is set
tled in England ; and, to that purpose, it will
be fitting that all the colonies be subordinate
under some bishop of this realm. The tenets
of separatists and sectaries are full of schism
and inconsistent with monarchy. Discipline by
bishops is fittest for monarchy." Robinson and
Brewster had drawn up a statement in seven
articles, putting their principles in the most tem-

26 WILLIAM BREWSTER
perate form, to allay irritation ; but the Council
easily saw that the articles were very shaky on
the sacraments and " the ecclesiastical ministry."
" Who shall make your ministers ? " asked Sir
John Wolstenholme, who had undertaken to
submit their "further explanation " to the Coun
cil. " The power of making them is in the
church," they answered ; and it came near wreck
ing their enterprise. Sir John saw that, the more
they explained, the worse it got for them ; and he
was shrewd enough and kind enough to keep
their " further explanation " away from the Coun
cil-board. Brewster and Robinson, at this time at any
rate, were not separatists of the extreme sort.
The early Brownists had gone so far as to declare
the Church of England no true church at all.
Robinson himself had been " more rigid at first "
than he was at Leyden. Roger Williams in his
Massachusetts days was a strict separatist, like
Smith at Amsterdam. The Pilgrims were
stanch believers in their own Independency.
They believed it was the polity of the primitive
churches and the polity most favorable to piety
and progress : they believed that in their time
the cause of freedom was bound up with it ; but
they treated all of their Christian brethren with
tolerance, respect, and love. " If any," writes

WILLIAM BREWSTER 27
Winslow " (joining to us formerly either when
we lived at Leyden in Holland or since we came
to New England), have, with the manifestation
of their faith and profession of holiness, held
forth therewith separation from the Church of
England, I have divers times, both in the one
place and the other, heard either Master Robin
son, our Pastor, or Master Brewster, our Elder,
stop them forthwith, showing them that we re
quired no such things at their hands, but only to
hold forth faith in Christ Jesus, holiness in the
fear of God, and submission to every ordinance
and appointment of God, leaving the Church of
England to themselves and to the Lord." They
believed that all jealousy and friction between
themselves and the Puritan Anglican clergy
would disappear instantly under changed condi
tions. In his farewell sermon to the Pilgrims in
Holland, Robinson said, advising them to close
with the godly party in England and " rather to
study union than division " : " There will be no
difference between the unconformable ministers
and you when they come to the practice of the
ordinances out of the kingdom." The history
of Salem and Boston from the first was the ful
filment of his prophecy.
Of the little congregation at Plymouth, Brew
ster was at once pastor and teacher and

28 WILLIAM BREWSTER
elder. Had Robinson come over, he would have
resumed the pastoral ofSce over the reunited
church. But it was settled at Leyden that " those
that went should be an absolute church of them
selves." Robinson objected, on no good Con
gregational grounds, to Brewster administering
the sacraments ; and so for several years the
Plymouth church went without the sacraments.
But that was all, and the church doesn't seem
to have been much the worse for it. Marriages,
from the beginning, at Plymouth were civil, per
formed by the magistrate, " according to the laud
able custom of the Low Countries in which they
had lived." They could not find in the word
of God that marriage was " tyed to ministrie."
The Plymouth church was a church of laymen.
Its elder was one of the most faithful of pastors,
but he was simply a brother among brethren.
He was nurse in sickness, he labored with his
hands in the fields, and he was as much coun
sellor in politics as in religion. If we had the
original draft of the Compact signed on board
the " Mayflower," it is an even chance that we
should find it in his hand.
To us New Englanders that Plymouth life is
as familiar as the very gospel story ; and no
other story save that alone is so simple and ten
der and sacred. It is the babe in the manger

WILLIAM BREWSTER 29
again, the cradle of our era. It is the apothe
osis of heroism. Since Luther at Worms, I
know of no such heroic picture as that of the
Pilgrims gathered on the shore, at the end of
the winter of death, to see the " Mayflower" sail.
With half their number lying in their graves in
the wheat-field, " not one looked back who had
set his hand to this ploughing." Through the
tremulous years comes the devout prayer of the
elder, and the resolute, unspoken antiphon :
" Here we stay : we cannot do otherwise. God
help us 1 Amen ! "
Memorable glimpses of the Httle church we
get from time to time through outside eyes.
Beautiful is the picture drawn by De Rasieres,
coming over from New Amsterdam in 1627, of
the little community on Sunday morning march
ing to meeting in the fort on the hill, the men
with their guns, the governor and elder and cap
tain side by side at the head. Beautiful is the
picture preserved by Winthrop in his journal of
his visit to Plymouth with Rev. John Wilson,
the pastor of the Boston church, in 1632, Brad
ford and Brewster coming out of the town to
meet and greet them.
" On the Lord's day there was a sacrament,
which they did partake in ; and, in the afternoon,
Mr. Roger Williams, according to their custom.

30 WILLIAM BREWSTER
propounded a question, to which their pastor,
Mr. Smith, spoke briefly; then Mr. Williams
prophesied ; and after the Governour of PHmouth
spake to the question ; after him the Elder ; then
some two or three more of the congregation.
Then the Elder desired the Governour of Massa
chusetts and Mr. Wilson to speak to it, which
they did. When this was ended, the Deacon,
Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their
duty of contribution ; whereupon the Governour
and all the rest went down to the deacon's seat,
and put into the box, and then returned."
At this time Rev. Ralph Smith had been " ex
ercising his gifts " among them for three years,
and they now had the sacraments. At one time,
while Brewster still lived, Charles Chauncey was
teacher at Plymouth ; at one time, for a winter,
John Norton. But so long as Brewster lived,
he was the colony's venerated " father in God " ;
and at Duxbury, which he made his home in his
last years, he served actively as teacher till 1637.
At Duxbury he died in 1644, ^^ the age of four
score and four. " His sickness was not long, and
till ye last day therof he did not wholy keepe his
bed. His speech continued till somewhat more
than halfe a day, & then failed him ; and about
9 or 10 oclock that evning he dyed, without any
pangs at all . . . and so sweetly departed this life
unto a better."

WILLIAM BREWSTER 31
Bradford's tribute to Brewster is one of the
most beautiful and most valuable passages in his
history. " Haply more may be done hereafter,"
he says, as if he felt the inadequacy of what he
wrote and purposed something fuller ; but nothing
more was ever written. Brief as it is, however, it
is more than he devoted to Robinson in his
pages ; and it is our authority touching Brewster's
life. His early history is reviewed ; and then the
touching story told of the hardships at Plymouth,
which he so cheerfully endured. High tribute is
paid to his ministry, by which many were brought
to God. " He did more in this behalf in a year
than many that have their hundreds a year do in
all their lives." His rare wisdom in the govern
ment of the church and its preservation in purity
and peace is noticed ; and the personal picture is
tenderly drawn.
For his personall abilities, he was qualified above
many ; he was wise and discreete and well spoken, hav
ing a grave & deliberate utterance, of a very cherfull
spirite, very sociable & pleasante amongst his freinds, of
an humble and modest mind, of a peaceable disposition,
under vallewing him self & his owne abilities, and some
time over valewing others ; inoffencive and inocente in
his life & conversation, wch gained him ye love of those
without, as well as those within ; yet he would tell them
plainely of their faults & evills, both publickly & pri-

32 WILLIAM BREWSTER
vatly, but in such a manner as usually was well taken
from him. He was tender harted, and compassionate
of such as were in miserie, but espetialy of such as had
been of good estate and ranke, and were fallen unto
want & poverty, either for goodnes & religions sake, or
by ye injury & oppression of others; he would say, of
all men these deserved to be pitied most. And none
did more offend & displease him then such as would
hautily and proudly carry & lift up themselves, being
rise from nothing and having litle els in them to comend
them but a few fine cloaths, or a litle riches more then
others. In teaching, he was very moving & stirring of
affections, also very plaine & distincte in what he taught ;
by which means he became ye more profitable to ye
hearers. He had a singuler good gift in prayer, both pub-
lick & private, in ripping up ye hart & conscience before
God, in ye humble confession of sinne, and begging ye
mercies of God in Christ for ye pardon of ye same.
He always thought it were better for ministers to pray
oftener, and devide their prears, then be longe & tedious
in ye same (excepte upon sollemne & spetiall occations,
as in days of humiliation & ye like). His reason was,
that ye harte & spirits of all, espetialy ye weake, could
hardly continue & stand bente (as it were) so long
towards God, as they ought to doe in yt duty, without
flagging and falling of.
No figure in the early history of New England
is so affecting as that of Elder Brewster. The
Plymouth Pilgrims, for the most part, — although

WILLIAM BREWSTER 32
there were fine minds among them, and Bradford
could quote Plato to good purpose on occasion,
and Pliny and Seneca, — were simple folk from
the farms and villages round about Scrooby, poor
peasant people, although schooled indeed in the
school of hard and varied experience. But Elder
Brewster, the father of the flock, was a scholar
in exile, a man of gentle blood, of Cambridge
culture, of experience in courts, carrying in mem
ory a picture gallery hung with great portraits
and historic scenes. He spoke Latin readily,
and knew Greek and Hebrew. Here in the
wilderness he had what was for those days, even
in England, a large library. It contained at his
death four hundred volumes, many of them
costly quartos and folios. Nearly one hundred
of these volumes were published after 1620,
showing in what close touch he kept himself with
the world's great life after he came hither. Dr.
Dexter has said that " probably New England in
the first quarter-century had not another so rich
exegetical library." But it was not simply exe-
getical nor theological. There were twenty-four
volumes of history, six of philosophy, fourteen
of poetry, and fifty-four on miscellaneous sub
jects. There were eleven works which Brewster
himself had printed at Leyden. There was John
Smith's " Description of New England " and

34 WILLIAM BREWSTER
various volumes of travel; there were volumes
of Machiavelli and Aristotle ; there was Bacon's
" Advancement of Learning " ; and there were
books on English government and politics. Such
was the environment in his heroic exile of the
father of the Pilgrim Fathers.
It is difficult for us to realize to-day how much
the struggle of church polities meant in England
and New England three centuries ago. The
early Independents were not theoretical men, but
practical Englishmen, — men of the sort disposed
to say, as Englishmen have usually been, " Let
well enough alone." They asserted their doctrine
of Independency because a practical exigency com
manded it. They were subjected to ecclesiastical
tyranny ; and, as Englishmen of common sense
and honor, they knew that there must be some valid
theory adequate to the situation, and they found
it. Had Episcopacy dealt justly, there would
then have been no Independency. When Arch
bishop Tillotson expressed to Increase Mather,
a century after Brewster became post of Scrooby,
his abhorrence of the course of the Church of
England at that time, the old Puritan exclaimed,
" If such had been the bishops, there had never
been a New England ! " But the bishops were
what they were; and Independency, when once
compelled, had no lack of theoretical justification

WILLIAM BREWSTER 35
from its founders. John Robinson and William
Brewster were quite able to hold their own in
controversy ; and William Bradford could appeal
to Christ's place in the synagogue, and to the
words of Origen and others of the Fathers, in his
argument that the proper distinction between
clergy and laymen in the church was no funda
mental one. Robinson was right in predicting
that " those who oppose them in England, if they
might come to a place of peace away from the
Bishops, would do as they did." The men who
came to Salem in 1629 and to Boston in 1630
came protesting their love for the Church of Eng
land, although condemning its corruption. But
immediately we find the Salem company uniting
to form a church by covenant, and electing their
pastor and teacher, with Bradford and others
coming up from Plymouth to give the right hand
of fellowship at the ordination ; and Winthrop's
company shows the same fraternal spirit toward
Plymouth when they form their church, now the
First Church in Boston. Episcopacy could not
live then on this soil and in this air. We can
not imagine John Wilson tempted to read the
liturgy one month after he reached this side of
the ocean. Indeed, it had been John Cotton's
charge to the Massachusetts company when they
came away that " they should take advice of

36 WILLIAM BREWSTER
them at Plymouth " ; and we find Cotton saying
afterward that the Plymouth way had been the
"leaven" of all the New England churches.
Whatever there was contrary quickly succumbed
to the power of that simple democratic Congrega
tionalism. Distinctly the American polity. Independency
has profoundly affected every other polity, not
only in America, but in all the world. By virtue
of its influence. Episcopacy and Presbyterianism
are both no longer what they were. The Epis
copal bishop of Massachusetts would no more
meddle with Trinity Church in the choice of its
minister than with the First Church or the Old
South. Puritanism itself has won the universal
honor of all serious religious men ; and among
the noblest recent tributes to it have been those
by Phillips Brooks, Bishop Lawrence, and Pro
fessor Nash of the Episcopal Theological School
at Cambridge. Affecting other polities as it has
done. Independency has also undeniably at times
been affected by them in its turn, and this
often to its cost, as Unitarians who remember
events at Saratoga ought not to need be told.
Any attempt by synods or conferences to formu
late doctrinal bases of fellowship by which Inde
pendent congregations or ministers feel under
any stress to measure themselves cometh of

WILLIAM BREWSTER 37
evil and tends to confusion. It is alien to the
genius of the polity, and is to be disregarded by
every genuine Independent. When one goes
back to the early covenants of the old New
England churches themselves, one is deeply im
pressed by their simplicity and breadth, by what
we may rightly term their modernness as com
pared with the creeds and confessions of most
Congregational churches in the intervening years.
Politics and religion with the Independent
went hand in hand. Church and State were to
him two instruments for advancing the kingdom
of God ; and in the same meeting-house where
he came to pray on Sunday he came to vote on
Monday. You devote a lecture in this course to
Thomas Jefferson and the Influence of Democ
racy on Religion. The real subject of this
word on Brewster is the Influence of Religion
on Democracy. The two great words which
the Puritan movement evolved or first made cur
rent and potent among men were " Indepen
dence " and " Commonwealth " ; and both of
these the sturdy and fraternal church at Plym
outh exemplified in highest measure.
The Thursday lecture, in John Cotton's day,
was meant for edification and for admonition ; and
we should be faithless sons of the Puritans if
here to-day we dealt simply with history, and did

38- WILLIAM BREWSTER
not — to choose the Puritan term-
of the history. And I know of no use to which
we can put it better than that pointed out by
John Cotton's own farewell sermon, " God's
Promise to His Plantation," preached to the
founders of Boston as they sailed away from
Southampton. " If God plant us, who shall
pluck us up ? " he asked, charging the colonists
to make themselves " trees of righteousness,"
and exhorting all who were planted at home or
intended to plant abroad to look that they be
" rightly planted." " Go forth, every man that
goeth, with a public spirit, looking not on your
own things only, but also on the things of
others." " Look well to the plants that spring
from you," he added, " that is, to your children,
that they do not degenerate "; for, as he well
reminded them, and as we need to remind our
selves to-day, " ancestors of a noble, divine spirit "
cannot save. The sins of the children shall be
upon them ; and if we, the sons, to-day, if the
people of this great republic, are planting at home
or abroad any trees of unrighteousness, then let
us not fail to know that they will bear for us
bitter fruit. If we are laying anywhere in the
wide world foundations in iniquity, then, though
we build upon them walls of wood, hay, and
stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stones, our
work will fail.

WILLIAM BREWSTER 39
We are in the centennial of Jefferson's admin
istration ; the year is the centennial of the birth
of Emerson. Said Emerson half a century ago :
" The Americans have many virtues, but they
have little faith. They rely on the power of a
dollar : they are deaf to a sentiment. They
think you may talk the north wind down as eas
ily as raise society ; and no class more faithless
than the scholars or intellectual men." You will
also remember well his word to the young Amer
ican scholar facing the hundred voices which
would tell him that the first duty is to get land
and money, place and name. How is it after
half a century ? We are reading William James's
stern and tonic Puritan word upon our scholars'
paralyzing fear of poverty ; and yesterday our re
vered Mary Livermore, with her fourscore years
of experience, spoke this word : " A large minor
ity, if not a majority, of average Americans are
reckless of the liberties of other people. They
would not hesitate to risk ' all the prized charters
of the human race ' for a tariff that would make
them rich or a war on a helpless people that
would open to them a market for their particular
products. With this class there is but one su
preme good in life, — money. Whatever pays is
right." Such, say many voices, is the love of money in

40 WILLIAM BREWSTER
the republic to-day. How does the love of
freedom fare ? Senator Hoar, in the same speech
in which he warns us of the menace of money to
the republic, also tells us of the distinguished Re
publican senator who had said to him that he
had come to regard the abolition of slavery as a
mistake. Few leaders, surely, of the party which
still claims the name of Abraham Lincoln would
go so far as that; yet the word finds many
echoes — and our general recreancy to the freed-
men of the South is gross. " The clauses of the
Constitution that protect money are sacred ; the
clauses that protect personal and political rights
are not too sacred to be explained away."
Lincoln was the child of Jefferson, whose
influence upon religion you have so well chosen
to emphasize in this course of lectures. " The
principles of Jefferson," said Lincoln, "are the
definitions and axioms of free society." What
were the principles of Jefferson ? What did he
aim at for this repubhc and for the world ? He
dreamed that the birth of this republic should
mark a new era for mankind. We were not here
to re-enact the history of England or of Rome.
Humanity, fraternity, and peace were at our
hands to supplant the ways of conquest, war,
and blood. " He believed that Americans might
safely set an example which the Christian world

WILLIAM BREWSTER 41
should be led by interest to respect and at length
to imitate. He would not consent to build up a
new nationality merely to create more navies and
armies, to perpetuate the crimes and follies of
Europe. The central government at Washing
ton should not be permitted to indulge in the
miserable ambitions that had made the Old
World a hell and prostrated the hopes of hu
manity." How is it with us as we keep the centennial
and put Jefferson into a Thursday lecture in
John Winthrop's church? How is it with us
a generation after Abraham Lincoln ? Are we
hating slavery and loving freedom more and
more ? Do we hate war more ? Has posses
sion, indeed, become more sacred in our eyes
than personal and political rights? Have we
overcome the lust of territorial aggrandizement,
— that original sin of nations, as Gladstone so
well called it ? Have we since the days of Jeffer
son and James Monroe grown steadily more
sensitive to the rights of ruder and weaker
peoples struggling for independence and better
things ? Have we come to attach less and less
credit ever to guns and gunboats, mammon and
manoeuvres, in the process of civilization, and to
cherish more and more the proud distinction and
high office which for the century following Jeffer-

42 WILLIAM BREWSTER
son has been ours, of being the great peace power
of the world ?
For from Jefferson to Lincoln, despite the
shame of slavery, we certainly were the central
political influence among the nations, the primary
world power, the leaven of the lump. Our con
stitution was copied in each new constitution ;
our theory of the true relation of Church and
State has been conquering all nations ; our sys
tem of public education, founded at Plymouth
by our fathers almost as soon as they landed, has
proved a contagious example for the world ; na
tions and men everywhere struggling for freedom
and for opportunity have turned their faces
toward us as they prayed.
How is it with us in this centennial time,
measured by the ideals of the fathers, by our
own record, and the world's great hope, meas
ured by Emerson and Jefferson and Plymouth
Rock ? Are the moralities and the spiritualities
keeping pace with the materialities ? It surely
was not pleasant for you and for me, sons of the
Puritans, to read but yesterday the judgment of
the English statesman, that in these last years
America had ceased to be a moral power in the
world, and had dropped back to the level of the
other selfish, warring nations. It is not pleasant
to read the judgment of this other scholar, that

WILLIAM BREWSTER 43
for a generation our political fertility, so long the
world's dominant resource and hope, has largely
ceased, and that we are now giving to the world
far less in progressive principle and method than
it is giving us. How is it? Are we teaching
Europe, or is Europe teaching us, pure and
efficient municipal government? How does co
operative industry stand with us as compared with
England or Italy or France ? Are we Switzer
land's teacher or backward pupil in direct legisla
tion and rational representation ? Do we teach
New Zealand, or does she teach us, how to deal
with coal strikes ? Did we get our new system
of land registration and our ballot law from
Pennsylvania or from Australia ?
Is this the whole picture ? It is not the whole
picture. But it is the part on which the Puritan
asks us to-day to fix our solemn attention. It is
the part which the Puritan commands us to paint
out. He bids us remember that no fertility and
no enterprise and no superiority in iron or steel,
in engines or guns, can compensate for barrenness
in progressive political thought, and that no
" American invasion " of the world can do the
world or do ourselves any long or real good, which
is not primarily an invasion of ideals, of freedom
and of the sovereignty of God, Our fathers
were the first colonists in human history — that

44 WILLIAM BREWSTER
is the way our poet puts it — who went forth
seeking "not gold, but God," Are we their
children ? — that is the question which, in face
of what confronts us, we need to keep asking.
At the Pilgrim Festival in New York in 1850,
Webster pictured Elder Brewster entering the
room, in his simple, mild austerity, and dwelling
with amazement on all that the country had be
come since the small beginnings at Plymouth.
" Are you our children ? " he finally makes him
exclaim. " Does this scene of elegance, of riches,
of luxury, come from our labors ? " And he
adds : " We envy you not, we reproach you not.
Be rich, be prosperous, if such be your allotment
on earth ; but live always to God and to duty."
So long as the children still cherished an undying
love for civil and religious liberty, so long the great
orator was sure that the great Elder would breathe
his benediction on their festivals. And so he
would. But could he come to some of the festi-
tivals to-day of those who name themselves still
by the Pilgrim name, — could he mark the osten
tation, the indulgence, the arrogance, the pride, —
he would take, be sure, no such easy departure.
Far, far indeed would he pronounce all this from
the spirit and the aims and the atmosphere of the
men who signed the compact on the " May
flower."

WILLIAM BREWSTER 45
Not gold, but God ; not ourselves, but man
kind. " Once to every man and nation comes the
moment to decide." It comes with the fiiUness
of powers, comes when the man and the nation
are passing from youth into maturity. Emerson
has told us how it comes to the young scholar.
So it comes to the nation, — the temptation to
cease the eagle's flight, to temper the strenuous-
ness of the spirit, to pause in the high emprise,
with its stern demands, to accept the beaten
path, the easier task, the quick profit, the old
way. Get land and money. What is this free
dom which you seek for men? What is this
peace on earth? If, nevertheless, sounds still
the Puritan voice from the heavens above to
every nation under heaven, God has called
you to the service of progress, called you to be
pioneers of liberty, be bold, be firm, be true.
When you shall say. As others do, so will I ;
if others will be spoilers, so will I ; I, too, will
trust in my great guns ; I will eat the good of
the land, arid let equality and fraternity go until
a more convenient season, — then dies the soul
in you, then once more die the buds of hope
and prophecy and blessing and divine opportu
nity, as they have died already in the hundred
nations whose wrecks are strewn on the shores
of the ages.

46 WILLIAM BREWSTER
God save our dear republic from " the great
refusal " ! God will save it. And he will save
it precisely because, as the wise Enghsh thinker
told us here in Boston twenty years ago, it had
a Puritan youth and has had, more than any
other nation, the Puritan discipline. The only
real poHticians, said Socrates to the Athenians,
who were so sadly and so soon to prove its truth,
were those who kept insisting on the good of
righteousness and the unprofitableness of iniquity.
And our republic shall stand because there shall
not fail a sufficiency of teachers and of righteous
men who shall cherish and make potent the
Puritan's faith in the sovereignty of God, the
fear of God, which alone is the bulwark of lib
erty, as it is the beginning of wisdom.
" O ye who boast
In your free veins the blood of sires like these,
Lose not their lineaments. Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart, or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue, or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth's beach, and on that rock
Kneel in their footprints, and renew the vow
They breathed to God."

II

Roger Williams and His Doctrine of
Soul-liberty

ROGER WILLIAMS AND HIS DOC
TRINE OF SOUL-LIBERTY.
Lord Macaulay, with his famous facility for
epigram and sweeping assertion, once wrote : " In
England in the seventeeth century there were
only two great creative minds. One of these
produced the ' Paradise Lost,' and the other the
' Pilgrim's Progress.' " It is my wish to-day to
show, if possible, that at least one other creative
mind was working beside these two ; to tell you
how, in the -^ery years that the trumpet-note of
" Areopagitica " was first heard in England, a still
bolder assertion of liberty was made by a friend
of Milton in America ; and how, when Bunyan
was dreaming in Bedford jail of a celestial city,
an equally intrepid spirit was founding a city at
the head of Narragansett Bay, in which no
dreamer or prophet should ever suffer for utter
ing his message to the world. The noble de
fence of freedom in " Areopagitica " we shall never
willingly let die. The great dream of a heavenly
city we shall always cherish. But we would place
beside these " assertors of the soul " another
spirit, the man who first in the modern world
created a state that was truly free.

50 ROGER WILLIAMS
Still the visitor to Providence walks along the
bank of the Seekonk River and looks upon the
shattered and crumbling rock where Roger Will
iams landed. The rock is vanishing, but the
principle he enunciated has shown a "rocky
strength " that will outlive all monuments ; and
the idea embodied in the obscure colony by a
fugitive and outlaw is now accepted, in theory at
least, by every civilized State. He was not a
saint. No aureole played about his head in the
eyes of his contemporaries. His faults were
obvious and insistent. But he was a man to be
reckoned with when living ; and, being dead, he
yet speaketh.
It seems strange that no portrait has been
preserved. Accordingly, upon the dome of the
new State capitol of Rhode Island stands no
figure of Roger Williams, but rather a figure
symbolical of the "independent man" that he was
and wanted all to be.
Records of his early life are scanty. It seems
probable that he was a Welshman, and born
about 1601. We find him subsequently entered
at the Charter-house School in London, and then
at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After gradua
tion he studied law with Sir Edward Coke, who
was drawn to Roger Williams by that same
subtle attraction which Williams exerted through-

ROGER WILLIAMS 51
out his life. The man who was the intimate
friend of Sir Harry Vane, of Cromwell and
Milton, of the Governors Winthrop, father and
son, and who drew testimony to his personal
character from John Cotton and Cotton Mather,
certainly was a man of no ordinary power.
But he developed little taste for the law, and
soon we find him studying theology and disput
ing on religious subjects. Why he left England
we do not know. Long before he left he became
thoroughly opposed to the Established Church
and all its ways. In 1631 we find him arriving
at Boston on the ship " Lyon," thirty years of
age, of fine, sturdy physique, indomitable energy,
and opinions which would be heard from speedily.
Winthrop chronicles his arrival as that of a
"godly minister" ; and, if godliness be utter sin
cerity, unfaltering devotion to the ideal, and un
selfish desire to do good, Winthrop was right.
We have no time to chronicle the events of his
varied life, and no need to go over the thoroughly
familiar ground. His immediate refiisal to offi
ciate for the church in Boston on the ground that
they had not really separated from the Church
of England, his becoming assistant minister at
Salem, in spite of the protest of the General
Court at Boston, and his removal to the tolerant
atmosphere of Plymouth are known to us all.

52 ROGER WILLIAMS
At Plymouth, where his first child was born, he
spent two happy years, surrounded by honor and
esteem. Yet Elder Brewster and some others
looked with concern upon the radical opinions of
the young minister, and feared precisely what
happened later ; namely, that he would depart
from all churches and become a pure individualist
in religion. During this period he cultivated the
friendship of the Indian tribes of the region, and
came to have great influence with their sachems,
especially with Massasoit of the Wampanoags,
father of King Philip, and with Canonicus of the
Narragansetts. " My soul's desire," he says in
a later letter, " was to do the natives good." And
again he writes, " God was pleased to give me
a painful patient spirit to lodge with them in their
filthy smoky holes (even while I lived at Plymouth
and Salem) to gain their tongue."
But in 1634 he returned to Salem as the sole
minister of the Salem church, in spite of the de
mands of the Boston magistrates that he should
not be ordained. He was now face to face with
the entire power, religious and civil, of the Mas
sachusetts Theocracy. On the one side stood
this young man, unarmed save with his tremen
dous conviction, with no support in the churches
or governments of the civilized world ; and on
the other side Governor Endicott and John

ROGER WILLIAMS 53
Cotton and the entire theocratic claims and
powers of the colony. He was ardent, eager,
scornful of consequences, with a conscience mar
vellously tender and a will of iron, uniting the
chivalry of Sir Galahad with the polemic skill of
Aquinas and the missionary zeal of Judson. On
the other side were the men we know so well, the
men with whom we can sympathize in their grim
mest mood, because we are their children, the
men who were determined that the truth of God
as they understood it should rule their infant
colony, and that the vagaries of religious caprice
should find no place in Massachusetts. With
the quarrel of John Endicott and Roger Will
iams we have no concern. But the conflict of
eternal principles incarnate in these men, the con
test of the communions and civilizations ' which
they represented, is a conflict wide as the world
and long as time. Let us ask, then, what it was
that Roger Williams maintained and the Theoc
racy condemned.
First of all, as we have said, he publicly and
persistently /rebuked the Massachusetts church
for not abjuring all connection with the English
Church, and for not repenting for having com
muned with that Church on EngHsh soil. The
English Church was to him a nest of hateful prel
acy. He boldly condemned the conduct of the

54 ROGER WILLIAMS
English sovereign in speaking of Europe as
Christendom, and demanded that the Massachu
setts church, by word and deed, absolve itself
from all connection with English worship. These
demands were simply a hastening of processes
already in operation ; but certainly, when made by
a new-comer in a colony quite dependent on the
royal favor, the man who makes them will not
know the blessing of the peace-makers.
Furthermore, he contended, for much the same
reason, that-^^an oath should never be required of
an unregenerate man, since an oath is an act of
worship, and worship cannot be forced. In one
aspect this seems merely a curious and harmless
opinion. What Roger WiUiams wanted is now
allowed in nearly every State in the Union, where
the law permits affirmation by those who con
scientiously object to taking oaths. But, as the
magistrates were just at that time becoming sus
picious of the loyalty of some of the inhabi
tants, and were on the point of imposing a free
man's oath, the demand of the Salem minister
seemed to supply aid and comfort to the enemies
of the State,
Again, Roger Williams contended that the
charter of Massachusetts was invalid, since it was
not based on any purchase from the Indians, but
was merely a. siezure sanctioned by the king. He

ROGER WILLIAMS 55
would have the charter returned to England. He
even drafted a letter to the king, explaining his
objections to the royal patent, and proposing a
new basis for acquiring land in the New World.
The ethical teacher, judging events in the " quiet
and still air of delightful studies," must admit
that Roger Williams could well defend his posi
tion. Our relations with the Indians of America
are justified on biological rather than ethical
grounds. We look back to-day on far more
than a " century of dishonor," and may not ex
amine too closely our title-deeds. Doubtless the
King of England gave away that to which he had
but shadowy claim. But we can hardly imagine <
the consternation produced by such teaching in a
colony whose very right to existence was then
called in question. Had they suffered so many
things in vain ? Had they cleared the wilderness,
built churches and schools and towns, only now to
be told that every settlement was illegal and every
acre the property of savage foes ? At this day
we can discuss the wrongs of the Indian without
perturbation. But when dusky forms are skulk
ing through the forest just beyond the stockade,
discussion on the foundations of ethical ownership
is attended with difficulty. Although Roger Will
iams gladly in his later years availed himself of
a charter for Rhode Island, yet in the original in-

56 ROGER WILLIAMS
stance he carefully purchased from the Indians
the land on which he settled. If he was, as
John Cotton said, " conscientiously contentious,"
he was also rigidly consistent.
But the crowning offence of the Salem minister
was his steadfast declaration that me civil magis
trate might not punish, breaches of the first table
of the Decalogue, That first table relates solely
to duties toward God ; and 4 man's relation to
his Maker he affirmed to be altogether above and
beyond the power of the State,'' Here again
Roger Williams seems to be uttering truth that
is to us commonplace and axiomatic, embodied in
every court of every State in our Union, accepted
by every religious denomination and every code
of law in the republic. But the axioms of to
day are the heresies and anarchies of yesterday.
On no such principle was Massachusetts founded.
It was rather modelled after the old Hebrew
Commonwealth, which punished blasphemy as
well as murder, which enforced Sabbath-keeping
as truly as justice, and which heard from the lips
of inspiration the words : " Thine eye shall not"
pity and thy hand shall not spare." Roger
Williams had brought to America his great
doctrine of soul-liberty, imagining that here it
would find congenial soil and swiftly become a
mighty tree. But what seemed to him as to us so

ROGER WILLIAMS 57
clear, so logical, so inevitable, was to them mon
strous and exasperating and intolerable. For a
time at every session of the General Court the
young minister was reproved or summoned or
enjoined. At last, in 1635, '^^ specific charges
were formulated, and Roger Williams was exam
ined by the magistrates. On advice of the
ministers he was sentenced to depart from the
colony within six weeks, banished, or, as John
Cotton preferred to say, "enlarged" out of
Massachusetts, There will probably always be two opposing
judgments regarding this famous sentence of
banishment. This diversity has unfortunately
tended to become a division between Massachu
setts and Rhode Island, Defenders of Massa
chusetts, concerned for the honor of their State,
have attempted to show that Roger Williams was
a man with "windmills in his head"; that he
was a Quixotic reformer, — an Ishmaelite, whose
hand was against every man ; and that a young
colony, struggling for bare existence, could not
tolerate such a personality without danger of disso
lution. This is the view of Palfrey and Dexter
and Henry Cabot Lodge, They have maintained
that he was banished not for any religious convic
tion, but solely because of obstinacy, contumacy,
and disturbance of the peace. And it has not

58 ROGER WILLIAMS
been difficult to maintain this view, since, as Pro
fessor Diman has well said, " Massachusetts was
a community whose early eminence in letters
afforded it marked advantage in impressing upon
posterity its own view of any transaction in which
it bore a part."
On the other hand, we have the view of Pro
fessors Knowles and Gammell and Thomas Dur-
fee and Oscar S. Strauss, who maintain that Roger
Williams has been misrepresented by Puritan his
torians, and that he was a true martyr to the
doctrine of freedom of conscience in the New
World. They affirm that, though there were
irritating idiosyncrasies in the temperament of
this apostle, though he was doubtless eccentric
and at times alarming, yet the real cause of the
trouble was that he was two centuries in advance
of his time, and, while he faced the sunrise and
the future, the Massachusetts colony obstinately
faced the sunset and the dark. The most judicial
discussions of the matter are, perhaps, to be
found in the recently published works of Cobb
and Richman. The more deeply we study the
history of the time, the more clearly we perceive
the irrepressible nature of the conflict, and the
more genuine becomes our sympathy with the
great protagonists. To approve or condemn
either Massachusetts or Williams is easy. To
understand them both is a worthier task.

ROGER WILLIAMS 59
All Christian governments of the seventeenth
century held that the union of Church and State
was necessary for the safety of the State and the
preservation of the Church. For a thousand
years this doctrine had been intrenching itself in
Christendom, until it was practically unquestioned
by the powers that were. Augustine, Charle
magne, Luther, Calvin, believed it and acted on
it. Freedom of conscience for the individual was '
not asserted at the Reformation. " Cujus regio,
ejus religio," was the decision embodied in the
Peace of Augsburg. The English Reformation
was political rather than religious, and demanded
that the English sovereign should be both in
dependent of the papal see and absolute head of
the English Church. Luther recoiled from the ex
cesses of Miinster, and dared not intrust religion
to freedom of conscience. The result of the Ref
ormation was many national churches in place of
one universal church, not liberty in place of
authority. If religion was essential to the weal
of the people, then the State could not neglect it.
The theocracy which Calvin established at
Geneva was cruelly logical and logically cruel.
The first Helvetic Confession declares, " The
chief office of the magistrate is to defend religion
and to take care that the word of God be purely
preached." The Westminster Assembly affirmed.

6o ROGER WILLIAMS
" The civil magistrate hath authority and it is
his duty to take order that unity and peace be pre
served in the church, that the truth of God be
kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and
heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses
in worship and discipline prevented or reformed,
and all the ordinances of God duly settled, admin
istered, and observed." If now the nations of
the Old World, strong and well established, clung
to these ideas, how tenacious and how frantic
must have been the attachment to them on the
part of the New England colony, conscious of its
weakness, menaced by' tyrants on the one side and
fanatics on the other! It had been instructed by
all Christian governments of the Old World, and
it bettered their instructions. In the very year of
Roger Williams's arrival the General Court of
Massachusetts passed this resolution : " It is or
dered that henceforth no man shall be admitted to
the freedom of this commonwealth but such as are
members of the churches within the limits of this
jurisdiction." No voters except church members,
and no church members except on approval of
the clergy, — such was the compact, homogeneous,
and m'ilitant organization now preparing to resist
the newest thought of the age. By as much as
New England was weaker than Old England,
by so much more did it resolve on the policy

ROGER WILLIAMS 61
of exclusion of dangerous opinions. Robert
Baillie, a zealous defender of the Presbyterian
faith in Scotland, wrote in 1643, "They in New
England are much more strict and rigid than we
or any church to suppress by the power of the
magistrate all who are not of their way."
What now was the doctrine of " soul-liberty "
brought by the young minister into the rigid and
rigorous ecclesiasticism of Massachusetts ? It was
far more than a doctrine of toleration. On this
point confusion of thought still exists. Conceiv
ably, we may occupy any one of three positions
regarding the relations of the civil and the
religious authority. We may affirm the duty
of the government to support and control the
institutions of religion; we may affirm as a con
cession to human weakness the expediency of
tolerating false views of religion ; or we may affirm
the absolute wrong of any interference by the gov
ernment in matters of religious faith. It was not
the second of these positions — the duty of toler
ating false opinions — on which Roger Williams
planted his feet. It was the third and distinctly
different position, that the government may not '
decide what is true and what is false in religioji,
may neither encourage nor repress religious doc
trine, that it must refrain both from tolerance and
intolerance, and, confining itself to the civil realm

62 ROGER WILLIAMS
entirely/ leave the consciences of all men —
Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Atheist — absolutely
free. This is clear from his explicit writings. In his
massive volumes on " The Bloudy Tenent of
Persecution " he declares that the " great cause
of the indignation of the Most High against the
state and country is . . . that all others dissenting
from them, whether Jews or Gentiles, have not
been allowed civil cohabitation with them, but
have been distressed and persecuted by them."
It is clear from his'action in inserting a provision
in the first charter of Providence that " otherwise
than this [what is previously forbidden}, all men
may walk as their consciences persuade them,
every one in the name of his God."'^ The right
to believe and practise one's own faith, — every
man wants that. But Roger Williams wanted
equal rights for the Turk and the Atheist, not
because it was expedient to tolerate diversity, but
because of the inherent right of every human soul
to determine its own relation to its Maker.
We now see how inevitable was the struggle
between the young champion of soul-liberty and
the guardians of Massachusetts orthodoxy and
society. Even toleration was regarded as a fatal
blunder by the leaders of England and America.
A noted English divine of that period wrote:

ROGER WILLIAMS 6^
" Toleration will make the Kingdom a chaos, is a
grand work of the devil, is a most transcendental.
Catholic, and fundamental evil." The saintly
Rutherford could say, " We regard the toleration
of all religions as not far removed from blas
phemy." The lines found in Governor Dudley's
pocket after death express the fundamental pur
pose of his life, —
" Let men of God in court and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch."
The first legal code for the gov^ernmentof Massa
chusetts was drawn up by the Rev. Nathaniel
Ward, of Ipswich, whose wisdom found vent in
the following oracle : " It is said that men ought to
have liberty of their conscience, and that it is perse
cution to debar them of it. I can stand amazed,
then reply to this : It is an astonishment to think
that the brains of men should be parboiled in such
impious ignorance."
Was, then, Roger Williams, like Melchisedec,
" without father or mother " ? Were there no
other voices in the world pleading for freedom ?
Assuredly there were. The Brownists, or Sepa
ratists, of England had for some years affirmed
this doctrine ; and to the Anabaptists of Holland
it was the cardinal truth. To the despised Ana
baptists — and what band of truth-bearers have

64 ROGER WILLIAMS
not been at first despised ? — belongs the honor
of recalling the Christian Church from the severity
and cruelty of the Old Testament to the kindli
ness and charity of the New Testament. To the
Anabaptists, in spite of crudities and excesses,
belongs the honor, not of begging for toleration,
but of asserting each man's right to worship or
not to worship in his own way. One of them,
Hendrick Terwoot, of Flemish extraction, who
died at the stake in 1575, wrote, while in prison,
"the first declaration in favor of complete re
ligious liberty made on English soil " : " Oh, that
they would deal with us according to natural rea
sonableness and evangelical truth, of which our
persecutors so highly boast ! For Christ and his
disciples persecuted no one. On the contrary
Jesus hath taught : Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, &c .... From all this it is
clear, that those who have the one true gospel
doctrine and faith will persecute no one, but will
themselves be persecuted." Robert Browne, who
seems to have learned his doctrine from the Ana
baptists of Norwich, wrote, " The magistrates
have no ecclesiastical authority at all, but only as
any other Christians, if so be they be Christians."
In 1626 — five years before the landing of Roger
Williams in Boston — there were, as Professor
Vedder tells us, eleven Baptist churches in Eng-

ROGER WILLIAMS 65
land teaching the doctrine of complete religious
liberty. We all know how the teaching of these
small religious bodies found echo in the organ
voice of Milton, and how sympathetic were the
great souls of Oliver Cromwell and Sir Harry
Vane. Roger Williams, the friend of these dar
ing spirits and the representative of all the
humble protesting congregations in England and
Holland, stood forth in America to challenge the
traditions of the centuries and usher in the dawn
of God's new day.
But Massachusetts feared that dawn, and she
had nearly the whole world with her. In 1635
the magistrates formulated four distinct charges
against the Salem minister : —
First, that the magistrate ought not to punish
the breaches of the first table, otherwise than in
such cases as disturb the public peace.
Secondly, that he ought not to tender an oath
to an unregenerated man.
Thirdly, that a man ought not to pray with
such, though wife and child, etc.
Fourthly, that a man ought not to give thanks
after sacrament, nor after meat, etc.
The last two charges are so petty, relating
merely to scruples about family prayer, that we
cannot believe that they touch the gravamen of
his offence. The second charge, relating to the

e(> ROGER WILLIAMS
taking of oaths, shows that Roger Williams de
sired in certain cases what is almost everywhere
now allowed, — a judicial affirmation in place of a
calling on God to witness. But the first charge
contains the real reason of the commotion. It
rightly states Roger Williams's doctrine, — that
the magistrate might not interfere with any man's
inner life, with his worship or opinions, so long
as public peace was not disturbed. Here is the
doctrine of soul-liberty springing flill-grown into
the New World, never again to retire. But to
the clergy such doctrine was intolerable. Why
should men have liberty of thought more than
liberty of action ? Is not the real deed always
interior? and, if the government is to preserve
morality, must it not deal with the beliefs which
are the basis of conduct? Free religion was as
abhorrent as the doctrine of free love in our age.
It meant the loosing of all ties, the undermining
of the entire social and legal order. The theoc
racy of Massachusetts was modelled on the Mosaic
pattern, its laws following the old Deuteronomic
code. Its courts had studied long and deeply
the command, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live," and the statute which ordered the blas
phemer to be stoned. The Puritans had not
come out into the American wilderness to offer
their new homes as shelter to all the unclean

ROGER WILLIAMS 67
birds of Europe. They had not come with a
vision of a land where each man might do and
think as he pleased. They had come to incar
nate in institutions certain defijiite, rigid convic
tions and to prevent any opposing institutions
from finding a foothold beside them. They had
come to escape a tyranny which they had found
hateful and to estabHsh a tyranny which they
believed beneficent and essential. The colony of
Massachusetts was not to be like the famous
sheet let down from heaven, full of four-footed
beasts and creeping things : it was to be a garden
of the Lord, where a divinely ordained order of
gardeners were to separate weeds from flowers,
and pluck up every weed by the roots. To wel
come all faiths was to confess that the false was
as good as the true. To proclaim toleration of
error was to assist in its propagation. To allow
free thinking was soon to see free action. To
oflFer welcome to every hair-brained enthusiast
was to endanger the new Commonwealth un
speakably, and to connive at heresy and disinte
gration. It was into such a colony, possessed of
such ideas, that Roger Williams stepped from
the good ship " Lyon," bringing a doctrine of
soul-liberty which was in itself a criticism on
every institution in the colony, himself the fore
most living apostle of non-conformity and indi-

68 ROGER WILLIAMS
vidualism. He was right, but he stood almost
alone, Massachusetts was, judged by our pres
ent standards, in the wrong ; but civilization and
historical Christianity were with her. Not until
1 833 was the standing order abolished on Massa
chusetts Bay. Not until about the same time did
the churches of Connecticut dare to go alone.
But, in 1 63 1, Roger Williams looked Massachu
setts in the face, and wrote:, "Constantine and
the good emperors are confessed to have done
more hurt to the name and crown of Christ than
the bloody Neros did. . , , Forcing of conscience
is a soul-rape. . /. . The civil sword may make a
nation of hypocrites and anti-Christians, but not
one Christian. . . . Persons may with less sin be
forced to marry whom they cannot love than to
worship where they cannot believe."
If now we ask the old unprofitable question
whether Roger Williams was banished for purely
religious or for political reasons, we see" that vari
ous answers may be given. If we at this day are i
unable sharply to divide between religion and '
politics, certainly the seventeenth century was c
unable to do so. i The phraseology of the decreed
of banishment seems to make it clear that the
cause was the promulgation of obnoxious opin
ion : " Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the
elders of the church at Salem hath broached and

ROGER WILLIAMS 69
divulged divers new and dangerous opinions
against the authority of the magistrates ; as also
writ letters of defamation both of the magistrates
and churches here, and that before any conviction
and yet maintained the same without any retract
ing ; it is therefore ordered," etc. On the other
hand, when the exiled apostle reviews his own
career, he lays emphasis on his action regarding
Separation and the royal charter as being the chief
cause of his troubles. Seldom, indeed, can we
trace the tragedy of history to any one cause
alone, or exactly assign praise and blame to the
participants. If we cannot say, even after forty
years, whether the causes of our great Civil War
were economic or ethical, if we cannot clearly
distinguish in the recent' Spanish War between
the altruistic and the imperialistic, small won
der that we cannot easily say whether the chief
emphasis of the Puritan condemnation was on
the inner religious conviction or the semi-po
litical action of Roger Williams. Perhaps the
sanest judgment is that of the latest historian,
Mr. Richman, who, writing with the approval
of James Bryce, declares, " Roger Williams of
fended against the Puritan Theocracy both by
his religious opinions and by certain of his opin
ions which were ethico-political ; his offence upon
the score of religion being primary and funda-

70 ROGER WILLIAMS
mental, and that upon the score of politics inci
dental and contributory."
If now we follow Roger Williams into exile, we
shall see that the dreamer was also a true leader
of men. After that terrible "fourteen weeks in
which he knew not what bed and board did
mean," and a brief sojourn at what is now Reho-
both, he appeared with four or five companions
on the Seekonk (Blackstone) River, and landed at
the famous rock still shown in Providence. Sub
sequently he passed around Fox Point, and land
ing near a spring of clear fresh water, expressed
his unswerving faith by naming his new resting-
place Providence. Evidently, this man was one
who " Wrought in a sad sincerity ;
Himself from God he could not free."
We thus see that Roger Williams was no mere
theorist, but the founder of a state. He had
small interest in pietistic doctrines of liberty. His
profound interest was in creating a " refiige for
distressed consciences." Others had preached
religious liberty. Many men, before Columbus,
had asserted that the world was round ; but Co
lumbus, by actually sailing over the horizon,
changed geographical speculation into tangible
fact. Roger Williams was a Columbus who dared
to incarnate what he believed into actual enter-

ROGER WILLIAMS 71
prise, and to pass from theory into practice. He
acted on his own principle. He was intensely
practical, and no doctrine had any interest for
him except as transmuted into life. Having pur
chased from the Indians land at the head of the
Narragansett Bay, as he felt that Massachusetts
should have done in making her first settlement,
he divided this land among twelve associates. He
did not think as yet of a state, but simply of a
community. No man was ever more thoroughly
free from personal ambition. The first president
of the setdement was John Coggeshall, not Roger
Williams, Two years later a compact was drawn
up, and signed by thirteen persons. This unique
and immortal document has been compared by
Professor Diman with the compact signed in the
cabin of the " Mayflower," and is certainly quite
as prophetic of the future. It reads as follows:
" We whose names are here underwritten, ^eing
desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence) do
promise to submit ourselves in active or passive
obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall
be made for the public good, of the body in an
orderly way by the major consent of the present
inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated to
gether into a township, and such others whom
they shall admit into the same, only in civil
things,"

72 ROGER WILLIAMS
That phrase "only in civil things," by whom
soever written, distinguishes the founding of
Rhode Island from the founding of every other
state which, up to that time, the world had seen.
It gives the founder a unique and sure place
among the leaders of humanity.
Let us now pass on to notice some of the
consequences of this peculiar settlement of Rhode
Island, in its subsequent history. The initial
impulse in any community is likely to endure ;
and the State of Rhode Island to-day feels in
every fibre of its body politic the influence of
Roger Williams and his associates. It is impos
sible to understand any phase of Rhode Island
life apart from the early history of the colony.
In the first place, Rhode Island suffered the
common fate of those who are resolved on hos
pitality. It found that hospitality at times
abused, and it became in its first days a refiige
for able but erratic men. Quaintly, Winthrop
writes, "In Providence also the devil was not
idle," Hither came from Massachusetts and
England the restless spirits who could not abide
established forms of any kind, Rhode Island
became to Massachusetts what Holland was to
Spain, Anne Hutchinson, being tried for heresy
and banished, found a peaceful home by Narra
gansett Bay. Samuel Gorton, whom we should

ROGER WILLIAMS 73
now call an anarchist, was described by Roger
Williams as " having abused high and low at
Aquedneck [that is Newport], bewitching and
madding poor Providence," John Clarke and
William Coddington, whose antinomian views
rendered them intolerable in the northern colony,
were kindly received at Narragansett Bay, But
communities composed of so divers and inhar
monious elements found it exceedingly difficult
to co-operate in any form of government. The
four towns. Providence, Warwick, Newport, and
Portsmouth, were frequently at swords' points ;
and the strong, energetic personalities that Rhode
Island had welcomed across her borders sometimes
uttered discordant notes that threatened utterly
to make the music mute. But no abuses could
make Roger Williams repudiate his fundamental
principles, no unhappy results could drive him
from his position. In his "Bloudy Tenent of
Persecution " he had fully expounded his own
doctrine ; and now, in his " Parable of the Ship,"
he explained its application to civil affairs. When
told that his principles would not permit magis
trates to enforce any law, he replied with this
parable : —
" There goes many a ship to sea, with many
hundred souls in one ship, whose weal or woe is
common, and is a true picture of a common-

74 ROGER WILLIAMS
wealth or a human combination of society. It
hath fallen out sometimes that both Papists and
Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked
into one ship, upon which supposal I do affirm
that all the liberty of conscience that I ever
pleaded for turns on these two hinges, that
none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks,
be forced to come to the ship's prayers or wor
ship, if they practise any. I further add that I
never denied that, notwithstanding this liberty,
the commander of the ship ought to command
the ship's course, yea, and also to command that
justice, peace, and sobriety be kept and practised,
both among the shipmen and all the passengers.
If any one of the seamen refuse to perform their ' '
services, or passengers pay their freight, if any
refuse to help in person or in purse toward the
common charge and defence, if any refuse to obey
the common laws and orders of the ship, concern
ing their common peace or preservation, and if
any shall mutiny and rise against their com
manders and officers, 'if any should preach oF" "
write that there ought to be no commanding
officers, because all are equal in Christ, therefore
no masters, no officers, no laws, nor corrections,
nor punishment, I say I never denied,*but in
such cases whatever is pretended, the commander
or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and

ROGER WILLIAMS 75
punijh such transgressors to their deserts and
merits.'' John Stuart Mill or W. E. H. Lecky could
not more lucidly and cogently express the essen
tial doctrine of civil liberty and the essential prin
ciple of true democracy. Thus at the head of
Narragansett Bay soul-liberty led straight into
democracy. The " refuge for distressed con
sciences " became the nursery of the civil liberty,
and the defender of faith became the asserter of
the rights of man. No other colony went as far
as Rhode Island in proclaiming religious free
dom. The "Toleration Act" of Maryland
offered full rights to every believer in the Trin
ity : Rhode Island offered them to all. Penn
sylvania would not allow Deist or Jew to hold
office. But from the beginning Rhode Island
offered to all sorts and conditions of men asy
lum and welcome. When the first charter was
procured in 1642, it contained no reference to
any power over religious faith. Henceforth the
problem of the colony was to reconcile extreme
individualism with social and political co-opera
tion. The conflict of these two principles is the
history of the State. In Massachusetts the laws
had to be modified to create liberty. In Rhode
Island, liberty had to be defined and directed in
order to establish law. Rhode Island was the

76 ROGER WILLIAMS
first of the colonies to legislate against slavery^
and the first to declare independence of Great
Britain, — in May, 1776. For the same reason
it was the last to adopt the Federal Constitution,
giving at last its consent by a vote of 34 to 32,
and attaching to its consent a bill of rights con
sisting of eighteen articles and twenty-one pro
posed amendments to the Constitution.
Out of the spirit incarnated by Roger Will
iams, and expressed in Rhode Island, came the
remarkable charter of Brown University in 1764,
which contains only two provisions regarding the
character of the instruction to be offered. First,
" that the Public Teaching shall in General Re
spect the Sciences," — this in an age when
modern science was struggling to the birth.
Secondly, after providing that each of the chief
religious denominations then existing in America
should hold place on the Corporation, this sig
nificant declaration was made : " Into this Liberal
and Catholic Institution shall never be admitted
any Religious Tests, but on the contrary all the
Members hereof shall forever enjoy full free Ab
solute and uninterrupted Liberty of Conscience."
Not till ninety years later was any dissenter ad
mitted to Oxford or to Cambridge University.
It is time for us to say a word regarding the
temper and disposition of the man whose doctrine

ROGER WILLIAMS 77
we have studied. Seldom have dignity of manner
and sweetness of temper been so combined with
relentless logic and inflexible tenacity of purpose.
If Cotton called him a " haberdasher of small
questions," yet the same Cotton loved him as a
brother. If Bradford spoke of him as " unsettled
in judgment," he yet described him as having
"many precious parts." Edward Winslow op
posed him, but spoke of his "lovely carriage."
Roger Williams loved peace, but was forced to
fight. He was a wanderer for conscience' sake,
but ever longed for home. No controversy could
imbitter him, no ecclesiastical opposition involve
him in personal enmity. He saved Massachu
setts time and again from the Indians. He
fought the hierarchy while sending them letters
of personal affection. He replied to the severe
strictures of John Cotton with sharp rhetoric, yet
began, " I desire that my rejoinder shall be as full
of love as truth." His imagination is like that
of Jonathan Edwards. His speech overflows
with striking metaphor or quaint conceit. An old
Puritan chronicler writes (quoted by Cobb) :
" This child of Light walked in Darkness about
forty years, . . . yet did not his root turn into
rottenness. The Root of the Matter abode in
him." At the age of seventy-eight we find the apostle

78 ROGER WILLIAMS
of Rhode Island feeble, broken, poor, but still
serene, and bating not a jot of heart or hope.
He was buried near the clear spring where he first
landed. The spring now flows underground,
buried and forgotten ; but from his life issues an
unfailing contribution to the freedom and happi
ness of humanity.
If what we have said be true, you will perceive
that the personality and principles of Roger Will
iams possess far more than an antiquarian interest.
Eternal vigilance will be the price of our liberty.
Continually to-day we need to apply the old
doctrine to the modern life. Whenever govern
mental support of denominational teaching is
urged or offered, then the spirit of Roger Will
iams should awake in us to protest. If it can be
shown that exemption from taxation allowed the
smallest right of control, then such exemption
should rightly be declined by every church. The
expansion of the United States which is now tak
ing place, whether for weal or woe, will constantly
bring before this nation great problems which will
never be settled until they are settled right ; that
is, until they are settled on the basis of the teach
ing of Roger Williams. The application of that
teaching must be made afresh from year to year,
but the principle itself must never be called in
question by Americans. Whenever in modern

ROGER WILLIAMS 79
times the law of evolution is so misinterpreted as
to invalidate the laws of ethics, whenever the
" survival of the fittest " is supposed to mean the
survival of the strongest, when supposed necessity
or alleged profit is made the excuse for depriving
another man or another nation of its liberty, then
the spirit of Roger Williams should be summoned
from the vasty deep, that it may speak in trumpet
tones to recall us to ourselves. This apostle of
liberty denied two hundred and fifty years ago
that " Christian kings, so called, are invested
with a right by virtue of their Christianity to take
and give away the lands and countries of other
men." He was persistently against every inter
ference with self-government, home rule, and
liberty for all sorts and conditions of men. He
preferred Democracy, with all its perils, to the
assumption of Divine Right, with all its hateful
splendor. We need also to exalt the principles of Roger
Williams whenever in our day the claims of the
individual are in danger of being ignored. A
century ago the word "independence" was a
word to conjure with. Now it awakens little
enthusiasm : interdependence is the great truth
in which men are now interested ; and society is
frequently treated as an organism, in whose
mighty development the individual is over-

8o ROGER WILLIAMS
shadowed and forgotten. The brotherhood of
man, the amelioration of humanity, the federa
tion of the world, the progress of the species, are
phrases on all our lips, and concepts which catch
and hold the public mind. We live in the day
of combination and consolidation, when isolation
is defeat, and division is frequently death. The
ends of the world are growing together, and the
progress of the race is accelerated to an amazing^
degree. But we must remember that the value
of the brotherhood of man depends on the in
dividuals who make up the brotherhood. The
progress of the species is impossible apart from
the progress of the units composing the
species ; the success of federation depends on
having real men to federate ; and the advance
of humanity is a dream, apart from the ad
vance of separate individual men and women.
The millennium will not come by paper pro
grammes or acts of Congress. It will come
by the millennial spirit of freedom and loyalty,
by the love of liberty and faith in law arising
in the heart of one man, and then communi
cating themselves to millions of others, as echoes
that grow forever and forever.
Let us learn also to tolerate the man of vision,
even if he be clothed in camel's hair, and insist
on eating wild honey. They that live delicately

ROGER WILLIAMS 8i
in kings' houses may be far more congenial com
panions at modern social functions ; but the men
whose voices ring out among the crags of the
wilderness are, after all, the true forerunners of
the Messiah. " Behold, this dreamer cometh,"
said Joseph's brethren scornfully ; but, until the
man of the dream does come, the man with a
hoe, the man with a purse, and the man with
a pen sit helpless and useless.
The men who disturb the smooth surface of
life are often divinely sent. Some bless the
world by aiding in its harmonious development.
They quiedy co-operate with the general ten
dency of society, and help it onward. Other
men help the world by challenging social custom,
by reopening questions the world has thought of
as settled, and by summoning their day and gen
eration to open their minds to new light. For
these men also let us have a welcome. If we
kill the prophets to-day, we shall sadly and peni
tently build their tombs to-morrow. Uncer
tainty is always the mother of intolerance. The
men who are sure of their own convictions can
always afford to listen to the man whose convic
tions are different. As James Russell Lowell
says, " The universe of God is fire-proof, and it
is quite safe to strike a match." Roger Williams
did strike a few matches in Providence Planta-

82 ROGER WILLIAMS
tions two and a half centuries ago, and the
conflagration which threatened to consume Mas
sachusetts has turned out only to be the lighting
of a flame now cherished on all the hearthstones
of the republic. Therefore we do well, from
time to time, to preserve in speech and song and
legal record, and in memorials of marble and
bronze, the name and fame of the founder of
Rhode Island ; for in the wise and balanced
words of John Fiske, "He was the first to con
ceive thoroughly, and carry out consistently, in
the face of strong opposition, a theory of relig
ious liberty broad enough to win assent and ap
proval from advanced thinkers of the present
day."

Ill
Thomas Hooker and the Principle of
Congregational Independency

THOMAS HOOKER AND THE PRIN
CIPLE OF CONGREGATIONAL
INDEPENDENCY.
While no period of history can be wholly de
void of interest to those whose lives fall within its
bounds, the story of human progress has been
one of varying picturesqueness and, we must be
lieve, of unlike attractiveness to the successive
actors in its changing scenes. The path of
events, like the roadway across some vast conti
nent, has its alternations of arid stretches, of
humdrum levels, of mountain ranges of struggle
and of far-sighted inspiration. To have lived in
an age which witnessed the discovery of a new
world, with its infinite possibilities of adventure,
which opened the sea route to the Orient, which
altered educational methods, and, above all, wit
nessed the great Lutheran revolt, seems to us
vastly more significant than to have had one's
allotted span of existence in the obscurity of
Anglo-Saxon England, or even in the artificiality
of the first half of the eighteenth century. Not
a few of the generation to which the speaker be
longs feel a pang of regret that they can know
only from the lips of others the struggles and
aspirations and hopes of that wonderful period in
our New England story which began with the re-

86 THOMAS HOOKER
formatory movements of the early thirties of the
nineteenth century and spent itself in the fever
of the Civil War. Doubtless the more personal
events of business and family and community life,
which count for so little on the great roll of his
tory, but loom so momentously in our individual
experience, make most of concern in the estimate
of the greater part of the men and women of any
age ; but one can but believe it to have been a
privilege to have lived when the Renaissance
burst the shackles of the Middle Ages, when
England saw the peril of the Armada ebb from
her shores, when France entered on the high
hopes of the Revolution, or when American
independence was won.
For most men, however, acquaintance with the
more stirring and picturesque of the events of
history must be through the recorded experience
of others, — if possible, of others who had an impor
tant role on the great stage of human events ; and
we shall therefore try to see a significant epoch of
Anglo-Saxon development as it is illustrated in
the story of one of its typical leaders, — Thomas
Hooker. If one glances at the map of England, one sees
in almost its exact geographical centre the county
of Leicester. The region is one of fertile farming
land and of wide landscapes. And in the little

THOMAS HOOKER 87
Leicestershire village of Marfield, then numbering
six houses and now counting but five, it was that
Thomas Hooker was born, probably in 1586,
and possibly on the 7th of July. Of his par
ents little has been recorded. His father bore
the same Christian name ; and the family position
was honorable, as social rank was then estimated.
But, in spite of Cotton Mather's statement that
the parents " were neither unable nor unwilling
to bestow upon him a liberal education," their
pecuniary ability was apparently limited ; and
young Hooker's mental training seems to have
been made largely possible by the use of funds
and fellowships established by those who had
sought to make the paths of learning easier for
needy young men. His first scholastic training,
beyond the rudimentary instruction in his own
home, was gained at a school founded by Sir
Wolstan Dixie at Market-Bosworth, in which,
more than a century later, Dr. Samuel John
son was to be an " usher." From the instruction
afforded by Market-Bosworth he passed in due
course to the University of Cambridge, being
matriculated a "sizar," or student-waiter, of
Queen's College on March 27, 1604, when not
quite eighteen years of age. From Queen's Col
lege he passed to the more comfortable enjoy
ment of one of the two Wolstan Dixie fellow-

88 THOMAS HOOKER
ships at Emmanuel College ; and there he
graduated a Bachelor of Arts in 1608, and
received the Master's degree in 1611.
To become a student at Emmanuel College in
the early years of the reign of James I. was to be
initiated into the most strenuous circles of Eng
lish Puritanism. Beyond any other foundation
at the prevailingly Puritan University of which
it was one of the colleges, Emmanuel had been
devoted to the Puritan cause since its establish
ment by a zealous Puritan courtier of Queen
Elizabeth, Sir Walter Mildmay, in 1584. Its
services in training the founders of New England
were to be conspicuous ; for it bears upon its roll
of graduates, besides the name of Hooker, those
of John Cotton, Samuel Stone, Thomas Shepard,
John Harvard, and Nathaniel Ward, not to
speak of others destined to be of eminent use in
the Puritan colonies across the Atlantic. It stood
in the forefront of the Puritan battle ; and in its
simplicity of public worship, its zeal for preach
ing, its hearty support of the intense Calvinism
characteristic of Puritanism generally, and its
strenuous desire to alter the constitution of the
Church of England once more in conformity
with the ideals which Calvinistic Puritanism
gathered from the study of the New Testament,
it represented in its intensest form the spirit of

THOMAS HOOKER 89
the Puritan party. So pronounced, indeed, was
the Puritanism of Emmanuel College, under the
mastership of Laurence Chaderton and his emi
nent successor, John Preston, that it was regarded
" as neither more nor less than a mere nursery of
Puritans " ; and its services to the Puritan cause
were such as to make the designation eminently
just. The struggle, into the heat of which the young
Cambridge student was thus thrown, was one
which had been dividing England with increasing
bitterness for two generations. It was a contest
of principles rather than of mere parties in the
Church ; and, being a contest of principles, it
penetrated deeply and divisively into the national
life. At the time of the accession of Queen
Elizabeth, nearly a generation before Hooker's
birth, probably not more than a third of the pop
ulation were Protestant at heart. The situation
which the great queen encountered was one of
exceeding difficulty. Opposed by the Catholic
powers of Europe and declared without title to
her royal authority, her heir, Mary Queen of
Scots, an adherent of the Roman communion,
and her own subjects divided in their allegiance,
the situation was one not merely of great peril
for the stability of her own throne, but one, also,
in which the land she ruled might easily become

90 THOMAS HOOKER
prey to civil war, as was the fate contemporane
ously of the neighboring kingdom of France.
That such a result was avoided was no mean
political achievement, but it was avoided at the
expense of what was thought by the more earnest
of the Protestant party of England a serious
check to the religious interests of the kingdom.
To the queen herself it seemed sufficient to
secure uniformity of worship and submission to
her own ecclesiastical authority. To inquire
much further than that into the real beliefs or the
pastoral fitness of the clergy who had been swept
in a body from the Roman obedience into the
new Anglican fellowship was unnecessary ; and to
agitate for any further reforms in the ecclesiastical
constitution, especially for any reforms that would
limit the royal authority or increase the danger of
civil discord by antagonizing any considerable
portion of the population, was, in her judgment,
practically equivalent to treason against her sov
ereignty. Nor were matters really bettered when James
I. succeeded to the throne made vacant by Eliza
beth's death in 1603. Trained in Presbyterian
ism, and himself a vigorous and polemic defender
of the Calvinistic theology, the party desirous of
the further reform of the English Church hoped
much from him ; but their expectations suffered

THOMAS HOOKER 91
speedy disappointment. He declared to the
Puritan representatives who presented their re
quests to him at the Hampton Conference in
1604, regarding those who desired to alter
the worship of the English Church, " I shall
make the conforme themselues, or I wil harrie
them out of the land, or else doe worse." " No
bishop, no king," was the " short aphorisme "
in which James expressed his approval of the
English establishment as it had come to him
from the hands of the great queen. With this
hearty commendation of the ecclesiastical system
of which he was the head and controlling author
ity, James combined the loftiest conceptions of
the divinely appointed nature of his kingly
power. To be responsible to his subjects, either
for the religious or the political administration of
his realm, was as far as possible from his thoughts ;
and his conduct, both in Church and State, was
such as to anger and to alienate those of his
subjects alike who looked for further churchly
reform and for constitutional government. Thus
he quarrelled with the commons as to whether
they had the right to discuss questions of Church
and State. He irritated the Puritans no less
by prescribing the reading of a book of sports in
16 1 8, which, however well intentioned on the
king's part, seemed to them a direct incitement

92 THOMAS HOOKER
to the breach of the Fourth Commandment ; and
by denying to any one lower in ecclesiastical
station than the occupant of the high position of a
dean the right to discuss in public those Calvin
istic doctrines of election, predestination, and the
mysterious ways of God which seemed to the
Puritan party the doctrines of grace, and to be
fundamentally necessary for a true presentation
of the way of salvation. And, when James I.
closed his life in 1625, the situation, so far as the
hope of further reform in the English Church or
State was concerned, was made worse rather than
better by the accession of his son Charles I.
More polished in manner and more tactful in
address than his father had ever been, his con
ceptions of the royal authority were fully as lofty,
and his determination to suppress all innovations
in ecclesiastical procedure quite as strenuous. In
this policy, in Church and State alike, he had,
moreover, the counsel and support of one who
was in himself the illustration of what was
best and worst in the high Anglicanism which
the king represented, — William Laud, a prelate
fiercely determined to enforce ecclesiastical uni
formity throughout the length and breadth of the
kingdom, because he sincerely believed that such
absolute suppression of dissent was for the best
interests of the English Church.

THOMAS HOOKER 93
In almost polar opposition to these principles
which Elizabeth and the Stuart sovereigns repre
sented, and which enjoyed the support of a large
proportion of the people of England, stood the
Puritan party. Thorough-going in its Protes
tantism, it believed that the Elizabethan settle
ment was but a half-completed reformation at
best, and that it was the duty of the government
to alter the much altered Church of England
once more into completer conformity with the
pattern of what the Christian Church should be,
as the Puritans thought they discovered that
pattern in the New Testament, under the light
that came to them from the expositions of the
great theologian of Geneva. Above all, Puritan
ism was an ethical power. It desired the moral
betterment of the people of England ; and it
regarded the toleration in the Church of an ig
norant, non-preaching, unstrenuous clergy, how
ever politically expedient such toleration might
be, as nothing less than a deprivation of religious
privilege which demanded immediate reform.
Puritanism desired a learned, earnest, preaching
ministry, and a vigorous, searching moral disci-
pHne; and it viewed the royal power and the
royally appointed bishops who kept in office
clergymen whom Puritanism regarded as unfit
to be spiritual leaders as the main hindrances to

94 THOMAS HOOKER
the reform of the Church of England, which
Puritanism desired to see accomplished.
It was natural, trained as the leaders of Puri
tanism were, under influences which emanated
from Calvin, that their interpretation both of
Christian truth and of church government ran
in lines which the Genevan reformer had marked
out ; and it was fortunate for English liberty that
such was the case, for, though Calvin himself was
by nature an aristocrat, and though his ecclesiasti
cal rule at Geneva was marked by an interference
with the individual life of the inhabitants of that
city which we should now deem tyranny, his influ
ence on the existing state of religious and political
thought alike was one which made for constitu
tional liberty and which demanded for the people
some share in the government. Calvin was not,
in intention, a political innovator. His work, in
his own thought at least, was purely a religious
one ; but the lessons that he taught to Western
Europe were of a wide-reaching importance, no
less in the realm of politics than in that of church
organization. Calvin taught that no law of man
is right, by whomsoever enacted, till it is in con
formity with the law of God. Who was to tell
what that law of God is to which conformity is
due save the common man as he read his Bible
with his own eyes and tried to interpret the stat-

THOMAS HOOKER 95
utes of the government under which he lived in
conformity with what he understood to be divine
requirements ? Calvin taught thus to all think
ing men who accepted his view of Christian truth
that there is a further test to be applied to any
statute enacted by king or parliament than the
mere fact that it has proceeded from such hu
manly constituted authority. It must justify
itself as true, also, to the divine law, when tested
by the judgment of the common man. This was
a doctrine with which the Tudor and Stuart the
ory of the divine right of kings could have no
fellowship. Furthermore, Calvin taught the Puritan that
the minister served his congregation by its con
sent ; that that congregation had a voice in his
election ; and the conclusion was a natural con
sequence of his principle that in some sense, in
definite it may be, the minister was responsible
to the congregation that he served, and could be
deposed by it if guilty of maladministration of his
office. This doctrine, equally, had no fellowship
with the Tudor and Stuart conception of the
Church as having its centre of authority in the
sovereign, as ruled by bishops of his appoint
ment, and as ministered to by priests in whose
selection their congregations had no share. And,
as it is Impossible to disassociate the principles

96 THOMAS HOOKER
which govern men's thinking in matters of
church organization from those which control
them in political affairs, the Puritan soon queried
why, if ministers were responsible to the con
gregations that they served, might not officers
of civil government, even kings on their thrones,
be answerable to the people for a proper admin
istration of the trusts committed to them ? It
was a perception of the far-reaching consequences
of these fundamental diversities of conviction,
quite as much as any mere question of ecclesiasti
cal organization or of ritual, important as those
matters were then regarded, which nerved the
Puritan and his opponent alike in their long
struggle. King James well expressed his sense
of the irreconcilable antagonism of the two points
of view when he declared, regarding Scottish
Presbyterianism, in terms equally applicable to
Puritanism, that it " as wel agreeth with a Mon
archy" — as a Stuart king conceived monarchy
should be — " as God and the Deuill,"
Hooker's stay at Cambridge initiated him fully
into the Puritan side of this great controversy, if
he had not been a Puritan from the beginning
of his intellectual life ; and he made the principles
for which the Puritan party stood fully his own.
But his university years brought to him another
and more intimate experience, the sense of which

THOMAS HOOKER 97
vivified and quickened his own personal piety
thereafter, and, since it did not a little to deter
mine the peculiar shade of his theology and the
emphasis of his preaching, is of much importance
in any consideration of his life. That experience
was his conversion. It was through the gateway
of intensest spiritual struggle, as was natural to
the Puritans of his day, that Hooker believed
thac he came into the kingdom of God ; but this
struggle had an agony and strenuousness exceed
ing that of Puritanism in general, convinced as
Puritanism was that salvation is an extremely
difficult matter. It has been customary to at
tribute to that sombre theologian of Newport,
Samuel Hopkins, the belief that no man could
be fiilly a Christian until he was so willing to
place himself at the divine disposal as to accept
without rebellion whatever disposal God should
see fit to make of him, even if the divine purpose
should involve his damnation. This was the
rigorous and, to most Christian people, ab
horrent test to which Hooker held himself in
his own conversion, and in his preaching ever
afterwards held up to others as the fiindamental
prerequisite of a true Christian hope. One cannot
wonder that Hooker pictured this trying passage
in his personal history as the "time of his
agonies," or that he took comfort in what Cotton

98 THOMAS HOOKER
Mather describes as the "prudent and piteous
carriage " of Simeon Ashe, afterwards an eminent
Puritan divine, but who was brought into rela
tions with Hooker in this time of spiritual trial
as the " sizar that then waited upon him," and
whose sympathetic compassion touched Hooker's
burdened heart.
At precisely what point in his university career
this profound religious experience occurred it is,
perhaps, impossible to say ; but it was followed by
a determination on Hooker's part to enter the
ministry. During the latter part of his residence
at Cambridge he served as a catechist and
preacher; and between 1618 and 1620 he was
appointed to the rectorship of Esher, a village
some sixteen miles south-west of London, The
moving cause which induced Hooker to accept
this modest position, with its salary of only ;£^40
a year, seems to have been the fact that the Esher
rectorship was direcdy in the gift of a Puritan
patron, and did not require the intervention of
a bishop for its reception ; and it was the hope
that Hooker's ministrations might be of benefit
to his invalid and spiritually distressed wife that
induced the patron of Esher, Francis Drake, a
relative of the English sailor of Elizabeth's reign,
to offer the living to the young Cambridge grad
uate. Here Hooker preached until 1626, and

THOMAS HOOKER 99
here he married Mrs. Drake's " waiting- woman,"
Susanna, whose family name is not known, but
who, there is evidence to prove, was highly re
garded in the household in which she was a com
panion. That the union thus formed, which
continued as long as Hooker lived, was one of
mutual helpfulness and affection, we may well
believe; but regarding Mrs. Hooker's personality,
or her influence upon the life of her husband or
of others, scarcely any trace has been recorded.
Hooker's pastorate at Esher was exchanged
in 1626 for a post of much greater conspicuity,
when he became lecturer at Chelmsford, some
twenty-nine miles east of London. The position
which he thus assumed was one of the char
acteristic devices of Puritanism, in order to
secure a more efficient ministry than the regular
incumbent of the parish always afforded. Side
by side with the duly installed rector, Puritan
benevolence, in many towns, supported a "lect
urer" who would preach as Puritanism desired;
and as a divisive element in ecclesiastical life,
efficient in the propagation of that Puritanism
which Laud and his Stuart sovereign alike op
posed, the lectureship system won the hearty
condemnation of the Anglican party, and found
in Laud himself its most efficient, conscientious,
and active enemy. Hooker's preaching, more-

ICO THOMAS HOOKER
over, both at Esher and in his Chelmsford min
istry, in spite of the royal prohibition of the
public discussion of Calvinistic doctrines to which
allusion has already been made, was of intensely
Calvinistic character. Much of it bore the stamp
of the deep and searching struggle through which
he had passed in his conversion ; and the volumes
in which his sermons of this period and of his
early New England ministry have been preserved
bear such titles as " The Poor Dovting Christian
drawne vnto Christ," "The Sovles Preparation
for Christ," or " The Sovles Humiliation."
Of his great repute as a preacher there can be
no question ; and a single quotation from one
of these sermons will illustrate alike the char
acteristics of Hooker's pulpit style and the
degree to which he made his own religious ex
perience a touchstone to test the truth of that
of others. He is speaking of conversion : —
Now I come to this last passage in this worke of
Humiliation, and this is the dead lift of all. The
Prodigall doth not stand it out with his Father and say,
I am now come againe, if I may have halfe the rule in
the Family, I am content to live with you. No,
though hee would not stay there before, yet now hee
cannot be kept out, hee is content to bee anything. . . .
Lord (saith he) shew me mercy, and I am content to
be, and to suffer anything. So from hence the Doctrine

THOMAS HOOKER loi
is this. The Soule that is truly humbled, is content
to be disposed of by the Almightie, as it pleaseth him.
The maine pitch of this point lyes in the word, content.
This phrase is a higher pitch than the former of sub
mission : and this is plaine by this example. Take a
debtor, who hath used all meanes to avoyd the creditor :
in the end he seeth that hee cannot avoyd the suit, and
to beare it hee is not able. Therefore the onely way is
to come in, and yeeld himselfe into his creditors hands ;
where there is nothing, the King must loose his right ;
so the debtor yeelds himselfe : but suppose the creditor
should use him hardly, exact the uttermost, and throw
him into prison. Now to bee content to under-goe the
hardest dealing, it is a hard matter : this is a further
degree than the offering himselfe. So, when the Soule
hath oifered himselfe, and he seeth that Gods writs are
out against him, and his Conscience (the Lords Ser
jeant) is comming to serve a Subpana on him, and it is
not able to avoyd it, nor to beare it when he comes,
therefore he submits himselfe and saith, Lord, whither
shall I goe, thy anger is heavy and unavoydable ; Nay,
whatsoever God requires, the Soule layes his hand upon
his mouth, and goes away contented and well satisfied,
and it hath nothing to say against the Lord.
Here are illustrated the qualities which stand
evident on every page of Hooker's printed dis
courses, — his aptness in homely illustration, his
vividness of description, his intense spiritual
earnestness, and his conception of the profound

I02 THOMAS HOOKER
and fundamental character of the transformation
by which alone he believed the soul could be
fitted for the kingdom of God. A preacher such
as he must have commanded attention to his
message always, whether men agreed with him or
not ; and we have ample evidence of the effective
ness with which he encountered, and not in
frequently overcame, the opposition of those
indifferent or hostile to what he had to say.
A single, and we may hope, an extreme in
stance alike of this opposition and of his skill
in meeting it is recorded by Cotton Mather as
having taken place on one of Hooker's visits
to the town from which his native county of
Leicester takes its name.
" One of the chief burgesses," says Mather,
" much opposed his preaching there ; and when he
could not prevail to hinder it, he set c&xtai.n fiddlers
at work to disturb him in the church-porch or
church-yard. But such was the vivacity of Mr.
Hooker, as to proceed in what he was about,
without either the dampning of his mind, or the
drowning of his voice ; whereupon the man him
self went unto the church-door to overhear what
he said. It pleased God so to accompany some
words uttered by Mr. Hooker, as thereby to
procure, first the attention and then the conviction
of that wretched man; who then came to Mr.

THOMAS HOOKER 103
Hooker with a penitent confession of his wicked
ness," The very conspicuity and effectiveness of this
Chelmsford ministry drew upon it the more
promptly the criticism of those who opposed the
system of Puritan lectureships ; and before a year
had passed after Laud had become bishop of
London, and thus Hooker's immediate ecclesias
tical superior, the Chelmsford lecturer felt the
hand of churchly discipline. The neighboring
clergy of the estabhshment soon after ranged
themselves for and against him, some forty-nine
signing a petition in Hooker's behalf, while forty-
one in a similar way expressed their wish that
Laud should " enforce these irregulars to con
forme " ; and so threatening grew the situation
that, apparently, about the close of 1629, Hooker
retired from his Chelmsford ministry, and found
refuge in the neighboring village of Little Bad-
dow, where he opened a school in his own house.
Yet even here Laud regarded him as dangerous.
Cited to appear before the High Commission
Court in July, 1630, by the advice and assist
ance of his friends he escaped with much diffi
culty to Holland, and began the self-imposed
exile from his native land which was to last, with
one short interruption, till his death. In Hol
land, after a brief sojourn at Amsterdam, Hooker

I04 THOMAS HOOKER
became for about two years the colleague of
John Forbes in the pastorate of the Scotch
Church of Delft, and was then, for a few months,
associated with the eminent William Ames in the
care of the expatriated congregation worshipping
in Rotterdam.
But, even before Hooker's flight to Holland,
English Puritanism was beginning to look to a
New England across the sea ; and Hooker can
have regarded his Dutch residence only in the
light of a temporary refuge. Just what the
course of negotiations between him and his former
parishioners and admiring hearers was it is im
possible to say ; but it is evident that the renewal
of pastoral relations in the New World with his
English friends must have been determined upon
before his residence in Holland had long contin
ued, for we find a company of immigrants from
Chelmsford and the neighboring Braintree and
Colchester in Old England settled at Mount
Wollaston, near the New England Boston, in
1632, and so identified with the absent Hooker
as to be described contemporaneously by Gov
ernor Winthrop as " Mr, Hooker's company."
It was to join this waiting congregation that
Hooker left Holland for England in 1633, and
after a narrow escape from capture sailed on the
" Griffin," with Rev. Samuel Stone, who was to

THOMAS HOOKER 105
be his colleague during all his American minis
terial career, John Cotton, already famous in
English Puritan circles and to be yet more dis
tinguished as the foremost minister of Massachu
setts, and John Haynes, to be governor succes
sively of Massachusetts and of Connecticut. And
it must have been a kind of Puritan feast of
preaching that the " Griffin " company enjoyed
during the eight weeks' voyage, for Cotton
Mather declares : " They had three sermons . . .
for the most part every day : of Mr. Cotton in
the morning, Mr. Hooker in the afternoon, Mr.
Stone after supper in the evening."
Arrived in Boston on September 4, 1633,
Hooker was settled, on October 11 following,
as " pastor," with Stone as " teacher," over the
waiting congregation, which meanwhile had re
moved from Mount Wollaston to what was then
known as Newtown, but was speedily to be desig
nated by the now familiar name of Cambridge.
With such leaders as Hooker and Stone in its
ministry and Haynes in its lay membership, the
congregation worshipping at Cambridge might
well contest with that at Boston, under the guid
ance of Cotton, Wilson, and Winthrop, the pre
eminence among the churches of early Massachu
setts. Its influence was speedily felt, not merely
in ecclesiastical, but in civil matters. Thus

io6 THOMAS HOOKER
Hooker was employed in 1633 and 1636, with
Cotton, in adjusting differences between Dudley
and Winthrop, and in 1635 ^" discussing with
Roger Williams the opinions which that erratic
and liberty-loving minister had advanced, and
which the General Court looked upon with
disfavor. The same year Haynes was chosen
governor of the Massachusetts Colony. The
Newtown company, whether ministers or laymen,
were evidently taking a prominent part in New
England affairs.
But for certain reasons, some of which are not
as evident as might be wished, the company of
which Hooker was the spiritual leader was dis
satisfied with the location and environment in
which they found themselves. As early as May,
1634, they were representing to the General
Court of Massachusetts their lack of sufficient
land and their desire for a widening of their
boundaries or for permission to remove else
where. They were sending out men of their
number to investigate the possibilities of the
meadow lands along the Merrimack, and by the
following July they were seriously contemplating
removal to the banks of the Connecticut and
were sending explorers thither. Such a situation
of discontent was a serious disturbance of the
colony, and, at the General Court in September

THOMAS HOOKER 107
following, the whole " matter was debated divers
days, and many reasons alleged pro and con.
The principal reasons for their removal were, i.
Their want of accommodation for their cattle, so
as they were not able to maintain their ministers,
nor could receive any more of their friends to
help them ; and so it was alleged by Mr.
Hooker, as a fundamental error, that towns
were set so near each to other. 2. The fruit-
fulness and commodiousness of Connecticut, and
the danger of having it possessed by others,
Dutch or English. 3. The strong bent of their
spirits to remove thither."
The two reasons first mentioned by Winthrop
are readily comprehensible. The settlers of New
England had the land hunger so characteristic
of pioneer communities, and an extent of terri
tory which now seems absurdly adequate may
well have appeared unsatisfactory to them. The
meadow lands which bordered the Connecticut
certainly offered more fertile tracts for farming
than the relatively sterile soil about Massachu
setts Bay ; and it was desirable, from the point
of view of the interests of the Puritan colony,
that neither the Dutch nor the men of Plymouth
should have possession of so attractive and so
adjacent a territory as the Connecticut valley.
Yet these reasons by no means fully account for

io8 THOMAS HOOKER
the " strong bent of their spirits to remove,"
for these considerations might as well have ap
plied to any other communities in the colony
besides that at Newtown and its sympathizers in
Dorchester and Watertown. The danger was
common to all, and we cannot feel that the
desire for enlargement was peculiar to the com
pany of which Hooker was pastor.
Some deeper and further reasons must have
had their influence in causing them to reach so
momentous a decision as the determination to
leave their newly erected houses and just cleared
farms involved. What were these further rea
sons ? Unfortunately, the evidence is not quite
so ample as we could wish ; yet I think that two
grounds for this strong bent of their minds,
besides those conspicuously described by Win
throp, are evident in the light of contemporary
and subsequent evidence. One was, as Hubbard
intimates, a certain degree of personal — we will
not say jealousy — but rivalry, in popular esti
mate and leadership, between Cotton and Win
throp, on the one hand, and Hooker and Haynes,
on the other. Without serious antagonism to
their brethren of the Boston community, the
Newtown company may well have felt that a
further removal would give them greater inde
pendence in shaping their own affairs. And,

THOMAS HOOKER 109
more important than this, there is reason to
believe, in the light of later Connecticut prac
tice, that a decided diflFerence existed between
these would-be emigrants and their associates
who stayed behind in regard to so fundamental
a matter as the conditions of the franchise, and,
possibly even, some degree of dissent from Mas
sachusetts strictness in admission to church
membership. By a law passed by the Mas
sachusetts General Court at its session in May,
1 63 1, those admitted freemen after that time
were required to be "members of some of the
churches within the lymitts of the " Massachusetts
Colony. No such restriction obtained in the
little commonwealth which Hooker and his as
sociates speedily planted on the banks of the
Connecticut ; and the inference is natural that the
absence of such limitation there expressed a well-
considered dissent of the Connecticut founders
from the fundamental principles, in this respect,
of their Massachusetts associates. To what ex
tent this dissent involved ecclesiastical differences
is much less evident ; but a correspondent, writ
ing to Rev. John Wilson, of Boston, as early as
April, 1637, affirmed "that you [of Massachu
setts] are so strict in admission of members to
your church, that more then halfe are out of your
church in all your congregations, & that Mr.

no THOMAS HOOKER
Hoker befor he went away preached against yt as
one reports who hard him."
It seems clear, therefore, that no inconsider
able cause of this desire for removal to Connecti
cut, so strongly manifested by Hooker and his
associates at the General Court in the autumn of
1634, was due to a real, if little openly pro
claimed, want of sympathy with the intensity of
the theocratic conceptions then governing the lead
ers of Massachusetts ; and certainly, on the part
of Hooker, as we shall have occasion to see, to a
stronger and clearer conviction of democracy as the
essential basis of government than they possessed.
The discussion at the General Court in Sep
tember, 1634, resulted, however, in a temporary
delay. The people of Newtown accepted an en
largement of their territories ; but it was only a
palliative, and by September of the following year
enough settlers were in Connecticut to justify
the Massachusetts General Court, held that
month, in appointing a temporary constable for
the preservation of good order among them. In
the late spring of 1 63 6 the main body of settlers,
led by Hooker, Stone, and Haynes, made their
way through the forest ; and the early summer
saw Hooker and his parishioners building their
new homes at the spot which was soon to bear the
name of Hartford.

THOMAS HOOKER in
It was not merely with the erection of new
dwellings and the tillage of new fields that these
settlers were speedily occupied. Though a com
mission was appointed by Massachusetts with
temporary authority for their government, it was
speedily discovered that they were without the
bounds of the Massachusetts patent ; and, there
fore, without the fiindamental constitution which
that charter gave to the colony from which they
had come forth. They were obliged to erect
political institutions for themselves ; and, though
much of the technical skill shown in this construc
tive work may well be owing to the legal training
of Roger Ludlow and the executive experience of
John Haynes, the animating spirit of the new
constitution was undoubtedly the democratic spirit
of Hooker. A chance auditor of an address given
by him at a Thursday lecture on May 31, 1638,
before the General Court of the little colony, re
corded in shorthand the declaration of principles
which Hooker then set forth, and which, had it
not been for the long-undeciphered notes of this
hearer, would have remained unknown to us.
Taking as his text the thirteenth verse of the first
chapter of Deuteronomy, Hooker drew the fol
lowing doctrines : —
"I. The choice of public magistrates belongs
unto the people, by God's own allowance. II.

112 THOMAS HOOKER
The privilege of election, which belongs to the
people, therefore must not be exercised according
to their humours, but according to the blessed
will and law of God, III. They who have power
to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their
power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of
the power and place unto which they call them,"
And he gives as the first of the "reasons " for
these " doctrines " that " the foundation of au
thority is laid, in the free consent of the people,"
Here, then, we have the declaration of Hook
er's principles, which was to be embodied in
January, 1639, in the fiindamental laws or first
constitution of Connecticut, — a basal compact
which clearer and more fully than any political
agreement heretofore formulated recognized the
foundation of authority as existent in the people,
and the officers of government as responsible to
them. It was the first adequate and distinct
enunciation of what might be called the fiinda
mental political principle after which Puritanism
had been groping through two generations of
struggle on English soil, and which Puritanism
as a whole was far from having attained, — the
principle that a self-governing democracy is the
proper basis of the State, Of the far-sighted
soundness of Hooker's clear-visioned utterance
and of the deep-seated and thorough-going char-

THOMAS HOOKER 113
acter of his own democracy there can be no ques
tion. If it was for no other utterance than this,
he deserves high place among the founders of
New England.
Though Hooker was thus a moulding force
in shaping the political foundations of Con
necticut, his interests were, primarily, pastoral
and religious rather than political. Indeed, we
may truly say that the civil principles which
seemed so clear to his keen-sighted vision were
but the application to governmental affairs of
truths which appeared to him formative in eccle
siastical organization. To quote the title given to
this lecture, his conception of the foundation of
government in the free consent of the people was
but the transference to the realm of politics of
his "Principle of Congregational Independency,"
or the self-governing power of a local Congrega
tional church. Hooker's writings are, with one
exception, sermons and collections of sermons,
addressed, primarily, to the initiation and up
building of the Christian life, as his intense and
emotional Puritanism understood that life to be.
But that exception is a conspicuous one, and
shows Hooker to have been no less eminent as
an expounder of the principles of ecclesiastical
government, as New England generally under
stood those principles, than as a pioneer in the

114 THOMAS HOOKER
exposition of political truths which won far less
general following in his day. The volume in
which Hooker set forth what he deemed the fun
damental basis of the Church is that entitled "A
Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline,"
and passed through many vicissitudes before it
was finally published.
The outbreak of the great Civil War in Eng
land in 1642 was followed by the speedy ab-
oHtion of Episcopacy by Parliament and the
summons of the assembly of divines to meet at
Westminster in July, 1643, *° advise in the re
organization of the government of the English
Church and the new formulation of its doc
trine. Hooker, Cotton, and Davenport were
invited by men of influence in the Parliamentary
party, such as the Earl of Warwick who had
known and befriended Hooker at Chelmsford,
Lord Say and Sele, and Oliver Cromwell, to
allow these friends to present their names for
summons by Parliament to membership in that
great assembly. Cotton and Davenport had in
clined to go; but Hooker "liked not the busi
ness," and in a phrase which sounds characteristic
of him, though recorded by Winthrop, "nor
thought it any sufficient call for them to go three
thousand miles to agree with three men," He
clearly discerned the overwhelmingly Presbyterian

THOMAS HOOKER 115
complexion of the Westminster Assembly and
the hopeless minority in which he and his Con
gregational associates would be likely to find
themselves, if members of it.
But the summons of that assembly raised the
whole question of the proper organization of the
Christian Church to an intensity of debate such
as had not yet characterized England, Cotton,
Davenport, and Mather on this side of the At
lantic set forth Congregational principles ; while
English Presbyterian Puritans and their Scot
tish fellow-believers, like Charles Herle, William
Rathband, and Professor Samuel Rutherford, re
plied with a keen critique of the New England
position. The controversy waxed so warm and
seemed to the New England divines so impor
tant that the ministers assembled at Cambridge
on July I, 1645, examined and approved several
answering treatises which had been prepared in
refiitation of these Presbyterian criticisms. One
of these was Hooker's " Survey," in which the
Hartford minister laboriously and minutely trav
ersed the ground covered in the volume en
titled " The Due Right of Presbyteries," which
Samuel Rutherford, the vigorous professor of
divinity at St, Andrew's, had put forth in 1644,
The manuscript of this painstaking work started
for England on that ship which sailed from New

ii6 THOMAS HOOKER
Haven harbor one cold winter's day in January,
1646, and the otherwise unknown fate of which
was believed to have been mysteriously signified
in the strange mirage or apparition which was
seen by the people of New Haven nearly two
years and a half later, and formed so curious an
episode in the story of early New England cre
dulity. The manuscript thus lost. Hooker, after
much hesitation, attempted to reproduce ; and he
was still engaged on the task at the time of his
death, so that the form in which it was at last pub
lished by his friends, in 1648, was very imperfect.
And this incompleteness, combined with the mi
nuteness with which he attempts to refute Ruth
erford's involved argument, makes the volume
exceedingly tedious reading. But the preface of
the volume as it stands is evidently a copy of
that originally prepared in 1645; and it con
tains one of the most luminous and compact
expressions of Congregational principles to be
found in the literature of early New England,
Its language is technical, but its meaning is
simple and clear.
If [says Hooker] the Reader shall demand how far
this way of Church-proceeding receives approbation by
any common concurrence amongst us ; / shall plainly
and punctually expresse my self in a word of truth, in these
following points, viz.

THOMAS HOOKER 117
Visible Saints are the only true and meet matter
whereof a visible Church should be gathered, and con-
fcederation is the form.
The Church as Totum essentiale, is, and may be,
before Officers.
. . . Each Congregation compleatly constituted qf
all Ofi[icers, hath sufficient power in her self, to exercise
the power of the keyes, and all Church discipline, in all
the censures thereof.
Ordination is not before election.
There ought to be no ordination of a Minister at
large, Namely, such as should make him Pastour without a
People. The election of the people hath an instrumentall
causall vertue under Christ, to give an outward call unto
an Officer.
Ordination is only a solemn installing of an Officer
into the Office, unto which he was formerly called. . . .
Consociation of Churches should be used, as occa
sion doth require.
Such consociations and Synods have allowance to
counsell and admonish other Churches, as the case may
require. . . .
But they have no power to excommunicate. Nor
do their constitutions binde formaliter & juridice.
To Hooker's thinking, therefore, a true church
of Christ is a company of Christian people united
to one another in the service of God by a vol
untary covenant and under the spiritual over-

ii8 THOMAS HOOKER
lordship of Christ. Such a congregation possesses
full and complete authority to administer its own
affairs, choose and ordain its own officers, and
govern its members. We have here presented,
in the clearest and most succinct form, that dem
ocratic conception of the self-governing indepen
dence of the local congregation characteristic of
the founders of New England, but especially
congenial to the democratic spirit of Hooker, and
destined to be vastly influential in the develop
ment, not only of New England, but of Amer
ican political and religious life. And, while we
cannot claim for Hooker any such pre-eminence
in the formation of Congregational polity as be
longs to him in the assertion of principles of
democratic civil government, he ranks with
Cotton and Mather and Davenport as one of
the great expounders of the characteristic relig
ious polity of New England,
It is interesting to observe, however, that this
man of power in the pulpit and of leadership in
matters of State was as marked by kindness and
wisdom in the conduct of the affairs of the
church of which he was the pastor as by force-
fulness and clearness in the exposition of prob
lems of more public concern. Cotton Mather
records of his relations to the congregation of his
Hartford ministry that, "as for ecclesiastical

THOMAS HOOKER 119
censures, he was very watchful to prevent all
procedures unto them, as far as was consistent
with the rules of our Lord ; for which cause (ex
cept in grosser abominations) when offences hap
pened he did his utmost that the notice thereof
might be extended no fiirther than it was when
thev were first laid before him ; and having rec
onciled the offenders with sensible and convenient
acknowledgements of their miscarriages, he would
let the notice thereof be confined unto such as
were aforehand therewith acquainted ; and hence
there was but one person admonished in and but
one person excommunicated from, the Church of
Hartford, in all the fourteen years that Mr.
Hooker lived there,"
It would have been fortunate for the early
New England churches if all of their pastors had
been as profound in their knowledge of human
nature and as wise and charitable in their conduct
of church affairs as this leader of Connecticut.
Hooker's pastorate at Hartford terminated by
his death, after a brief illness, on July 7, 1647.
The story recorded of his last hours may well be
true, and, if so, seems characteristically illustrative
of his humility of spirit.
" When one that stood weeping by the bed
side said unto him, ' Sir, you are going to receive
the reward of all your labors,' he replied, ' Brother,

120 THOMAS HOOKER
I am going to receive mercy,' " — an expression
typical, we may think, of this eminent Puritan's
lowly estimate of himself and of his humble walk
with the God who had seemed to him the
greatest of all realities.
Hooker's friends and ministerial associates
strove to express, in the halting and elaborate
verses characteristic of the essentially unpoetic
writings of early New England, their sense of the
greatness of their loss and of the mental and
spiritual stature of the one who had gone from
them. Thus John Cotton of your own Boston
tried to versify his lament : —
'Twas of Genevahs Worthies said, with wonder,
(Those Worthies Three :) Farell was wont to Thunder ;
Viret, like Rain, on tender grasse to shower,
But Calvin, lively Oracles to pour.
All these in Hookers spirit did remain
A Sonne of Thunder, and a shower of Rain,
A pourer-forth of lively Oracles,
In saving souls, the summe of miracles.
Now blessed Hooker, thou art set on high.
Above the thanklesse world, and cloudy sky :
Doe thou of all thy labour reape the Crown,
Whilst we here reape the seed, which thou hast sowen.
We may well comprehend their sense of loss,
and the feeling that it was like the shutting in

THOMAS HOOKER 121
of the evening of a glorious day to see one and
another of the leaders of New England pass from
the scene of their labors. Men who had grown
to their stature in a contest of national propor
tions in the old country and in the foundation of
colonies beyond the ocean, they left no succes
sors behind them of equal gifts and similar
eminence. The more provincial, narrow, and
prosaic New England of the second generation
might well see in the departure of these great
men of the earlier time the loss of a radiance
and an honor which had illuminated the begin
nings of New England life. But we, who are
better able than they to trace the extent of our
indebtedness to the founders of New England,
when we recall the name of Thomas Hooker,
cannot fail to pay our homage to the memory
of one who so asserted the principles of democ
racy in civil affairs and of congregational self-
government in the church as to influence perma
nently the development of the peculiar ideals
for which New England has stood and has made
significant in American life.

IV

William Penn and the Gospel of the
Inner Light

WILLIAM PENN AND THE GOSPEL
OF THE INNER LIGHT.
The gospel of the Inner Light, the doctrine
that God makes himself known directly to the
souls of men everywhere and in all ages, was the
final and highest word of the Puritan Reforma
tion. It originated in a great, epoch-making
spiritual experience, or group of spiritual experi
ences, in an age when life had largely departed
from the established religious forms and spiritual
darkness was heavy upon the people.
The principle had lain from the beginning
enfolded in Christian teaching, and in all true
Christian life, but without enunciation and inter
pretation. Indeed, it had lain at the heart of
everything that deserved to be called religion,
from the beginning of human thought about the
invisible Author of the universe and of human
reverence and worship. Serious men had always
felt, and in measure realized, that God appeared
to them within, however much, from custom and
association, they tried to discover, or did discover,
him without. But this truth, like every great
truth, became a gospel of power for the liberation
and enlargement of men's lives only when it was

126 WILLIAM PENN
articulately set forth by persons who had mastered
its secret.
From the theological point of view the princi
ple sprang as a corollary from the primary truth
^ of the universal and impartial love of God as
Father of the human race, which the early Friends
vigorously maintained against the stiff and heart
less predestinarianism of the time. Love is
light, they saw and felt. The God who loved
all men must of necessity communicate himself
to the souls of all. The True Light, which
came into the world as the supreme revelation of
the character of God, must light every man, in
measure, in all ages and all times. The historic
manifestation was only the revelation in a special
and superlative way of a process coeval with
human society. Thus the first promulgators of
the gospel of the Inner Light supported by
simple but unanswerable theological judgments
what they had realized in their own experience
to be true.
It would be most interesting and instructive to
examine critically the relations of the doctrine of
the Inner Light to the historic Christ, to the con
science, and to the general philosophy of the
Christian religion ; but the purposes and limits of
this address do not permit the entrance of this
field. We are to study to-day the part which this

WILLIAM PENN 127
truth has played in the establishment and devel
opment of religious liberty.
The first effect of a clear perception of the fact
that God communicates himself directly to all
human souls is a sense of the place and value of
the individual personality. He to whom God
speaks, whom God deems worthy to receive his
direct messages, must have a high intrinsic worth,
must be, potentially at least, a king by divine
right within the domain of his own being. He
must be his own priest, offer up his own sacrifices,
do his own worshipping. However much he
may resort to others for instruction and help, he
must in the last appeal be his own interpreter of
what he is to believe and follow.
Just here is found the primal secret of religious
liberty, indeed of all liberty. Out of this experi
ence of inner connection and communion with the
Highest comes to all serious souls self-respect be
fore God and man, the exaltation and supremacy
of conscience, the purpose to realize one's own
place and destiny, a fine sense of obligation to a
life of godliness and manliness. The soul that
realizes this high prerogative can admit of no
lordship of men over it. It is to God alone that
it bows in reverent and loving submission, and
says, " Thy will be done." With the self-respect
and the devotion to righteousness come courage

128 WILLIAM PENN
and endurance in the face of persecution and
suffering, if these have to be met.
This secret of liberty and of earnest, patient,
heroic effort for its attainment has been the com
mon possession of all the prophets and martyrs of
freedom, though realized less clearly and fully by
some than by others. It inspired, directed and
upheld the Pilgrims and, in somewhat less meas
ure, the Puritans, as well as the Friends, both in
the Old World and in the New, in their great
moral struggle for liberty of self-directed worship.
It was the guiding star of John Robinson, of
William Brewster, of Thomas Hooker, and of
Roger Williams, no less than of George Fox and
of William Penn, though it did not lead them
all equally far.
But the principle of the direct light of God in
the human soul, the spiritual side of the now
generally accepted doctrine of the divine imma
nence, had a still deeper effect upon the minds
of those who felt the fulness of its power. It cre
ated intelligent, large-minded respect for others, —
a much greater thing than self-respect, — and
much more productive of freedom in its wider
social and political aspects. Self-respect is not a
very difficult accomplishment for thoughtful and
sincere men : it grows with small nurture directly
out of the elemental instincts of self-preservation

WILLIAM PENN 129.
and self-expression. Respect for others, sincere
and abiding, without which there can be no
social liberty, is the most difficult of spiritual
attainments. It was just here that the doctrine of the Inner
Light produced one of its finest fruits. If God
reveals himself to the souls of other men besides
one's self, in however dim a way, then these other
men have the stamp of worthiness put upon them
by the Most High himself. Whom God respects
and treats in this high way as he treats me, I
must respect as I respect myself. Whom God
has cleansed I must not call common. I must
leave him free to think, to respond to God in his
own way. I must not put him into any spiritual
bonds, for thereby I shall exalt myself above God
and dishonor Him from whom my own light
comes. Respect for others which is born of this source
knows no limit. Men may differ with me in
thought as widely as the poles are apart : I shall
still respect them. I shall uphold for them the
liberty to think, and to speak as they think, as I
claim these prerogatives for myself. They may
be wicked and unworthy, and I may feel myself
bound in duty to try to bring them back to the
path of goodness ; but even thus I shall employ
only the high art of persuasion and reproof by

I30 WILLIAM PENN
truth and love, and not the low art of compulsion
by brute force and persecution. They may be
my enemies, bitter and injurious ; but even so I
shall refuse to lower myself to hate and harm and
enslave them, because of the common relation
which they and I hold to God.
The Friends of the seventeenth century carried
this principle of respect for others,. so deeply in
volved in the principle of the Inner Light, to its
logical conclusion. They granted to others with
out regard to creed what they claimed for them
selves. Herein they differed from all other types
of the Puritans, with rare exceptions, and went
beyond all other leaders of the Reformation up
to their time. The Puritans in general, in spite
of the great stress which they laid upon the Bible
as the supreme standard of faith and practice,
believed in the direct communication of God
with the soul, — at any rate, with their own souls.
But they did not go far enough to see the
wider aspects of this truth. The self-respect in
which the principle issues they felt strongly, and
were ready to undergo all sacrifices to attain per
sonal liberty and liberty for those who believed
as they did. But of genuine religious respect for
others, for those of pronouncedly different relig
ious conceptions, they knew Httle, They were
not only not willing to undergo sacrifices and

WILLIAM PENN 131
sufferings for the sake of the liberty of other
sectaries to think and speak as they thought, but
they undertook, where they had the power, to
compel by force conformity to their own tenets.
They became persecutors, and did men and
women to death for insisting on the same liberty
of religious thought, interpretation and statement
which they had suffered all manner of hardship to
obtain for themselves.
The promulgators of the gospel of the Inner
Light not only conceded liberty of thought and
speech to others : they suffered and died for the/
spiritual rights and liberties of those of othert
beliefs as they did for their own. They never)
persecuted, or showed the least spirit of persecu
tion, even when they had the power, as in/
the colonies of Pennsylvania and West Jersey, *
They did not retaliate against those who had
maltreated them and sent many of their choicest
members to prison and to death. They thus
won for themselves and for humanity, on this
high ground, one of the greatest victories of
liberty — many think the greatest — ever gained,
and left incorporated in our civilization — let us
hope for all time — what is a commonplace to-day,
namely, the principle of respect for the personal
ities, the intellectual and spiritual liberties, of
other men than one's self. So accustomed are we

132 WILLIAM PENN
in this day to enjoy this priceless boon that it is
difficult for us to credit the fact that at least one
person died in prison for it every month during
the entire reign of Charles I,
But the gospel of the Inner Light carried its
apostles one final step further. They saw that
the sharers in the directly communicated light of
God were thereby treated as members of a com
mon family. That is what gave the doctrine of
universal brotherhood so profound a meaning to
them, and made them its unwavering exponents
and defenders when it had no other friends.
Brotherhood, in their conception, was not a mere
sentimental correlate of the Fatherhood of God,
held as a philosophic theory. Its basis was
deeper also than the likenesses everywhere ob
served among men and their dependences upon
one another. Beyond all these grounds for
treating their fellow-men as brethren they saw
God himself conducting himself as a father
toward them, as well as toward themselves, and
doing this in the deepest and truest way. They
saw him holding communion with them, en
lightening, instructing, inspiring, guiding, sup
porting, comforting, as well as reproving and
disciplining them with a father's faithfulness,
patience, and wisdom. The brotherhood of men
was thus to them a practical divine kinship.

WILLIAM PENN 133
founded in the active Fatherhood of God, to be
cherished as sacredly as the relationships be
tween the members of a true family.
The Friends were thus carried by their gospel of
Inward Light into the most active manifestations
of the spirit of brotherhood, — the effort to bring
men to the realization of a life essentially divine,
the uplifting of the down-trodden, the deliverance
of those in bondage, the amelioration of the lot
of prisoners and other unfortunates, universal
religious liberty, the endeavor to secure for all
equality of rights before the law. It was their
practice of brotherhood, when they were perse
cuted as well as when they were left in the enjoy
ment of their rights, not their theories about it,
that made their work from the middle to the
close of the seventeenth century probably the
greatest and most wide-reaching contribution to
religious and civil liberty ever yet made. Only
those who practise brotherhood can long hold any
true theory of it or really promote it. These
men filled the world with their doctrine of the
ideal brotherhood of man, and by their practice
of what they preached made it seem something
more than the baseless fabric of a dream.
Of this group of men who made the gospel (
of the Inner Light a permanent part of all sub-

134 ' WILLIAM PENN
sequent religious thought, the most conspicuous
in the practical application of its principles to
social and political problems was William Penn,
the stateliest, shapeliest, manliest figure of the
second half of the seventeenth century, a man
now always placed in the list of the few really
great men of history,
Penn came upon the scene at a very critical
time in the history of the development of relig
ious freedom. The great wave of the Puritan
Reformation had practically spent itself. All
the prominent Puritan leaders — William Brew
ster, John Robinson, John Winthrop, John Cot
ton, Thomas Hooker, John Hampden, John
Pym, John Milton, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Harry
Vane — were gone, Roger Williams, the only
other colonial leader, with the possible exception
of Thomas Hooker, who went as far as William
Penn in his advocacy of religious liberty, was
worn out and dying. The Royalist party, with
its high-handed monarchical proclivities and its
unblushing corruptions, had been restored ; and
Charles II. and then his brother James
dictated from the throne — or attempted to
dictate — both the politics and the religion of
the nation, Algernon Sidney had been banished,
and was living in exile in Rome, It was the
period of the infamous Jeffreys and his Bloody

WILLIAM PENN 135
Assizes. The party of pure religion and of
popular rights, though strong among the masses,
was for the time being submerged. Puritanism
itself was degenerating into a hard-and-fast
ecclesiasticism, and in its strife for political as
well as religious ascendency was losing much of
its original spirit and becoming intensely bigoted
and intolerant. In New England it had only
been saved from moral shipwreck at the hands
of the clergymen and the magistrates by the
influence of Roger Williams and his friends, and
by the heroic treatment of a group of followers
of the Inner Light, the remarkable voyage of
whose " Mayflower," the " Woodhouse," is only
less famous than that of the ship of the Pilgrims,
because it was not the first to be made. The
severe persecution of these men and women and
the final martyrdom of a number of them created
a reaction among the people, and, ultimately re
stored to Massachusetts the spirit which had
planted Plymouth Colony.
There is nothing in the whole scope of relig
ious biography more interesting than the manner
in which William Penn became a spiritually free
man, an experience through which one must have
passed himself before he can do anything effec
tive for the freedom of others. Nearly every
thing in his inheritance and home surroundings

136 WILLIAM PENN
was of a nature to make him the pliant slave
of circumstances. No man was ever less so.
What he heard in the Puritan atmosphere at the
school at Wanstead about civil liberty and the
rights of Parliament doubtiess had much influ
ence with him, but it is entirely inadequate to
account for the course which he took. That
can only be explained as the result of the work
of God within him. Born a Rovalist, of a father
who was a heavv drinker and a glutton, as well
as a man of rough military life and habits, Penn
had, on the one hand, a restiess, impetuous,
combative disposition, fond of dress and pleasure,
ready to run the common course dictated by
custom and self-interest. On the other hand,
he was characterized by a thoughtfiil, contempla
tive, sincere, pure-minded, richly religious nature,
on which the light of God fell as the rain and
sunshine upon a deep, fertile soil.
The struggle in him between the earthy and
the spiritual began at the early age of twelve and
lasted for nearly a dozen years. He had at this^
age, while alone in his room, what he always be
lieved to be a special visitation of God's spirit,
which awakened all that was best in him, inspired
and comforted him, made him feel that God was
in direct communication with him, and that he
was called to a holy life. The conflict through

WILLIAM PENN 137
which he passed till his twenty-third year was
a very trying one. At Oxford, where he studied
for three years, he was fined and then expelled
from his college because he preferred Quaker
meetings to the regular church services, and,
as report has it, joined the Puritan students in
tearing off the surplices from the Royalist boys.
He was sent to France later, to cure him of his
deepening religious tendencies. The court of
Louis XIV., at which he was introduced, was
then at the height of its brilliancy. Under the
influence of the court and its surroundings he fell
away from his best light into a life of pleasure
and vanity, though never, he assures us, into
impurity, profanity, or even vulgarity of speech.
Returning home a well-educated and polished
young gentleman, well versed in theology, — which
he had read at Saumur under the distinguished
Moses Ameyrault, — his father set him to study
law at Lincoln's Inn; but, observing during the
time of the great plague that his son was turning
again to a serious life, he put him into business
and military positions, which, he thought, would
prevent any return of his former religious ideas.
But these were living in him, and had silently de
veloped during his stay abroad.
At the age of twenty-three another special call
came to him through the preaching of Thomas

138 WILLIAM PENN
Loe, a Friend whom he had heard at Oxford,
This time his final decision was made, and he was
henceforth a son of the Inner Light and a free
man. His father protested, entreated, stormed,
whipped him, beat him, turned him out of doors.
But it was all in vain. Young Penn, with his face
toward the sun, stood his ground, and entered at
once upon that consecrated, divinely guided, ear
nest, steadfast, patient, benevolent life, which was
to be so fruitful in the promotion of both relig
ious and civil liberty to the people of his own and
of subsequent times,
Penn's spiritual freedom, it may be remarked^
in passing, was of that rare kind which avoids!
asceticism and austerity, on the one hand, and/
every form of impurity and looseness, on tha
other. He relished, as occasion offered, all the\
lawful pleasures of life ; but the corrupt, obscene,
and disgustingly low manners and habits of peo
ple in high places, among whom he was so often
cast at court and elsewhere, made not the least
inroad upon the purity and loftiness of his
soul. He walked in the light of God ; and that
light kept him clean and strong, and therefopr
free. The fruit of the principles which had mastered
his soul began at once to manifest itself. During
the next fifteen years, which he spent in preaching

WILLIAM PENN 139
the new gospel and suffering for it, his work for
religious freedom was as constant, brave and
effective as was ever done in England. His high
social standing and friendly connection with the
royal family put him into a position of extraor
dinary influence ; and this, though often exposing
him to suspicion and vituperation, he never
failed to use in behalf of the liberties of
all his fellow-citizens, without regard to creed.
He became, because of the unequalled depth
and breadth of his conceptions, his impar
tial and incessant efforts and the faithfulness with
which he used his position of commanding influ
ence, the foremost of the seventeenth-century
apostles of religious liberty.
When imprisoned himself, as he was several
times, Penn addressed powerful appeals for liberty
of conscience and civil freedom to those in au-^
thority. When out of prison, he did the same for
others. Catholics as well as Protestants, In his
letter to the Earl of Orrery, Lord President of
Munster, on the occasion of his first imprison
ment, he touched the great springs of all his future
efforts for liberty, — the inalienable rights of con
science, the principles of English liberty as set
forth in the Great Charter, and the evil effects to
the State of religious intolerance. Imprisoned in
the Tower for nine weary months on a charge of

I40 WILLIAM PENN
blasphemy, because he had in one of his books
criticised the crude tri-theism of the time, when
told that the Bishop of London had determined
that he should recant or die a prisoner, he re
plied : " My prison shall be my grave before I
will budge a jot, for I owe my conscience to no
mortal man, I have no need to fear : God will
make amends for all. They are mistaken in me,
I value not their threats and resolutions ; for they
shall know I can weary out their malice and peev
ishness, and in me shall they behold a resolution
above fear, conscience above cruelty, and a baffle
put to all their designs by the spirit of patience,
, , , A hair of my head shall not fall without the
providence of my Father that is over all." He
did not budge a jot, nor did he die in prison, nor
did a hair of his head fall.
The trial of William Penn and William Mead
in 1670, while the Conventicle Act was in force,
for speaking at a meeting in Grace Church Street,
when they had been locked out of their own
house of worship, was one of the most memorable
in English history. It took place eighteen years
before the famous trial of the seven bishops,
described so graphically by Macaulay's brilliant
pen. The victory for justice in which it resulted
was also greater than that in the case of the
bishops, because the matter at stake was not, as

WILLIAM PENN 141
in the latter, a mere question of supremacy be
tween Protestant and Catholic, but the wider and
deeper question of general religious toleration
and universal civil rights against lawless bigotry
and tyranny.
The trial was held at the Old Bailey. Penn's
defence, which he conducted himself without
counsel, was that the Conventicle Act, which he
did not deny that he had broken, was in viola
tion of the principles of the Great Charter. His
knowledge of the law enabled him to take ad
vantage of the errors and falsehoods of the in
dictment, which included the charge of taking
part in a tumultuous and disorderly assembly.
In spite of the most shameless attempts of the
court to silence him, he stood his ground, and
made a masterly defence of himself and com
panion. When the jury brought in the verdict, " Guilty
of speaking in Grace Church Street," the magis
trates were fiirious, and ordered a new verdict.
The jurymen went out, and immediately returned
with the same verdict. It was again rejected by
the court. Time after time, though brutally
threatened and maltreated, these brave men came
back with the same judgment. Two days and
nights they were kept without bed or food or
even water. When they came in for the last

142 WILLIAM PENN
time, they had changed the mock verdict into a
real one, — "Not guilty." The magistrates were
dumb with anger and amazement. The crowd
in the court-room broke forth into excited dem
onstrations of approval. In their fury the mag
istrates fined both the prisoners and the jury for
contempt of court, Penn strode forward to the
bench, and in the name of the fundamental laws
of England demanded his liberty in accordance
with the verdict. It was denied him. Refusing
to pay their fines, they were all committed to
Newgate. The jury, following Penn's advice,
brought suit against the mayor and recorder for
false imprisonment. They carried the case to
the Court of Common' Pleas, and won. The
judges declared unanimously that a jury had
absolute freedom in rendering its verdict. It
was a great victory for simple truth and justice,
and did much to strengthen the foundations of
the growing structure of English constitutional
liberty, Penn's written protests against religious per
secution and pleas for civil and religious liberty
were numerous, and among the most noble and
effective in the whole history of English reform.
They were in homely, unpolished Anglo-Saxon
English ; but they struck hard, and went straight
to the heart of the matters dealt with. Memo-

WILLIAM PENN 143
rials to the High Court of Parliament, to the
sheriffs of London, to justices and lords ; his
speeches before a committee of Parliament, and
before King James on presenting an address of
the Friends ; his treatise on " The Great Case of
Liberty of Conscience," in which he musters an
array of historic example and precedent that re
minds one of John Milton ; his "Address to the
Protestants of All Persuasions"; his tractate on
"England's Present Interest"; his " Project for
the Good of England " ; his political manifesto on
" England's Great Interest in the Choice of a New
Parliament," in which he set forth the principles —
fundamental for all time — in accordance with
which the franchise should be used by free and
honorable men, — all these are papers and trea
tises which, though in the antiquated language of
the seventeenth century, might still be read with
great profit, particularly in the none too saintly
circles of modern politics. There are no two
documents in all English political literature fiiller
of political wisdom than "The Great Case of
Liberty of Conscience " and " England's Present
Interest Considered."
Penn is usually supposed to have been a man
of placid disposition, submitting passively to in
justice, and never using vigorous and pungent
speech in defence of justice and liberty. He was

144 WILLIAM PENN
nothing of the sort. He refused from principle
to use any physical violence, and was as abso
lutely master of his spirit as any man who ever
trod upon English soil. But " in deeds of dar
ing rectitude " he was unsurpassed. His discard
ing of the weapons of brute force made him all
the more bold and aggressive in the use of those
of moral cast, as was the case with our leading
anti-slavery reformers. None ever wielded the
weapons of truth in defensive speech and in
protest against wrong, where occasion demanded,
with more naked directness and unsparing keen
ness than he. He knew not the meaning of
fear. He was swift in off^ence wherever a strong
hold of injustice towered before him.
In the trial at the Old Bailey, when the court
was browbeating the jury, he exclaimed in manly
indignation : " It is intolerable that my jury
should be thus menaced. Is this according to
the fundamental law? Are not they my proper
judges by the Great Charter of England ? What
hope is there of ever having justice done, when
juries are threatened and their verdict rejected ? "
When the recorder maliciously ordered him
taken away, declaring that for such men as he
something like the Spanish Inquisition ought to
be established in England, Penn replied : " I
can never urge the fundamental laws of England

WILLIAM PENN 145
but you cry, 'Take him away, take him away.'
But 'tis no wonder, since the Spanish Inquisition
hath so great a place in the recorder's heart.
God Almighty, who is just, will judge you for all
these things." Chided by Cavaliers for abandon
ing the society of gentlemen and associating with
the despised Quakers, who were from among the
common people, Penn's moral sense flashed back
the retort : " I confess I have made it my choice
to relinquish the company of those who are in
geniously wicked, to converse with those who
are more honestly simple." In a letter to the
vice-chancellor of Oxford University, by whom
students inclined to Quakerism were treated with
great contempt and severity, he wrote : " Shall
the multiplied oppressions which thou continuest
to heap upon innocent English people for their
peaceable religious meetings pass unregarded by
the eternal God? Dost thou think to escape
his fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy
ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor chil
dren? I tell thee, no. Better were it for thee
thou hadst never been born. Poor mushroom,
wilt thou war against the Lord, and lift up thy
self in battle against the Almighty?" In the
" Great Case of Liberty of Conscience," written
while he was a prisoner in the Tower as a political
suspect, he declares that in trying to secure uni-

146 WILLIAM PENN
formity in religious belief " the way of force
makes instead of an honest dissenter, but an
hypocritical conformist, than whom nothing is
more detestable to God and man." In " Eng
land's Present Interest Considered," a tractate
inspired by the purest and loftiest patriotism,
he utters a protest of rare power against the
abuses and cruelties practised throughout the
nation in the effort to bring about religious con
formity, and pleads for toleration as the surest
means of putting an end to the prevailing con
fusion and disorder. "Your endeavors for uni
formity," he says, " have been many : your acts,
not a few to enforce it. But the consequence,
whether you intended it or no, through the bar
barous practices of those who have had their
execution, hath been the spoiling of several
thousands of the free-born people of this king
dom of their unforfeited rights. Persons have
been flung into gaol, gates and trunks broken
open, goods distrained, till a stool hath not been
left to sit down on ; flocks of cattle driven off,
whole barns full of corn seized, threshed, and
carried away ; parents left without their children,
children without their parents, both without sub
sistence. But that which aggravates the cruelty
is the widow's mite hath not escaped their
hands : they have made her ' cow the forfeit-

WILLIAM PENN 147
ure of her conscience," not leaving her a bed to
lie on nor a blanket to cover her. And, which
is yet more barbarous, and helps to make up
this tragedy, the poor helpless orphan's milk,
boiUng over the fire, has been flung to the dogs,
and the skillet made part of their prize."
The severest ordeal through which Penn had
to pass in his work for religious liberty was that
which befell him in his advocacy of toleration for
Catholics as well as Protestaouts, The torture
of soul which he experienced in this conflict,
wherein for twenty years he was misrepresented
and maligned as a scheming Catholic, a Jesuit,
a hireling of the pope, was tenfold greater than
any suffering which vile imprisonment or bodily
abuse caused him. In these latter he gloried,
in a high, triumphant spirit. He gave hard
blows, and he knew how to take them. But to
be treated as a consummate liar, an arch deceiver,
a snake in the grass, cut his fine, sensitive, honor
able soul to the very quick, and sometimes
wrung from him expressions of a grief too keen
and overmastering to be concealed. But he
never flinched from the trying duty until he
had done his work. Pleading before a com
mittee of Parliament his case and that of his
co-religionists under persecution as Papists, he
said : " That which giveth me a more than

148 WILLIAM PENN
ordinary right to speak at this time and in this
place is the great abuse that I have received
above any other of my profession ; for of a long
time I have not only been supposed a Papist,
but a Seminary, a Jesuit, an Emissary of
Rome, . . . What with one thing and what
with another, we have been as the common
wool-sacks and common whipping-stock of the
kingdom. All laws have been let loose upon
us, as if the design were not to reform, but to
destroy us, and that not for what we are, but
for what we are not. It is hard that we must
thus bear the stripes of another interest and be
their proxy in punishment, ... I would not be
mistaken. I am far from thinking it fit that
Papists should be whipt for their consciences,
because I exclaim against the injustice of whip
ping Quakers for Papists. No ; for, though the
hand pretended to be lifted against them hath,
I know not by what discretion, lit heavy upon
us, and we complain, yet we do not mean that
any should take a fresh aim at them, for we
must give the liberty we ask, and cannot be
false to our principles, though it were to relieve
ourselves ; for we have goodwill to all men, and
would have none suffer for a truly sober and
conscientious dissent on any hand."
More pathetic and, if possible, more noble

WILLIAM PENN 149
still is his language in reply to an urgent request
from a particular friend to vindicate himself in a
public statement against the calumnies which fell
upon him from all sides on account of his fre
quent visits to James II. in behalf of universal
toleration. I quote a few sentences from this re
markable but litde known letter : —
" I am not only no Jesuit, but no Papist.
And, which is more, I never had any temptation
upon me to be it, either from doubts in my own
mind about the way I profess, or from the dis
courses or writings of any of that religion. And,
in the presence of Almighty God, I do declare that
the King did never once, directly or indirectly, at
tack me or tempt me upon that subject, the many
years that I have had the advantage of free access
to him, so unjust as well as sordidly false are all
those stories of the town. . , , I have almost con
tinually had one business or other there for our
Friends, whom I have served with a steady so
licitation, through all times, since I was of their
communion. I had also a great many personal
good offices to do, upon a principle of charity,
for people of all persuasions, thinking it a duty
to improve the little interest I had for the good
of those that needed it, especially the poor, , , .
I am not without apprehensions of the cause of
this behavior towards me, I mean my constant

150 WILLIAM PENN
zeal for an impartial liberty of conscience. But if
that be it, the cause is too good to be in pain
about, 1 ever understood that to be the natural
right of all men, and that he that had a religion
without it, that religion was none of his. For
what is not the religion of a man's choice is the
religion of him that imposes it. So that liberty
of conscience is the first step to have a relig
ion, ... If, therefore, an universal charity, if the
asserting an impartial liberty of conscience, if
doing to others as one would be done by, and an
open avowing and steady practising of these things
in all times to all parties, will justly lay a man
under the reflection of being a Jesuit or a Papist
of any rank, I must not only submit to the char
acter, but embrace it, too ; and I care not who
knows that I can wear it with more pleasure than
it is possible for them with any justice to give it
to me. For these are corner-stones and princi
ples with me ; and I am scandalized at all build
ings that have them not for their foundations.
For religion itself is an empty name without
them, a whited wall, a painted sepulchre, no life
or virtue to the soul, no good or example to one's
neighbor. Let us not flatter ourselves. We can
never be the better for our religion, if our neigh
bor be the worse for it. ' He that suffers his dif
ference with his neighbor about the other world to

WILLIAM PENN 151
carry him beyond the fine of moderation in this,
is the worse for his opinion, though it be true,' "
This noble vindication, unsurpassed by any
thing in the language, ought to have silenced the
tongue of calumny forever ; but it did not. He
was still hounded by enemies and arrested and
brought to trial no less than three times after
ward, until he was finally cleared of all blame by
King William himself and by the King's Bench
at Westminster,
This work of Penn in England for liberty of
conscience, for universal religious toleration, and
the equal and impartial rights of all before the
common law, has been less heralded and less ap
preciated than his experiment in the New World,
It ought not to have been so. The two were
only different parts of the same service to the
cause of liberty. What he did in England pro
duced the training and laid the foundations for
the American experiment, and was by all odds
the more difficult and trying. What he did on
the banks of the Delaware was simply to test in
practice, with a comparatively free hand, the
soundness and practicability of the doctrines
whose advocacy had cost him so many years of
thankless labor, social ostracism and relentless
persecution on his native soil. It took, of

152 WILLIAM PENN
course, a political genius of the highest order to
conceive and execute the American scheme. But
it required, in addition to genius, a sustained
moral heroism, unsurpassed in the annals of re
form, to maintain for so many years the hard
conflict by which he wrested from the English
courts and government the recognition, for him
self and for multitudes of others, of the simple
rights of citizenship and of religion, — a victory
whose benefits went to all English-speaking
peoples. It would be gratuitous to rehearse before a
cultivated American audience the story of the
founding and development of the colony of
Pennsylvania, and of its extraordinary success,
without soldier or armed policeman, for two
whole generations of men. Nothing in the
annals of the country is better known than this
singular romance of our political history, more
marvellous in its simple reality than any ideal
republic of philosophy or any Utopia of political
dreaming. Leaving aside, as not relevant to the purpose
of this address, the phase of the experiment
which has been most dwelt upon, that of the
entire disuse of deadly weapons, it is difficult to
say which of the other parts of it — the policy
of justice and brotherhood toward the Indians,

WILLIAM PENN 153
that of universal religious toleration, and that of
equality of rights in the government — was the
most successfiil and the most influential in its
ultimate effects on the nation after the colonial
period was over.
The Indian policy, which was incomparably
successfiil during the seventy years that it was
continued, was finally abandoned by the colony,
along with that of the disuse of arms. But it
remained as an appealing ideal to the nation
during more than " a century of dishonor," with
its frightfiil Indian wars and enormous cost to
the country. At last the government, weary of
the bitter and costiy fruits of the method of
oppression and slaughter, found itself practically
compelled, by considerations of self-interest and
economy as well as of right, to adopt toward the
Indians who remained what was substantially the
policy of Penn, The results have again justified
the method. Since the adoption of the peace
policy under President Grant, Indian wars have
ceased. The Indians are rapidly becoming civil
ized, and are being absorbed into the general
population and life of the nation. Through it
all Penn's influence has been beyond calculation,
and it will continue to be mighty until the last
Indian remaining becomes a citizen and enjoys all
the rights and liberties of his white brother.

154 WILLIAM PENN
The policy of universal religious toleration —
a better word than toleration ought to be
used to describe it — that was adopted by the
founder of Pennsylvania was immensely success
ful. Though tried for the first time in its full
scope, — the experiment of Roger Williams hav
ing been not only much more limited, but much
marred and broken by interference from abroad, —
it worked just as Penn had often declared in Eng
land that it would work. People of every
nation, tongue and creed of Western Europe
flocked to the banks of the Delaware. They
lived in mutual respect and harmony, and the
colony grew and prospered beyond all the others.
The effect of this bold, thorough-going, and
measurably unhampered experiment in freedom
of conscience and of religious polity was deep
and wide-spread among all the colonial settle
ments. The policy finally worked its way,
strengthened of course from many other sources,
into the larger life of the nation, and became part
and parcel of the controlling spirit of the Amer
ican people, as we know it to-day.
Before leaving England, Penn drew up " The
Fundamental Constitutions of Pennsylvania," and
also a " frame of government," as he styled it, for
the ordering of the new colony, in which it was
decreed that " the people themselves were to be

WILLIAM PENN 155
the authors of their own laws in a properly con
stituted assembly," Scarcely had he set foot
upon the new soil when he put the frame of
government into operation, calling a general as
sembly of the farmers and cave-dwellers on the
lower reaches of the Delaware Bay, In this
curious assembly of " plain people" — very plain
people we should think them — the constitution
was adopted and suitable laws passed. For se
rene audacity and unlimited faith in the under
taking there is nothing of its kind like this in
history. Untamed regions, wild Indians, motley
groups of settlers, only loosely related, traducers
at home, all counted for nothing as obstacles.
The thing was of God, and it must gO, And go
it did, because it was of God, The constitution
worked, worked admirably, as any good thing
will work when in good hands ; and Penn had
successfiilly planted what he had already prophe
sied in England God would make the " seed of a
nation," This frame of government, though revised and
altered in its details, remained essentially un
changed in its principles from the time when its
author landed in 1682 until the Revolution of
1776, nearly a hundred years. When the thir
teen colonies after the war consolidated them
selves into a nation, and undertook the difficult

156 WILLIAM PENN
task of creating for themselves a constitution,
their representatives assembling for the purpose
on the very ground where Penn had tried his
" holy experiment," this " frame of government,"
drawn on the other side of the water, furnished,
more than any other document unless it be
Hooker's Constitution of Connecticut, the funda
mental principles for the construction of the new
instrument. It is scarcely too much to say that,
when the natural history of the American Consti
tution is flilly written, it will be found to have
been born, not in the brain of Madison, Ham
ilton, or Franklin, or of any other of the distin
guished statesmen who sat in the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 and worked out with so
much wisdom the details of our great national
charter, but in the brain of this man of God, who
in obedience to the heavenly visions that came to
him dared to break with all the customs and
precedents of his time, and to go as far as his
English citizenship and dependence on the crown
would permit him to go in creating a government
of the people by and for themselves.
The statue of William Penn above the city
hall in Philadelphia yonder, which one can easily
imagine to blush with shame as certain politicians
of the place pass beneath it, is higher from the
ground than any other in the world. It is fitting

WILLIAM PENN 157
that it should be so. Most men are soon left
behind by the march of progress, and their ideals
are outgrown when their age has passed away.
Not so with Penn, The civilized world, even
our own America, has not yet come up with him.
He had his weaknesses and his imperfections,
especially in his judgments of men ; but they were
like the spots on the sun, — they sprang from the
same virtues and energies which made him great
and powerful. His central ideals were as eternal
as those of the Master, after whom he framed
his life and policies, and can never be outgrown.
He is still the statesman of the fiiture ; and there
is no voice out of our country's great past to
which the present, with its aspirations, its hopes,
its ambitions, its wanderings, its lapses from the
high ideals which it had set for itself, might give
heed with greater profit than to his.

Thomas Jefferson and the Influence of
- Democracy upon Religion

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE
INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY
UPON RELIGION.
In 1743 a third child was born to Peter and
Jane Jefferson. They called him Thomas, not,
I suppose, with any prophetic knowledge that he
was to be the sceptic among the colonists ; but,
certainly, no man more completely than Thomas
Jefferson declared by every attitude of his life
and every utterance of his lips that, unless he
should see the print of the nails, he would not
believe. The shot that was fired at Concord
echoed in this young man's mind when, at thirty-
two, he stood in the Continental Congress, and
was selected, together with Franklin and Adams
and Jay, to frame the Declaration of Indepen
dence, That declaration was based upon his con
viction that the colonies owed no allegiance to the
British Parliament ; that to claim such allegiance
was to exact by one legislature, independent and
free, obedience by another legislature, as free and
independent as itself
It is not proposed to make the address of this
afternoon a biographical survey nor a political
plea. The biography of Jefferson is the record

i62 THOMAS JEFFERSON
of the emotions of a human soul. It may be
enough to say of his boyhood that at fourteen his
father died ; and he found himself well endowed,
well placed, and well connected. Neither Jeffer
son nor Madison nor Washington was technically
a gentleman ; but each was so near the margin of
that coveted title in Virginia that he had only
to step into matrimony to win the title for him
self, or to step upon the public arena of
achievement to vindicate the title as already
his, Peter Jefferson married Jane Randolph, and
the Randolphs were better off than the Jeffersons
in point of estate ; and the one thousand acres
which Peter Jefferson acquired upon his betrothal,
as being a fit domain to bring to his marriage, was
augmented by the sale of a place for his house
from the Randolph side of the account, for which
there was given, it is said, the largest bowl of
arrack punch.
In the College of William and Mary, Thomas
Jefferson found his education, studying fabulously
long hours, — one might almost say, mythically
long hours. And yet it is recorded of him that
he gained a thorough knowledge of Latin and
Greek and French and Spanish and Italian, and
purposed to study German, if he might procure
the books. Certain it is that, when at thirty-two

THOMAS JEFFERSON 163
upon his entry into the Continental Congress,
the sage fathers of your own New England
and the commercial spirits of New York and
Pennsylvania looked up in wonder to see so
young a man who knew so many things, and,
besides, could survey an estate, could play the
violin, could lead in a minuet, could argue a case
at law, and could use the English tongue in a way
to make them all his debtors. He had entered
the House of Burgesses at the age of twenty-six,
taking the training there which prepared him for
his later work in the Continental Congress, in
the office of Secretary of State, as minister to
France, and for serving two terms as President of
the United States, He reckoned his whole life
practically as a life of pubHc service. He claimed
for it sixty-one years of public service. He was
in office perhaps some thirty-nine years ; but
there was no time at which he was not a public
servant, and so justly reckoned sixty-one of his
eighty-three years to the public good. His activi
ties were in a Virginia so charming that Channing
said in 1 799 that, if he " could separate the Vir
ginians from their sensuality and slaves, he would
be able to think of them as the finest people in
the world," He elevates them above his own
New England in the fact that they are " more
hospitable, less reticent, and do not love money

1 64 THOMAS JEFFERSON
so much," However this may be, as an impres
sion upon the mind of Channing, who was private
tutor in a family of Virginia in 1799 and 1800,
it is quite certain that Virginia was a very charm
ing place in which to live. No class distinctions
were there, based simply upon family lines. They
were open-hearted, hospitable to all comers. All
who could vindicate their right to be received
were received upon their own account of them
selves, and maintained their position by the con
tinuance of that account. Yet there was in
Virginia one thing that immediately aroused the
indignation of Thomas Jefferson when he came
into public life, which was in opposition to all
democractic principles, as he conceived them,
namely, the State Church, It was not believed
by him, any more than it was believed by Roger
Williams, that the State or the Church could
dominate the human soul. Certainly, neither by
Jefferson nor by Roger Williams was it believed
that the Church and the State could be united in
any such survey of the rights of man. In the
contest that Jefferson soon led in the House of
Burgesses for the disestablishment of the State
Church, a different view was held by one of the
elderly members in powdered wig and three-
cornered hat and silver-topped cane, " No
gentleman," said he, " would choose any road to

THOMAS JEFFERSON 165
heaven but the Episcopal," But there was a
serious difficulty about the State Church in Vir
ginia, It had no bishop, nor could procure any.
The rectors, vicars, and curates earnestly exhorted
the people to bring their children to the bishop,
but he was in London, The clergy were con
fronted by the serious people of Virginia, as the
deputation confronted the lords of England, with
the charge of the abuse of their privileges and
disregard of their duty. It was said, with some
humor, by one of the number of those who
entered into this contest, that the clergyman " had
a nominal interest in their souls and an actual
tithe of their estates." The struggle for a bishop
was settled by the Connecticut Episcopalians in
the election of Dr. Seabury to that office. But,
when the application from the United States to
London for a bishop came before the lords ecclesi
astical in England, it was found at last that Vir
ginia did not join in the petition ; and a vote of
the House of Burgesses recorded the gratitude
of their rulers that the Virginia Episcopalians had
abstained from the petition for a bishop.
These things are mentioned, in order that you
may see the rise of the sense of independence
of all ecclesiastical authority. The first American
Conference of Methodists came about this time,
held in Philadelphia in 1773. The first General

i66 THOMAS JEFFERSON
Conference of the Methodist Church, a significant
growth of this time, was in 1784. Coke comes
from England, sent by Wesley, consecrated by
Wesley and his associates ; and Asbury is ordained
bishop. The reorganization of the Catholic
Church falls to this period in Maryland, in a
colony, now a State, in which the Catholic Church
had been the pioneer of religious liberty, as it
understood religious liberty, 1789 is a great year
in America as to religion and as to the democracy
which lay at its root. The Protestant Episcopal
Church Convention was in Philadelphia in that
year. The meeting of the Methodist Council, to
deliberate upon unity of doctrine and of form,
was held in the same year. In that year, 1789,
Baltimore was created, by special bull of Pius VI.,
a see of the Catholic Church, and is still its
primacy. The First General Assembly of Presby
terians met in Philadelphia in 1789, They had
already given Witherspoon to the Continental
Congress, And yet, when the Baptist Church
and all others refrained from the plea for the
assessment of all persons according to their means
for the maintenance of religion, these same Presby
terians were found ioining with the Episcopalians
in such a request.
We come now to the first significant declaration
of Thomas Jefferson with respect to the rights

THOMAS JEFFERSON 167
of the soul and of the mind in religion. It is
called his Declaratory Act. It was written by
Jefferson, singularly enough, in that time of
political liberation, 1776, but was not introduced
by him into the Assembly of Virginia until 1779,
and was not passed by them until 1785. Said
Jefferson in this Declaratory Act, " Be it enacted
by the General Assembly that no man shall be
compelled to frequent or support any religious
worship, place, or ministry whatever; nor shall
be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in
his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on
account of his religious opinions or belief; but
that all men shall be free to profess, and by argu
ment to maintain, their opinions in matters of
religion, and that the same shall in no wise
diminish or affect their civil capacity," This is
exactly in accord with the view which Thomas
Paine had announced ; and, doubtless, he had 1
conferred with Jefferson as to its announcement,
to the effect that " toleration is not the opposite
of intolerance, but its counterfeit. Both are des
potisms. The one assumes to itself the right of
withholding liberty of conscience, and the other
of granting it," And those of us who know what
word has taken the place of tolerance must
applaud this protest so early against so inconven
ient and despicable a word. For now no man

i68 THOMAS JEFFERSON
uses the word, but, rather, spiritual sympathy, — the
effort of one man to see what another man sees,
and to compare the views together. The con
viction has grown in our day that it is a small
ledge of observation that is not large enough for
two to stand on while they get the view.
Another significant matter in which Jefferson
had a hand was the section of the Bill of Rights
drawn by Patrick Henry, The Bill of Rights
itself was by George Mason, as a whole ; but
Patrick Henry drew the section that had to do
with the subject in hand, " Religion," said he,
" is the duty we owe our Creator ; and the manner
of discharging it can be determined only by reason
or conviction, and not by force or violence ; and,
therefore, all men should enjoy the fullest tolera
tion in the exercise of religion, according to the
dictates of conscience, unpunished and unre
strained by the magistrate, unless, under the
color of religion, any man disturb the peace, the
happiness, or safety of society ; and that it is the
mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbear
ance, love, and charity towards each other,"
Both Jefferson and Madison protested against
the form of this statement ; and it was modified,
so that the words " toleration " and " magistrates "
were both eliminated from it. The objectionable
clause was stricken out, and this substituted:

THOMAS JEFFERSON 169
"All men are equally entitled to full and free
exercise of religion, according to the dictates of
conscience." But Madison went further, " No
man, or class of men," said he, " ought to gain
emoluments by the fact of their religious relation
ship," These are some of the signs of the times that
were manifest in the period of Jefferson's most
active history,
I pass now to consider the association of Jeffer
son's name with the term " Democracy." It must
be remembered that Democracy, as Jefferson con
ceived it, was Republicanism, The first term
used by him was not " Democrat," but " Republi
can." Then, in order that he might clear the
atmosphere and be understood, he used the
awkward phrase " Republican-Democrat." And,
finally, by that laziness of mind which is so com
mon, all other terms were dismissed, and his party
came to be known as the Democrats. This
term is used in this connection in its philosophic,
not its political, sense. Jefferson's shade is so
often invoked to be present at the banquets of
those who call themselves " Democrats that it is
well just here to say that his democracy was of an
older type, and had to do with the rights of
society and the freedom of the human mind, not
with the spoils of society and the enslavement of

I70 THOMAS JEFFERSON
party prejudice. The association of Jefferson's
name with democracy was the result, first, of his
mania against monarchy ; for by no lighter term
can the attitude of his mind be expressed. The
slightest suspicion^ in John Adams, for instance,
of clinging to family distinction or to ancient
tradition, or to anything that smacked of English
regard, aroused his wrath, until he charged John
Adams himself with apostasy.
The second source of his enthusiasm for
democracy was in his antagonism to Hamilton.
It is safe to say that neither Hamilton under
stood Jefferson, nor Jefferson Hamilton. Ham
ilton believed that Jefferson was an honest man,
both personally and politically. Jefferson be
lieved that Hamilton was an honest man person
ally, but politically ever ready to resort to force
or to trickery to gain some end. The centraliza
tion which Hamilton taught was exactly antago
nistic to the States' Rights, which was fundamental
to Jefferson's political creed ; for Jefferson was
author, not only of that form of statement with
regard to States' Rights in Virginia, but author,
also, in part, of the Kentucky Resolutions. His
aversion to monarchy amounted, as I say, to a
mania, but was associated in his mind with a
passion for liberty. It might have been said of
him, as Matthew Arnold says of Shelley, with

THOMAS JEFFERSON 171
the change of a word or two, that " That radiant
and ineffectual angel beat his luminous wings in
the void in vain." For, with Jefferson, every
stroke of the wing was a lifting of the whole
political body ; and the luminous character of his
utterance gave radiant form to the impulses of
other men. While Hamilton, at a dinner in
New York, smote the table with his hand at the
mention of " the people," and said, " Your people
is a great beast," JeflTerson held firmly to the in
herent tightness of the popular decree, and yet
was at heart a dictator. It is the old story of the
man who thinks he knows being willing to guide
the people who ought to know.
In contrast to this democratic spirit which now
ruled the Virginian mind, we turn for a moment
to the attitude of the New England mind toward
this new democracy. The New England mind
was free, it declared ; and yet, to every suggestion
of democracv, the one cant phrase was the suf
ficient answer in that day, — " Look at France!"
The French Revolution, which to Jefferson had
been an inspiration, leaving him untouched by its
anarchy, only moved by its deep emotions, was
to New England, and justiy, a sign of anarchy
and a herald of dissolution. And yet in New
England there were not wanting tendencies
and attempts toward a democracy which Virginia

172 THOMAS JEFFERSON
was fast achieving. In New England the growth
of Arminianism — the doctrine of salvation by
faith and free grace, as distinguished from the
Calvinistic decrees — was matched in democratic
tendency by the inauguration of a public school
system, which, as Dr. Hale says, was as genuinely
and joyously adopted as though men did not
believe in total depravity. They believed the
child was totally depraved, but must be entirely
educated. To this must be added the determina
tion of election by ballot ; and the determination,
by written law, to check the decisions of the
General Court. And yet, may it be said, under
the term of this lectureship, it was John Cotton
who held that democracy was not a fit govern
ment for Church or State. He might well have
added " for Church and State " ; for, after all
that can be said, the New England state was not
democratic except in its town meeting, and in its
town meeting, for a long period, inspected its
church roll to determine upon the right to vote.
It was Thomas Hooker, standing for indepen
dence, declaring for Congregationalism as the
democratic form of government, who said : " The
foundation of authority is laid in the free consent
of the people. The choice of the people's magis
trates belongs to the people of God's own allow
ance. They who have the power to appoint

THOMAS JEFFERSON 173
magistrates have also the right to place bounds
and limitations on the power and place unto
which they call them."
But here is a suggestion of divine right and
that theocracy which lay at the verv root of
Hooker's scheme of thought concerning the
Church. The power of the clergv in all this
district was equivalent to an inquisition. Con
trast Jefferson's faith in the rightness of the
people, the way in which he felt down through aU
the ebullition of the surface to the great under
current of popular thought, and placed his faith
upon that, — contrast this with the statement of
that man who, perhaps, more than anv other,
phrased, in strenuous words at the rime, the feel
ing of New England concerning democracv. I
quote from Fisher Ames : " Our country," said
Fisher Ames in 1803, "is too big for union, too
sordid for patriotism, too democratic for liberty.
What is to become of ir : He who made it best
knows. Its vice will govern it by practising
upon its foUy. This is ordained for democracies."
Again, in the same year, Fisher Ames says :
" Democracy catmot last. It has no resistance,
though its next change shall be into a military
despotism. The reason is that the tyranny of
what is called the people and that of the sword
both operate alike to debase and cormpt, until

174 THOMAS JEFFERSON
there are neither men left to desire liberty nor
morals with power to sustain justice."
That is capital English, but it is dreadful
nonsense. We read with composure these decla
rations of our dissolution in 1803, and might
well learn from them an abatement of our fears
for 1903. It was George Cabot who said in
1 804 : " Even in New England, where there is
among the body of the people more wisdom and
deliberation than any other part of the United
States, we are full of errors, which no reason
could eradicate, though there were a Lycurgus in
every village. We are democratic altogether;
and I hold democracy, in its natural operation, to
be the government of the worst." He was
anxious to betray a little knowledge of Greek by
putting democracy over against the government
of "the best." Such natural tendency to aristoc
racy and learning marked the public utterances
of the time. We have now the attitude of two
great sections of a great country. I have already
quoted to you the different impression made
upon the mind of Channing, when, in 1799 and
1 800, he was a private tutor in Virginia. This is
the Virginia which he so much applauds, from
his applause abating only his disgust for their
sensuality and their slaves ; yet, in this pleasure-
loving, chivalric, hospitable Virginia, all the

THOMAS JEFFERSON 175
structures of society rested on a State Church, on
primogeniture, on exemption by law of the
seizure for debt of all lands, and upon slavery.
And these foundations Jefferson set himself to
remove to the last stone of the substructure.
These were the props at which he struck. These
were the pillars around which this far-seeing giant
cast his arms and bowed himself. Yet, through
out all this period, when Jefferson and his associ
ates, Madison, Mason, and others, were working
at the problem of democracy, as seen in the abo
lition of the State Church, in the removal of the
limitations upon the law in favor of primogeni
ture, and release of all lands from debts incurred
in a previous generation, there was growing the
conviction that religion, like government, de
pended upon the sovereign soul. The phrase
"the sovereign citizen," and the phrase "the
sovereign soul," are twins of their thought. The
individual responsibilities to man as constituting
society, and to God as dominating with his will
the moral sense by which that society was gov
erned, these two go hand in hand in the thought
of this time. Already the influence of Channing
and his friends was beginning to be avowed and
felt on every hand. One shrewd critic of the
period says : " Human nature was adorned with
virtues hardly suspected before, and with hopes

176 THOMAS JEFFERSON
of perfection on earth altogether strange to their
theology. So strong was the reaction against old
dogmas that for thirty years society seemed less
likely to resume the ancient faith in the Christian
Trinity than to establish a new Trinity, in which
a deified humanity should have place." This is
an exaggerated statement of a palpable fact ; for
the divinity of human nature was fast becoming a
corollary to the rights of man. The elder Buck-
minster, of Portsmouth, was clinging to the crum
bling enclosure of Calvinism, and yearning over
his son Joseph, who had gone into bondage to
Boston Unitarianism. Just then Hosea Ballou,
having caught the impulse of democracy in religion
which had been gathering steadily in these
Northern lands from its fountain-head, in Vir
ginia, was announcing an Universalism more ex
tended than ever Paul or Origen proclaimed.
The faith of the new movement declared itself
thus : " That there is one God, whose nature is
love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one
Holy Spirit of grace, who will finally restore the
whole family of mankind to holiness and happi
ness." This is the deliverance of New Hamp
shire to match the deliverance of Virginia. And,
while this seems but a limited movement toward
ultimate democracy, it may be called, in view of the
phraseology it announced, an ultimate democracy

THOMAS JEFFERSON 177
to be achieved by intermediary legislation.
Already the Constitution of the United States
had put upon its record "that no religious test
shall ever be required as a qualification for any
office or public trust under the Constitution."
And Judge Story, commenting upon this, de
clares, "The Catholic and the Protestant, the
Calvinist and the Arminian, the infidel and the
Jew, may sit down now to the communion-table
of the National Council, without any inquisition
into their faith or mode of worship."
Another of the results of the democracy for
which Jefferson stood was that certain doctrines
were fast falling into disregard, preliminary to
their final collapse. They were salvation by
belief, exclusive salvation, and the criminality
of error. It was fast becoming true in all the
churches that belief was to give way to the
experience of religion. For this the Baptist
stood, with his rite of baptism. For this the
Methodist stood, with his doctrine of the Holy
Spirit. For this Campbell stood in his organiza
tion in 1809 of the sect that bears his name, the
sect of the Disciples of Christ, claiming the Bible
as the sole guide of faith and conscience. And
more and more the utterances of men like Paine
and Jefferson and their associates forbade the
erection of error into a crime. Probably they

178 THOMAS JEFFpRSON
did not quote, but they believed those lines of
George Herbert in which he says : —
" Be calm in arguing, for fierceness
Makes error a fault and truth discourtesy.
Why should I feel another man's mistake
More than his sickness or his poverty i
In love, I should ; but anger is not love,
Nor wisdom, neither ; therefore gently move."
So for liberty of expression they contended ;
for liberty of discussion, and for liberty of
association. I have traced in this very imperfect way the mo
tive and attitude of democracy as understood and
expressed by Thomas Jefferson. Let us look
now for a few moments at the result of it in
the whole movement of the religious life in
America. I have already said that the sover
eign citizen and the sovereign soul had come
to be the watchwords, the one of the pohtical,
and the other of the religious world. It was
not that all reaHzed responsibility as citizens,
nor that all claimed responsibihty as souls.
There was the tendency to elevate strong gov
ernments, like the Methodist and the Episco
palian, in place of individualism. But still
through all there ran the same impulse, — the
sense of responsibility for life, not for opinion ;

THOMAS JEFFERSON 179
for conduct, not for creed. And so it came to
pass that over and over again great bodies were
found drifting away from the estabHshed require
ments of their faith, and yet steadily increasing
the sense of responsibility for righteousness.
Democracy, as conceived in this discussion, is
based in the essential dignity of human nature,
to use a phrase of Channing, — the essential dig
nity of human nature. Under its influence there
could not for long survive a doctrine of deprav
ity which was a reflection upon the Creator's wis
dom and benevolence. In view of the strenuous
endeavor for the liberation of the slave, made
by Jefferson in the presentation in the Assem
bly of Virginia of his bill forbidding the impor
tation of slaves beyond that date ; of his endeavor
for the emancipation of the slave and his disap
pointment that the State of Virginia and the
country in which slavery was a fact were not
ready for that movement, and yet declaring, as
he did, that the liberation of the slave was as
certainly upon the books of destiny as any other
right of man, it could not be possible under
these conditions that the doctrine of an incurable
hell could last long. But the real stress, the
strain of integrity laid by democracy upon
the religious Hfe, is upon the self-sufficiency of
the soul to be its own guide and its own arbiter

i8o THOMAS JEFFERSON
in matters of religion. The Congregationalism
which began as intending democracy, soon began
to seek for reinforcement of its integrity in terms
of confession beyond the terms of covenant with
which it at first contented itself, making laborious
statements, appealing to assemblies for vindication
and for guidance. So in the liturgical churches
the tendency to enrichment of ritual, the elabora
tion of services, enforced the claim for the assthetic
value of the services of religion as distinguished
from the stern integrity of that earlier time. And
yet I think it may be said, until proof to the con
trary is furnished, that the growing feeling that
the religious life needs artificial helps in the
church is not so much a reflection upon democ
racy in religion as it is a reflection upon the
verve and power and individual force of those
who constitute the group which seeks so to
buttress itself. The effort to lean upon sup
ports instead of standing erect ; the conscious
ness that the individual soul is not enough for
its own satisfaction, — these, under manifold
appearances, represent the sense of insufficiency
as felt by the failing sense of God. It must
never be mistaken for that which it vainly repre
sents ; for when, in the order of self-government
in religion, the democratic principle is deserted,
it is proof, not that new faiths have arisen, but

THOMAS JEFFERSON i8i
that new weaknesses have appeared. No democ
racy is possible when the people distrusts itself
No integrity of soul can be vindicated while it
lies supine upon its tradition of faith.
I speak of this because the other problem
comes associated with it in our minds. I offer
you as a suggestion in this connection whether
the personal value, the sense of personal value,
is not essential to the whole scheme of democ
racy in religion ; and whether the tendency to
impersonality in religion is not also a tendency
to irreligion itself. What is meant by this ? From
the time when Hagar uttered her feeble cry,
*' Thou, God, seest me," in the old folk story
of the Hebrews, to the time when Jesus said,
" I am not alone, for the Father is with me,"
there is an unbroken succession of prophetic
souls who have learned that " the prophet is
he who knows upon what adamantine manhood
he must take his stand, and to what heights of
divinity he must look up." This is what we
mean by the integrity of the individual soul.
This is the reason for the insistence by earnest
men and women that the religious life of America
shall resolve itself into the two words " God "
and " the soul." This is the reason for the
statement continually made by those who seek
the largest liberty for the souls of believers in

i82 THOMAS JEFFERSON
the great facts of religion, that there are but
two words in religion, " God " and " the soul " ;
and that all religion, in its history, philosophy, and
services, has been the effort to bridge over from
the one great pier of thought to the other, by
virtue of which the soul alone may find God,
and God may seek the soul. For, said Jesus,
"The Father seeketh," — seeketh : the search
ing God is on our path, — " The Father seeketh
such to worship him as worship him in spirit and
in truth." More and more we must hold, it
seems to me, to the true democratic conception
of religion ; namely, the essential validity of the
soul's own rights. What led Jefferson to pro
test against slavery, to protest for the rights of
the States, as distinguished from the centraliza
tion taught by Hamilton ? What led him to
phrase the ideal of equality in the Declaration
of Independence, of which it may well be said that
it states not " glittering generalities, but eter
nal ubiquities " ? What led him to turn with
faith through all his life to the man next the
soil, as distinguished from the man in the arti-
ficiahties of the city? What made him feel
that the farmer, not the trader, was the man
who was likeliest to find his rights and inde
pendence under the general government? All
these are but the aspects, in the domain of gov-

THOMAS JEFFERSON 183
ernment, administration, and civic duty, of that
fundamental thought in religion, — that in the last
analysis God and the soul are alone together ; and
all that abates from the soul's conscious person
ality, and all that interferes, whether in terms of
pantheism or terms of impersonality of any kind,
with the conscious presence of the living God
with the living soul, must tend more and more
to irreligion. Religion is an experience, and all
vital experiences are personal.
This, then, seems to me the lesson of the
hour; namely, that, as Jefferson in every act of
his life, even in the founding of the University
of Virginia, which he regarded as his greatest
service to the nation, put the responsibility upon
the individual mind, so religion leaves the man
shut in alone with God. In the organization of
the University of Virginia we have a singular
instance of faith in unrestricted liberty. The
University of Virginia has no president, no
obligatory schedule of studies, no entrance ex
aminations ; has no rules for its students as to
the attendance upon study or absence from
study. It makes but the one rule, — -that in the
college and out of it, in the seat of learning or at
home, each student is to bear himself as a gentle
man. That much-abused term harks back to
the meaning that old Thomas Dekker gave it

i84 THOMAS JEFFERSON
in that play of which we sometimes quote these
lines : — " The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit.
The first true gentleman that ever breathed,"
This was the conception which Jefferson had of
the University of Virginia, in which he felt such
pride ; and that conception runs parallel to the
freedom of the religious life. Error cannot be
made a sin. Mistake cannot be erected into a
crime. Human nature cannot pray in phalanx.
It is not possible to enhance the impact upon
the mind, even by multiplying the agencies for
approaching the shrines of worship. Throughout
the whole range of thought the dignity of human
nature and the sufficiency of each soul to its own
task before God appears. And what was said by
that great Democrat, that great RepubHcan, that
believer in his country, that emancipator of the
slave, — "The government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth," — may be paraphrased, it seems to me, as
to the religious life and its tendency among our
American people, — that the time shall come when
each man shall find God for himself, and shall
tell his discovery to the next man with joy, but
without insistence that he shall hear.

VI

William Ellery Channing and the Growth
of Spiritual Christianity

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING AND
THE GROWTH OF SPIRITUAL
CHRISTIANITY.
In the summer of 1830 tidings reached
Channing in Newport of the Revolution of
the three days of July in France. It was
glorious news to him : for it meant the victory
of the principles ever dearest to his heart —
freedom of speech and the rights of man — in
the land which from young manhood he had
regarded as the home and symbol of antagonistic
principles. A free press and a free people
had conquered the Bourbons under Charles, and
Lafayette was at the head of the National Guard.
It had been a conflict of liberty against despotism,
and liberty had won. In his exultation, Channing
shortened his vacation and hastened to Boston,
that he might have part in what he supposed
would be universal jubilation. But to his dismay
he found Boston unmoved. The general apathy
shocked and disheartened him ; and, when shortly
afterwards a young Harvard graduate was intro
duced to him by Miss Peabody, Channing greeted
him with the ironical words : " I see you young
gentlemen of Cambridge were quite too wise to

i88 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
be thrown out of your accustomed serenity by
the new revolution in France 1 I was a young
man in college in the days of the first French
Republic, and at every crisis of its history our
dignity was wholly upset. We were rushing to
meetings of sympathy or kindling bonfires of
congratulation and walking in torchlight pro
cessions. But now the young American has
come to years of discretion, and may not give
way to such unseemly excitements." At the
close of the conversation, when the young man
rose to take leave, Channing invited him to call
again, to which he replied, " Yes, sir, I will ; for
you are the only young man I know ! " Instantly
Channing answered in a loud ringing tone that
was almost an hurrah, " Always young for lib
erty ! "
This incident, related by Miss Peabody, and
especially the sentence, " Always young for lib
erty," strikes what should be the keynote of the
discourse concerning Channing to which this oc
casion summons us. By the general plan of the
course we are called upon to consider Channing
primarily as an apostle of spiritual liberty, and as
preacher, philanthropist, theologian, only in so
far as these modes of his activity stand related
to the principle of spiritual freedom. Yet this
limitation is neither unjust to him nor regret-

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 189
table by those who honor him ; for in the case
of a unified character, such as Channing's un
deniably was, the whole is implicit in every part,
and adequate presentation of any single phase
involves consideration of the character as a
whole. Moreover, if the particular principle
selected be central to the life, especially if it be
the organizing one, to group our thoughts about
it is to see the phases of the nature in their true
relations and just proportions. That love of
liberty was such a central and constructive prin
ciple in the life and thought of Channing, no
one can doubt. In the Introductory Remarks
to the first volume of his " Collected Works,"
Channing mentions two thoughts so frequently
occurring in all his writings as to constitute their
characteristics ; and these are respect for the
human soul and reverence for liberty. Of the
latter he says, [" It is] a sentiment which
has grown with my growth, which is striking
deeper root in my age, which seems to me a
chief element of true love for mankind, and
which alone fits a man for intercourse with his
fellow-creatures. I have lost no occasion for
expressing my deep attachment to liberty in all
its forms, civil, political, religious, to liberty of
thought, speech, and the press, and of giving
utterance to my abhorrence of all the forms of

I90 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
oppression. This love of freedom I have not
borrowed from Greece or Rome. It is not the
classical enthusiasm of youth which by some
singular good fortune has escaped the blighting
influences of intercourse with the world. Greece
and Rome are names of little weight to a Chris
tian. They are warnings rather than inspirers
and guides. My reverence for human liberty
and rights has grown up in a different school,
under milder and holier discipline. Christianity
has taught me to respect my race and to repro
bate its oppressors. It is because I have learned
to regard man under the light of this religion
that I cannot bear to see him treated as a brute,
insulted, wronged, enslaved, made to wear a yoke,
to tremble before his brother, to serve him as a
tool, to hold property and life at his will, to sur
render intellect and conscience to the priest, or
to seal his lips or belie his thoughts through
dread of the civil power. It is because I have
learned the essential equality of men before the
common Father that I cannot endure to see one
man establishing his arbitrary will over another
by fraud or force or wealth or rank or super
stitious claims. It is because the human being
has moral powers, because he carries a law in his
own breast, and was made to govern himself, that
I cannot endure to see him taken out of his own

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 191
hands and fashioned into a tool by another's
avarice or pride. It is because I see in him a
great nature, the divine image, and vast capacities
that I demand for him means of self-development,
spheres for free action ; that I call society not to
fetter, but to aid his growth. Without intend
ing to disparage the outward, temporal advan
tages of liberty, I have habitually regarded it in a
higher light, as the birthright of the soul, as the
element in which men are to put themselves
forth, to become conscious of what they are, and
to fulfil the end of their being."
From this quotation it is plain that the two
distinctive principles of all Channing's work, re
spect for the human soul and reverence for liberty
and human rights, were, as he says, intimately
connected. Indeed, the former was the because
to the latter's therefore. This will appear more
plainly if we trace the origin of the two prin
ciples, and so discover their organic affiliation.
There is always a certain fiitility in the attempt
to account for a great man by reference to his
heredity and environment, especially if either be
unduly emphasized. To enlarge upon environ
ment is as if one should account for a rose by
chemical analysis of the soil out of which it grows,
and to lay stress upon heredity is as if one should
expect a bulb kept from the earth to blossom

192 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
into a tulip. Nor can the union of the two suf^
fice for an explanation ; for Channing's brothers,
eminent as they were, did not do and could not
have done his work in the world. Let us ac
knowledge, then, that in Channing, as indeed in
all men, there was the ultimately inexplicable, that
mysterious individuality which passeth knowledge.
Notwithstanding the science of meteorology, the
wind still " bloweth where it listeth, and thou hear-
est the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence
it cometh and whither it goeth " ; and, notwith
standing all that may be said of heredity and
environment, it is still true that "so is every
one that is born of the Spirit." But with this
preliminary caution we may profitably consider
certain influences which at least fostered and
encouraged his respect for man and reverence
for liberty.
Channing was born at Newport, R.I., on the
7th of April, 1780. His father was a lawyer, of
rather more than local eminence, becoming at
torney-general of the State in 1777, ^^^y ^^^^^ ^^^
adoption of the Federal Constitution, district
attorney for Rhode Island. His mother was
daughter of William Ellery, one of the Sons of
Liberty, a signer of the Declaration of Indepen
dence, member of Congress from 1776 to 1786
with the exception of the years 1780 and 1782.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 193
So far, then, hereditary influences were on the
side of freedom. And the environment was no
less congenial. Of all the States none has been
more zealous for liberty than the State of Roger
Williams. It may be granted that its zeal was
not always according to knowledge, — one may
applaud the freedom-loving spirit of Roger Will
iams without approving all the acts which it
prompted, — but it cannot be doubted that in the
litde State love of independence and dislike of
everything that even looked toward interference
with it were supreme. Throughout the country
there was objection to the Order of the Cin
cinnati. Rhode Island promptly disfranchised its
members. Of Jeshurun it is written that it
waxed fat and kicked, but against all authority
assumed by Congress Rhode Island in utter
leanness outkicked Jeshurun. Its attitude toward
the Federal Constitution has already been de
scribed in this course by President Faunce. It
is not surprising, therefore, to find in Channing
the independence of his native State, tempered
and regulated, however, by wisdom and reflection.
In Harvard, which he entered in 1794, there was
almost a riot of school-boy feeling. Channing
fraternized with those who wore the black cockade,
and shouted for Adams and Liberty. It is in
teresting to recall that he wrote the address sent

194 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
by the students to President Adams, the flam
boyant rhetoric of which is in amusing contrast
with the chastened style of his mature years, and
that, when the college faculty announced that all
political discussion must be excluded from the
commencement exercises, Channing indignantly
resigned the oration assigned him ; nor would he
consent to take the part until the faculty had
made concessions which to himself and his
friends seemed sufficient to meet the demands of
his conscience and self-respect. Yet he was not
content that the matter should rest thus ; and at
one point in his oration on " The Present Age,"
turning to the faculty, he exclaimed with impas
sioned utterance, " But that I am forbid, I could
a tale unfold which would harrow up your souls ! "
We like to dwell upon this early exuberance of
Channing because of his later moderation. It is
pleasant to know that there was something to
moderate. Channing has too often been regarded
as naturally deficient in emotion, temperament
ally cool and intellectual ; but the truth is that
the limitation which many seem to find in him
in this respect was not a natural deficiency, but
a self-restraint deliberately achieved by wisdom
and effort. The popular opinion is based mainly
upon his published sermons ; but it should be
remembered that these are almost all occasional

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 195
discourses, out of which, since they were neces
sarily largely controversial in character, he was
particularly careful to keep the heat customarily
associated with polemics, trusting to light alone,
to the reason, and not to the emotions, for his
approval. It is said that in his regular work —
that is, in his parish sermons — there was an emo
tional warmth not found in his published dis
courses, and criticisms are on record to the effect
that a certain sermon tended to encourage fanati
cism, and that in general he was in the habit of
putting his hearers into " an immense excitement
of feeling." It is hard for us to think of Chan
ning as a man of intense feeling, yet of the fact
there can be no doubt. In his letters to his col
lege friends there is stilted sentimentality, and
sometimes an outburst of emotion which goes
far to justify Professor Fisher's reference to his
" maudhn tempers." His brother wrote to him,
" You are the baby of your emotions, and dandled
by them without any chance of being weaned."
He himself confesses that his life had been a
struggle with his feelings, and that the victory
over his habit of reverie and musing, in which
fancy won an ascendency dangerous to his moral
life and his powers were weakened and dissipated,
was gained by the reflection that virtue does not
consist in feeling but in acting from a sense of

196 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
duty. But, with this curbing of his emotions, the
passion for liberty only grew more deep and
ardent, so that toward the close of his life he said
in a sermon to his own people that, much as he
valued his own views of God and duty, there was
a cause nearer his heart than any-particular doc
trine, and that was the cause of religious liberty.
Thus he obeyed at eve the voice obeyed at
prime ; and the talent given him by heredity and
environment did its proper work in the world,
and grew by the doing.
Here, then, was the youth with his passionate
love of liberty, his fervent conviction that men
ought to be free in body, mind, and soul ; but the
religious system in which he was brought up was
based upon a conception of human nature with
which such freedom was quite incompatible.
Berkshire County in Massachusetts has a well-
deserved reputation for summer loveliness and
winter austerity ; but its worst December blasts
are balmy compared with the rigor of its theo
logical solstice in the second half of the eight
eenth century, while Edwards was at Stockbridge,
succeeded by West, Hopkins at Great Barrington,
and Bellamy and Smalley not far away in Con
necticut. These were leading representatives
of what was called Consistent Calvinism, or
sometimes also Berkshire Divinity. According

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 197
to their teaching, which agreed in substance,
although there were individual variations at spe
cial points, man as man was totally incapable by
nature of knowing and loving God, and must
ever remain so unless enlightened and regener
ated by special grace. Into the details of this
Berkshire Divinity we cannot enter here, but
it would be gross injustice not to speak of the
splendid ethical standard it set up for the regen
erate. Virtue is love of universal being, and
this virtue comes to pass in man only by the
act of the Spirit, This alone is goodness accept
able to God ; and how paltry and impotent
appeared all good works, judged by this ideal of
true virtue and genuine goodness ! That was a
sublime ethical standard which in the hands of
Hopkins took the practical form of a willingness
to be damned for the glory of God, It was gen
erally conceded that some were to be damned, and
it was said that this damnation was for the com
plete revelation of the glory of God, How could
God's hatred of sin be shown except in a universe
where sin is to be found ? Therefore, sin is in the
world. But how, again, can his hatred of it be
shown except by his awful and eternal punish
ment of it ? But for sin and hell, therefore, this
side of God's nature would be unrevealed : hence
his glory would be imperfect. For the glory of

198 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
God, therefore, some are to be damned ; and, con
sequently, one who cares not for himself, but only
for the glory of God, must be willing to be among
the eternal victims. And, since such desire for the
glory of God was possible only to the regenerate,
willingness to be damned for the glory of God
became a test of regeneration. Thus even this
revolting doctrine testifies to the grandeur of the
ethical teaching of the Berkshire Divinity as it
was held by Hopkins in the form of Disinter
ested Benevolence. Now this Samuel Hopkins
was settled in Newport in 1770, and, barring
three years of -absence during the Revolution,
remained as minister there until his death in
1803. Although the family of Channing be
longed to Dr. Stiles's church. Dr. Hopkins and
his doctrines were well known ; and, when the other
church was closed for some time after the war, its
members, and the Channings among them, at
tended upon the preaching of Dr. Hopkins.
And Dr. Hopkins never flinched from the
most uncompromising declaration of his princi
ples. It is said that on one occasion the unre
lenting doctor, dining with a young minister, de
tected the ruffles which it was then fashionable to
wear, but which the doctor disliked, peeping out
of their concealment under his coat. Whereupon
the doctor said with some asperity, " I don't

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 199
care for ruffles ; but, if I wore them, I'd wear
them like a man," That was characteristic : oth
ers might wear theological shackles betrayed
only by a miserable habit of shuffling, but Dr,
Hopkins wore his without disguise, holding
them gifts of God, — anklets and bracelets of
beauty. " He was distinguished for nothing
more [says Channing] than by faithfulness to his
principles. He carried them out to their fiill
extent. Believing, as he did, in total depravity,
believing that there was nothing good or gener
ous in human nature to which he could make an
appeal, believing that he could benefit men only
by setting before them their lost and helpless
condition, he came to the point without any cir
cumlocution, and dealt out terrors with a liberal
hand," Evidently, such religious teaching as this made
the passion for liberty logically absurd. Set free a
child of the devil, whose nature is depraved I Set
free a mind which in its natural condition cannot
possibly learn the truth of God ! Set free a man
who by his very nature cannot practise true virtue I
In fact, these Calvinists, with the splendid incon
sistency which we so often have to applaud in
men, were not true to the inevitable logic of their
creed ; but youth is not so way wise. If this
teaching were true, the ideal of liberty must be

200 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
denied. Consequently, there were many who,
identifying his doctrine with Christianity, and
succumbing to the French influence then rampant
in what was called infidelity, rejected Christianity
altogether. Hence Channing's mind was exer
cised over the nature and evidences of Christian
ity, and it was at this period of his career that his
great experience came, Reading one day certain
passages in Hutcheson which asserted man's ca
pacity for disinterested affection, he saw as by a
light from heaven the truth of the dignity and
worth of human nature, which, his biographer
says, became henceforth " the fountain light of all
his day, the master light of all his seeing," Is
not the connection of thought plain ? He had
learned from Hopkins the glory of disinterested
benevolence, but also that it is the property only
of the sons of God ; that is, the regenerate. But
now he finds Hutcheson affirming the natural
capacity of man for disinterested affection. Then
is not man naturally a child of "God ? And, if so,
then is not the nature of man to be respected and
deemed worthy of all honor ? Yes, is it not plain
now that man may be trusted with liberty and
that freedom is his birthright, even as God,
whose child man is, is free? Thus his love
of Hberty found its support and guarantee in a
thought of human nature. So the therefore of

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 201
freedom found its because in the thought of divine
Fatherhood. Having seen that the two ideas of respect for
man as man and reverence for liberty were thus
as one at heart of his thinking, we are prepared
to see how they furnished both impulse and
method to his practical activity. Very recently a
magazine article referred to him as the famous
philanthropist. That he would not have objected
to the term, except perhaps on the ground of its
swoUenness, appears from his saying in a report
to a committee of Unitarians appointed to con
sider the Ministry-at-large, "We ought to be
by eminence Christian philanthropists," And
this because he believed that the motive of phil
anthropy must be respect for man as man, and its
method must be the liberation of the mind and
soul of man. Let us recall his specific teaching
with reference to one or two of the evils of
society, to see how this motive and method were
applied. The distressing problem of poverty
forced itself upon him. Early in his ministry he
wrote, " Let the poor be my end " ; and here
are a few of the many disconnected jottings in
his journals, showing how the problem lay
in his mind and the remedies he approved :
" Causes of poverty to be traced. Charity is not
enough directed. Intimate acquaintance with

202 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
poor families. Employment found. Provisions
of wood in large quantities at cheap prices, and so
with all necessaries of life. Excite no feeling of
dependence. Stimulate to exertion. Relief such
as to call out energy and remove whatever dis
heartens and disables. Comfortable houses to be
let cheap to the poor. Innocent and improving
amusements. Interesting works to be circulated
among them. Associations among mechanics for
mutual support, if reduced. Complete course of
instruction for youth designed for active life.
The poor need moral remedies. Let each rich
family have some poor under their care. Con
nect the poor with good families." These are
but casual memoranda in his journals ; but how
significant they are in the light of approved
methods of modern philanthropy, and how acute
and accurate is the diagnosis of the evil ! A
few more quotations will deepen this impres
sion. In 1833 he wrote, "It seems to me
an important means of improving the poor to
improve the classes immediately above them,
from whom their number is constantly recruited,"
In his address on Temperance there is clear
hint of the modern settlement idea. He wrote
one sentence which should be graven deep in
the heart of every would-be philanthropist : " Be
not wilful in well-doing." Such was to be the

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 203
method, — the method of liberation rather than
of repression ; and, next, what was the motive
of philanthropy ?
" Does any one ask [he says] , Why shall I pity
and help the poor man ? I answer, because he is
A MAN ; because poverty does not blot out his
humanity ; because he has your nature, your
sensibilities, your wants, your fears ; because the
winter wind pierces him and hunger gnaws him
and disease racks and weakens him as truly as
they do you. Place yourself, my friend, in his
state. Make yourself by a strong effort of
thought the inhabitant of his unfurnished and
cold abode, and then ask why you should help
him. He is a man, though rags cover him,
though his unshorn hair may cover his human
features, — a member of your family, a child of
the same Father ; and, what is most important, he
not only has your wants and feelings, but shares
with you in the highest powers and hopes of
human nature. He is a man in the noblest
sense, created in God's image, with a mind to
think, a conscience to guide, a heart which may
grow warm with sentiments as pure and generous
as your own. To some this may seem declama
tion. There are some who seldom think of or
value man as man. It is man born in a particular
rank, clad by the hand of fashion and munificence.

204 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
moving in a certain sphere, whom they respect.
Poverty separates a fellow-being from them, and
severs the golden chain of humanity. But this is
a gross and vulgar way of thinking, and reason
and religion cry out against it. The true glory
of man is something deeper and more real than
outward condition, A human being created in
God's image, and, even when impoverished by
vice, retaining power essentially the same with
angels, has a mysterious importance ; and his good,
where it can be promoted, is worthy the care of the
proudest of his race,"
Thus again and again Channing teaches that
an indispensable prerequisite to social usefulness
is a vital respect for man as man ; and it
were well if those who profess to love men had
at heart the genuine respect for them which
Channing had, and sought to inculcate. Thus
both in method and in motive we find Channing's
governing ideas. We should serve men because
they are men, because under the poverty and vice
is hidden the divine image of exalted humanity.
Moreover, aid should be given in such a way as
to remove the obstructions which prevent the
realization of the divine ideal and let the humanity
shine forth. To quicken the mind of man by
truth and the soul of man by love is the only
way to lift him permanently out of poverty and

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 205
vice. Poverty needs moral remedies. To free
the enslaved mind is the niethod ; and respect for
man as man, and not merely love for him as a
poor man, is the motive of philanthropy. If it be
true, as Dr. Warner declares in American Chari
ties, that " the preventive and educational work,
in proportion to other kinds, has been more largely
undertaken by the Unitarians than by any other
denomination," it is because they have learned of
Channing and have been made to drink in of his
spirit. Take another evil, that of drunkenness, and see
how Channing treats it from the point of view of
his creative principles. To him, naturally, the
great evil in intemperance is inward, mental and
spiritual. It is the voluntary extinction of
reason, wilful self-degradation of man to the level
of the brutes. Among its causes he enumerates
the exhausting burdens of daily toil, which
prompt the overworked to seek stimulants ; the
narrowness of lot which, by depriving the laborer
of both the opportunity and the capacity for intel
lectual pleasures, restricts him to the gratification
of the senses ; the lack of self-respect among the
poor, due to low social ideals ; and the general
materialism of the community. To be stimu
lated, he says in substance, is our great and uni
versal want. For this we read, and to this we

2o6 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
devote our business hours. People even go to
church to be stimulated rather than improved.
Thus the thirst for stimulants characterizes the
community, and in those classes who can afford
themselves only a stimulus of intoxicating
liquors the spirit of the age breaks out in intem
perance. Is not this a remarkably comprehensive
and profound view of the case, especially in its
clear perception that intemperance cannot be re
garded as a detached vice, but is constitutional in
man and in society ? And the remedies pro
posed are equally noteworthy. First of all, there
must be physical training, since many become
sots through bodily infirmity. Again, since many
fall into the vice from lack of intellectual interests,
a resurrection of mind is demanded ; music, art,
reading, wholesome amusements, must be pro
vided. In a word, the moral and intellectual tone
of the individual and of the community must be
raised. Seriously, have we gone so very far be
yond Channing in our treatment of intemper
ance ? — " Are we wiser, better grown,
That we may not, in our day,
Make his thought our own .? "
Intemperance is a heinous sin, because by it
man is degraded from his humanity, the dignity

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 207
of human nature is impaired ; and the remedy is
in the upbuilding of the higher life of man, in
setting free his dormant powers and arousing his
soul. So the present-day emphasis upon per
sonality is only an echo of Channing. " What,
strike a man I " he said, when told of flogging
in the navy, A man, in poverty and vice I A
man, a drunkard ! Then let brother help
brother 1 Let man help man ! Let the per-
sonaHty of the stronger bring life to the
personality of the weaker, and permanent gain
shall be wrought. It would be profitable to
consider also his relation to other social reforms,
such as education, in co-operation with Horace
Mann, and peace, in company with Noah Wor
cester; but time forbids. Yet such an exami
nation would only strengthen the conclusion
already reached, that Dr. Channing's chief con
structive principles were present in all his phil
anthropic work. His motive was reverence for
man as man, and his method was not so much to
suppress the lower instincts as to liberate the
higher nature of man. The motive of human
ity, the method of Hberty,
One aspect of Dr, Channing's philanthropic
work cannot be passed over without mention,
slight as the mention must be, — his attitude
toward slavery. In Miss Kingsley's vivacious

2o8 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
" West African Studies " is a quotation from
a certain John Harford, of England : " Liberia
was taken over by the American Republic and
made a free country for all those slaves that
were liberated in the time of the great eman
cipation brought about by that good man,
W. E. Channing." This is noteworthy as show
ing the opinion of one who may fairly be
called an outsider with reference to the anti-
slavery movement in the United States, for
Channing has sometimes been represented as
faithless in this direction to his great principles
of human freedom. But he did not seem indif
ferent at the time ; for many of his friends, and in
his congregation, deemed him extreme in his oppo
sition to slavery, and wished he would leave the
troublesome question alone. The truth is that he
was condemned by the Abolitionists who could
see but one way to free the slave, — and that was
theirs, — and who, in consequence, had scant sym
pathy with any who were not wholly of their way
of thinking. As a tutor in the family of Ran
dolph in Virginia, he had first come to hate slav
ery ; but it was during his visit to St. Croix in
1830 that he experienced a regeneration upon
the subject. When he returned to Boston, the
topic was in the forefront of discussion. Garri
son had started the Liberator, and the pohtical

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 209
aggressiveness of the South was becoming more
marked and offensive. It would be as easy as
needless to multiply citations for the purpose
of showing that in his eyes the crowning iniq
uity was not the scourged body, but the imbruted
soul of the slave. Of course, the system was
horrible and intolerable ; but how was it to be
swept away ? Here Channing was too wise and
just to be dogmatic. At Randolph's house he
had often heard slaveholders speak of the system
with an abhorrence equal to his own, and he had
trusted that spirit to possess the South and ulti
mately abolish the iniquity. But he saw only too
plainly that the vehement attacks of the AboH-
tionists were uniting the South in defence of the
wrong, and, as he feared, putting oflf the day of
deHverance. Moreover, he had seen the good
side of slavery, the absence of pauperism and
the personal loyalties often developed between
slaves and members of the master's family ; and,
although he had not been deluded by these
things nor led to hate the iniquity one whit
the less, he found the facts perplexing in consid
ering methocis of emancipation. Moreover, he
looked forward to the condition of the slaves
immediately after emancipation, — weak, igno
rant, poor, — and wondered what would be their
fate when Hberated. So he could not go fiilly

210 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
with the AboHtionists. The question did not
seem to him so simple, nor the answer so obvi
ous, as to them. But, when Lovejoy was slain
at Alton, his name headed the petition for the
use of Faneuil Hall in which to hold an indig
nation meeting ; and when, in deference to a
counter-petition, the request was denied, Chan
ning's voice was heard in calm and effective
remonstrance. When the Abolitionists met a
committee of the legislature, Channing ap
peared, and took Garrison by the hand. He
spoke sorrowfully of the public indifference to
the great subject of slavery, and wrote and
preached against it. In this matter, however,
as in others, he trusted to general rather than
specific measures, and could not see his way
clear to immediate emancipation. Hence, while
the Abolitionists assailed him from the one
side, the conservatives, many of whom were in
his own church, attacked him from the other.
Notices of anti-slavery meetings designed to be
read from his pulpit were intercepted by vigilant
watchers and kept from reaching him. The use
of his church was refused for an anti-slavery meet
ing and even for a memorial service in honor of
his old and tried friend and comrade. Dr. Follen.
Although thus between two fires, he kept his
even way, hating the evil because it denied the

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 211
divineness of the human soul, yet not seeing
clearly the method of relief. His confidence
was in mental, and not merely in physical
emancipation. Now that the smoke and dust
of the conflict have blown away, and espe
cially in the light of subsequent developments
which Channing clearly foresaw, are we not in
a position to judge his attitude and that of
many another like him more justly and sympa
thetically than was possible at the time ? We
see now that often the Abolitionists branded
men with stigmas which cling to them even yet
in popular estimation, who were every whit as
zealous for liberty and against slavery as them
selves, but who could not see the way to accom
plish their deep desires. No friend of Channing
need doubt that in the fiiture men will find no
inconsistency between his practice and his creative
principles, nor conclude that he was any the less
a lover and prophet of liberty because he saw
the situation perhaps more clearly than those
who condemned him, and sought their ends by
other means.
We have dwelt so long upon Channing as a
prophet of liberty in social reforms, in order that
we might obtain the true point of view from which
to judge his religious and theological work. It
can be deemed nothing less than a grievous mis-

212 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
fortune that Channing was forced quite against
his nature and inclination into theological contro
versy, and this for two reasons : In the first place,
it has given him the standing of a controversialist
in the popular mind, whereas we are informed
that among all his unpublished manuscripts not
one was to be found of a controversial character,
a fact which shows that all such sermons and arti
cles written were published. Hence in his " Col
lected Works " the proportion of polemics is very
much larger than it was in his real interest and
activity. Moreover, a misunderstanding as to the
true nature of the Unitarian Controversy has
directed attention to quite the most vulnerable
point in all Channing's religious thought, and
by it mainly he has been judged. To he explicit,
it is commonly supposed that the principal point
of contention between liberals and conservatives
in New England at the beginning of the last
century was the nature of Jesus and the corre
lated doctrine of the Trinity. It is true that
point did assume prominence, and the name
Unitarian, forced upon the liberals against their
wish and protest, has perpetuated the dispropor
tionate prominence of the doctrine ; but, as so
often happens in religious controversy, the prin
cipal subject of debate was not the real point
at issue. As every one familiar with the history

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 213
is aware, the fiindamental difference was not on
the nature of Christ, but on the nature of man.
Yet because Channing, as representative of the
liberals, has usually been studied with reference
to his Christology, he has suffered as a thinker
in popular and even scholarly regard. Professor
Fisher has said that " the particular conception
which Channing set up in the room of the church
doctrine of the Incarnation is one of the crudest
notions which the history of speculation on that
subject has ever presented." It is an extreme
statement, and yet there is substantial justice
in it. Channing thought of Jesus as certainly
pre-existent, the highest of all created beings,
and only short of the Eternal God himself.
But this high Arianism is open to most of the
objections urged against historic Trinitarianism
on the one hand and pure humanitarianism on
the other. Obviously, Channing was led to it
by certain New Testament teachings which un
questionably represent Jesus as a pre-existent
being of creation's highest order ; and the mod
ern science of New Testament criticism was
below Channing's horizon. Miss Peabody
reports him as saying once : " I do not deem
it a question of importance, and may change
my view with respect to it. I am aware I have
never put my mind upon it." " I have never

214 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
put my mind upon it," — and yet by that doctrine
more than by any other he is popularly known
and estimated as a religious thinker. Plainly,
to his own mind, the moral personality of Jesus
was an all-sufficient attestation of his authority,
and reason for adoration. Theoretically, Chan
ning remained an Arian, but practically, so far as
emphasis in teaching and significance to thought
are concerned, he became a Humanitarian. The
Trinitarians believed in the pre-existent Christ sus
taining an eternal, inherent relation to the Father.
Channing rejected the eternal and essential rela
tion, but retained the pre-existence, because, hav
ing saved the unity of God, he no longer was
deeply interested in the problem. For let it
never be forgotten, the nature of man and the
competence of human powers in religion was
the real point at issue between the parties ; and
to Channing's mind the controversy was not
so much of doctrine against doctrine as of bon
dage against freedom. As has already been
shown, the rigorous Calvinistic creed appeared
to him a prison-house within which the mind
was held in slavery, — its rights denied, its pow
ers maligned. However it may have appeared
to others, the conflict so presented itself to
Channing; and few who now survey the strife,
with its antecedents and consequences, will hesi-

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 215
tate to affirm that his view was just. There
fore, his prominent participation in it was only
another illustration of his constraining love of
Hberty, springing out of his conception of human
nature. Moreover, it looked to Channing as if there
were an insidious attempt on the part of the con
servatives to undermine the cardinal principles of
Congregationalism, the polity of ecclesiastical
freedom in which he believed with all his heart.
In 1820, he wrote: " CongregationaHsm is
the only effectual protection of the Church
from usurpation, the only effectual security of
Christian freedom, of the right of private judg
ment. As such, let us hold it dear. Let us es
teem it an invaluable legacy. Let us resist every
effort to wrest it from us. Attempts have been
made, and may be repeated, to subject our
churches to tribunals subversive of their inde
pendence. Let the voice of our fathers be heard,
warning us to stand fast in the liberty with which
Christ has made us free. The independence of
our churches was the fundamental principle which
they aimed to estabHsh here, and here may it
never die." That Channing had good reason for
his apprehensions cannot be questioned. The
Panoplist had suggested the setting up of ecclesi
astical tribunals, the object of which was to dis-

2i6 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
fellowship the Hberals. The ancient proposals
of 1705, after lying for a century in the limbo to
which John Wise consigned them, were resur
rected and urged anew. And, if formal tribunals
were not possible, there was a warfare of insinua
tion and misrepresentation and depreciation, a
withdrawal of real fellowship, which was tanta
mount to excommunication. - There was, then, a
moral, if not an ecclesiastical, influence exerted
against freedom of thought and speech which the
liberty-loving spirit of Channing could not brook.
In very truth, Channing's place in the controversy
was due not to views concerning the Trinity and
pre-existence so much as to the two creative princi
ples which his whole career illustrates, — respect for
man as man and reverence for liberty and human
rights. The operation of these principles we have to
trace once more in a crisis which shows him at
his very noblest. Unitarianism, as it was called,
became popular and fashionable in Boston and
vicinity ; and, by and by, its adherents, forced out
of the old Congregational fellowship, began to
hanker for the flesh-pots of sectarianism. With
this came a stiflfening of theological doctrine until
Channing was led to say sadly, "We have a
Unitarian orthodoxy." Could he who abomi
nated sects have part in one, even though it were

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 217
the outcome of a movement with which he had
been identified ? Could he who beHeved in
absolute freedom regard with complacency the
rise of a Unitarian orthodoxy ? Manifestly not.
Hence we find him exceedingly jealous of all asso
ciations which had collective power, for whatever
purpose or with whatever high intentions designed ;
and hence it is that Parker could write that there
were two parties among the Unitarians, of which
the progressive party was led by Dr. Channing.
To this period belong certain utterances over
which every Unitarian, and particularly every
Channing Unitarian, lingers with more joy and
pride than over any other words he ever wrote.
So early as 1828, in a sermon upon "The
Great Purpose of Christianity," he said : " I have
no anxiety to wear the livery of any party. I
indeed take cheerflilly the name of a Unitarian
because unwearied efforts are used to raise against
it a popular cry ; and I have not so learned Christ
as to shrink from reproaches cast upon what I
deem his truth. Were the name more honored,
I should be glad to throw it oflf; for I fear the
shackles which a party connexion imposes. I
wish to regard myself as belonging not to a sect,
but to the community of free minds, of lovers of
truth, of followers of Christ both on earth and in
heaven. I desire to escape the narrow walls of a

2i8 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
particular church, and to live under the open sky,
in the broad light, looking far and wide, seeing
with my own eyes, hearing with my own ears, and
following truth meekly, but resolutely, however
arduous or solitary be the path in which she
leads. I am, then, no organ of a sect, but speak
for myself alone ; and I thank God that I live at
a time and under circumstances which make it my
duty to lay open my whole mind with freedom
and simplicity." This is the Channing whom
Unitarians love and rejoice in, deserving the
name of Channing Unitarians only as this spirit is
in them. And so to the end of life his spirit was
forward-looking. He resented the notion that
youth tastes the best of life, leaving to age only
its unpalatable dregs, proclaiming about sixty the
best time of life, when this was the tale of his own
years. Like the great father of our New England
Congregationalism, he believed that more light
and truth were yet to break forth out of God's
Word, that Unitarianism, as it then was, was but
the vestibule through which men must journey to
the ampler truth beyond.
There came a severe test of loyalty to his prin
ciples when Ripley, Emerson, and Parker began
a reform upon his reform. He himself believed
firmly in miracles, deeming them important, al
though the personal character of Christ was of

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 219
supreme importance. But Parker came denying
the miracles, and affirming that the personal char
acter of Christ had nothing in the world to do
with the truth or error of his teaching. The
O
demonstrations of Euclid are demonstrations,
whatever Euclid may have been, whether virtu
ous or vicious. Here was a man in Channing's
own fellowship whose thought was momentously
adverse to his ; yet let it always be said to Chan
ning's honor that there came from him no word
of condemnation, no demand for excommunica
tion, no word of sympathy with those who would
fain silence the heretic. " Let a fiill heart pour
itself forth," said Channing. This seems to me
in all the circumstances one of the resplendent
moments in his career, a shining proof that the
love of liberty, even when freedom produced
what he deemed error, was of supreme worth in
his eyes. Then, as in the Kiieeland case, he
demonstrated that in his eyes freedom of think
ing was actually more precious than correctness
of thought.
An apostie of spiritual freedom, then, he was
rightly called. And it was a fitting close to his
career that his last address was on die emancipa
tion of the slaves in the West Indies, spoken in
Lenox on the ist of August, 1841. What could
be in more perfect harmony with his whole

220 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
thought and life than the concluding words of this
his last public deliverance ? —
" I began the subject in hope, and in hope I
end. I have turned aside to speak of the great
stain on our country which makes us the by-word
and scorn of the nations. But I do not despair.
Mighty powers are at work in the world. Who
can stay them ? God's word has gone forth, and
it cannot return unto him void. A new compre
hension of the Christian spirit, a new reverence
for humanity, a new feeling of brotherhood and
of all men's relation to the common Father, —
this is among the signs of our times. We see it :
do we not feel it ? Before this all oppressions
are to fall. Society silently pervaded by this is
to change its aspect of universal warfare for peace.
The power of selfishness, all-grasping and seem
ingly invincible, is to yield to this diviner energy.
The song of angels. On earth Peace, will not
always sound as fiction. Oh, come, thou kingdom
of heaven, for which we daily pray 1 Come,
Friend and Saviour of the race, who didst shed
thy blood on the cross to reconcile man to man,
and earth to heaven 1 Come, ye predicted ages
of righteousness and love, for which the faithful
have so long yearned ! Come, Father Almighty,
and crown with thine omnipotence the humble
strivings of thy children to subvert oppression

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 221
and wrong, to spread light and freedom, peace
and joy, the truth and spirit of thy Son, through
the whole earth,"
So ends the final message spoken to the world
by this true and faithfiil witness to the dignity of
man and the worth of spiritual liberty. It was
not the last that came to him from the source
whence all his life proceeded ; for his last recorded
utterance was the feebly whispered words, " I have
received many messages from the Spirit." After
deHvering the Lenox address, he tarried awhile
longer in the lovely Berkshire region, and then
started for Boston, driving through Pittsfield and
Williamstown to Bennington, where he was taken
ill, and with the passing days slowly faded from
earth to heaven. When Dean Stanley visited
Boston, he asked to be taken to Mount Auburn ;
and, in response to a somewhat surprised inquiry
as to the object of the visit, asked in equal sur
prise, " Is not Channing buried there ? " Simi
larly, the Emperor of Brazil, visiting Cambridge,
sought the grave of Channing, — with whose books
he was familiar, — and plucked from a tree near by
a memento of his visit. Yet, when four years ago
I visited Bennington, anticipating no difficulty in
finding the place where he died, it was only after
many inquiries that a citizen was found who had
even so much as heard of Dr. Channing ; and his

222 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
knowledge appeared to extend only to the fact
that he had died in an inn now known as the
Walloomsac Inn, standing not far from the battle
monument, opposite the ancient church, and the
cemetery in which the elder Buckminster lies
buried. The proprietor of the inn knew noth
ing of Dr. Channing, and resented as a dis
paragement of his hostelry the assumption that
any one had ever died within its walls. Fortu
nately, however, I met there the son of the physi
cian who attended him, of whom he said, " A
good face that, and a most kind man." Conse
quently, it was my privilege to be shown the very
room in which he died. Its windows command a
view of surpassing beauty, and the eyes which had
rejoiced from childhood in the glory of the sea
were lifted up unto the hills when the great help
came. It was at the sunset hour which had al
ways afforded him serene joy, as from his New
port garden or through the windows of his Boston
house he watched the dying Hght of day and the
gentle oncoming of the night. Were not the
illumined sky and the soft outshining of the stars
on that placid Sunday in Bennington suggestive of
the prophet's words, — " They that are wise shaU
shine as the firmament ; and they that turn many
to righteousness as the stars forever and ever " ?
Symbolic, too, was the death in a wayside inn.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 223
since his eager, truth-seeking mind had tolerated
no permanent abiding-place, but was always on the
way, the homeward way that leadeth ever nearer
to God. His memory is a priceless heritage.
May his spirit abide with us and in us forever 1
The cause for which he lived still needs friends.
Tendencies which he discerned with the insight,
and deplored with the sadness, of a prophet have
strengthened apace : wealth and power accumulate
in the hands of a few, menacing individual liberty
and opportunity; theological thought, revolting
from the old Calvinism which he opposed, is mov
ing with almost irresistible urgency toward a new
Calvinism, which he foresaw, every whit as sub
versive of human freedom ; animated by noble
zeal for social utiHty through denominational effi
ciency, churches build ecclesiastical machinery and
centralize authority. So long as these tendencies
continue, and there are those who believe in
Hberty and the worth of the individual soul,
the words of Channing will be timely ; and
those who would fain cherish even in their small
measure the spirit that was in him will turn often
to his calm, luminous pages, and draw strength
and courage from that shining soul, always young
for liberty.

VII

Horace Bushnell and Progressive
Orthodoxy

HORACE BUSHNELL AND PROGRES
SIVE ORTHODOXY.
Nothing could have brought me hither to-day
but a strong sense of personal obligation. I can
hardly hope to find anything new or important
to say of Horace Bushnell. The recent carefiil
and admirable studies of his life and work have
omitted nothing that is essential to a just under
standing of who he was and what he did. Mr.
Mead's appreciative and beautiful sketch of him ;
Dr. Munger's critical, sympathetic, and thoroughly
adequate discussion of his theological teachings ;
the comprehensive series of addresses given last
June at the Bushnell Seminary in Hartford, — have
covered the ground. Most of the things that I
could have wished to say have been nobly said
already. Yet, when this invitation came to me, I
could not decline it ; for there is a duty of per
sonal confession which no man can perform for
another, and my debt to Horace Bushnell is too
large for me to refiise to come and bear my testi
mony. The little blossom that I shall bring to
the garland which the years are weaving will add
nothing to its beauty, but it will not lack the fra
grance of gratefiil memory.

228 HORACE BUSHNELL
The topic of this lecture, as phrased for me, not
by me, would be misleading if it suggested that
Orthodoxy first became progressive at the initia
tive or under the leadership of Horace Bushnell.
When Orthodoxy became progressive, it would be
difficult to say. We might go back to Edwards
for its stationary state, but the biographers will
not let us pause there. Edwards himself, they
say, was a reformer. Professor Allen tells us
that, in making the motive of true virtue consist
in devotion to an infinite Being [rather, I sup
pose, than in obedience to an abstract law], he
marks the first beginnings in the Calvinistic
chjirches of a theology in which love is the
central principle of the creation and the law
of all created existence." And Professor Fisher
evidently regards Edwards's doctrine of the
Atonement as a distinct advance upon that
which had preceded it.
The theologians following Edwards all be
lieved themselves to be progressive. Bellamy,
Hopkins, Emmons, the younger Edwards, the
elder Dwight, all made "improvements" in the
doctrinal system. The notion of a " stationary
state " in theological thinking did not much ob
tain among New England thinkers. John Rob
inson's expectation of more light seems to have
been shared by all of them.

HORACE BUSHNELL 229
In the youth of Horace Bushnell this move
ment was going forward with great vigor. For
his own part in it he was made ready by the influ
ences of his home, of which he says : " The re
ligion of the house was composite, — that of the
husband, in his rather Arminian type, received
from his mother ; that of the wife, in the Epis
copal, from hers ; and that of the Calvinistic
Congregational church, in which they were now
both members. ... I remember how, returning
home, after second service, to his rather late din
ner, my father would sometimes let the irritation
of his hunger loose in harsher words than were
complimentary on the tough predestinationism
or the rather over-total depravity of the ser
mon : whereupon he always encountered a beg-
ging-off look from the other end of the table,
which, as I understood it, said, 'Not, — for the
sake of the children.' It was not the Calvinism
that she cared for ; but she wanted the preacher
himself kept in respect, for the benefit of the
family. In which, unquestionably, she had the
right of it." *
Here was ample suggestion and warrant for in
dependent thinking, and, happily, along with it
the restraint of a wholesome reverence. Under
these well co-ordinated influences he passed
through college, spent a year in teaching and in
* Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, p. 28.

230 HORACE BUSHNELL
editorial work, and then returned to Yale as
tutor. It was a religious motive that had taken
him to college at first, but his religion did not
prosper there. Mr. Joseph Cook said on one
occasion that Bushnell became while in college an
infidel of the Tom Paine variety. That is prob
ably one of Mr. Cook's many marvellous ax
ioms : nothing can be much farther from the
truth. Still he testifies of himself that his re
ligious life was utterly gone down. " I had run
to no dissipation," he says ; " I had been a church-
going, thoughtful man. My very difficulty was
that I was too thoughtful, substituting thought
for everything else, and expecting so intently to
dig out a religion by my head that I was pushing
it all the while practically away." Dr. Munger
correctly diagnoses the case : "He might during
this time be described as sound in ethics and scep
tical in religion. Each is easily explained. The
soundness of his morality was due to his nature
and training: his scepticism was chiefly due to
the theology in which he was involved," I
should be inclined to go a little fiirther, and say
that his scepticism was primarily due to the
soundness of his morality. It was his ethical
thoroughness, more than anything else, that made
him sceptical respecting the doctrines which he
was expected to hold and teach.

HORACE BUSHNELL 231
What is called his conversion, or reconversion,
during his tutorship, was simply the entire sub
mission of mind and heart and will to the reg-
nancy of right. He had tried to be right in his
relations with men, but he felt that he was not
right with God, This was the failure that came
home to him, " Beginning," says his biographer,
"at the plain standpoint of conscience and duty,
to which, in darkest hours of doubt, he had ever
stood faithful, he asks himself the test question
(which he afterward gave to others as a guide),
' Have I ever consented to be, and am I really
now, in the right, as in principle and supreme
law ? to Hve for it, to make any sacrifice it will
cost me, to believe everything that it will bring
me to see, to be a confessor of Christ as soon as
it appears to be enjoined upon me, to go on a
mission to the world's end if due conviction sends
me, to change my occupation for good conscience'
sake, to repair whatever wrong I have done to
another, to be humbled, if I should, before my
worst enemy, to do complete justice to God, and, if
I could, to all worlds, — in a word, to be in wholly
right intent, and have no mind but this forever,'
Thus the simple desire to be and do right was
the first step. By the side of the moral question,
intellectual doubts appeared unimportant and
were deferred." This was Horace Bushnell's

232 HORACE BUSHNELL
conversion, and the result of it was that he turned
from the study of the law and entered the divinity
school. His theological questions have been deferred.
He has found God ; and in finding him he has
been made sure of what at first he dimly believed,
that " he is a right God," His life is devoted to
the study and the proclamation of the truth about
God. And the principle which has guided him
in this important crisis of his life is the principle
that will guide him in all his theological thinking.
His God is " a right God " ; and the truth must
be told about him, and nothing must be said con
cerning him which implies any lack of righteous
ness in him. The ethical test will be applied,
then, unflinchingly to theology. If the theories
of the lecture-room will not abide this test, they
cannot claim his acceptance.
It seems tolerably clear that they did not aH
abide this test. The teaching of New Haven
Seminary at this time was regarded by the ortho
dox world at large as dangerously radical. Those
"improvements" of which I have spoken had
resulted in pruning the New England theology
of many of its mediaeval elements. The whole
process had been in the direction of a more ethi
cal doctrine. What these " improving " theolo
gians had mainly wanted to get rid of were the

HORACE BUSHNELL 233
theories which imputed unrighteousness to God.
That credit must not be denied them. Edwards's
Doctrine of foreordination, which boldly proclaims
the irresistible efficiency of the divine decree by
which men are made sinners, and the prasterition
of the non-elect, had been rejected because of its
essential immorality ; and a doctrine less at war [
with fiindamental ethical convictions had taken/
its place. Sin, it was now held, is not decreed, but
permitted. The decrees of God are not wholly
arbitrary : we must suppose that his fore-knowl
edge of human conduct had something to do with
them. The old doctrine that we are held re
sponsible for Adam's sin and could justly be
punished for it had been abandoned for the same
reason : it was now held that the consequences of
His sin are ours by natural inheritance, but that
guilt cannot be inherited. Because God is just, he
will not blame us for the misdeeds of our ances
tors. These and other modifications of the old
doctrine had already taken place, greatly to the
scandal of many stanch Calvinists in and out of
New England, The advocacy of these new views
had indeed divided the Congregationalists of New
England, and had resulted in the founding of a
new theological seminary where the ancient and
unimproved Calvinism was to be propagated.
So far as these changes had resulted in forms of

234 HORACE BUSHNELL
doctrine less repulsive to the moral sense, Horace
Bushnell undoubtedly approved them. But they
had not gone far enough. Some theories were
still held concerning God which were not easily
reconciled with a belief in his righteousness, and
toward these his attitude was sure to be one of
dissent. The teacher of theology at New Haven, the
Rev, Nathaniel W, Taylor, was a man of great
power as a metaphysician and as a preacher. He
had done what he could to eliminate the unmoral
element from the doctrine which he taught ; but
there were still implications in it which Bushnell
could not accept ; and the method of Taylor,
which enthroned dialectics, was utterly at variance
with the poetic and mystical tendency of Bush
nell, Thus the dissent of Bushnell from the
current Orthodoxy began pretty vigorously in the
seminary, albeit the Orthodoxy with which he was
then confronted was of an advanced type. We
have no very clear account of the discussions of
the class-room. Dr. Munger says that Taylor
and Bushnell "were not within hailing distance,
'' hardly on the same side of the planet. Hence,
as often has happened in New England, the theo
logical teacher and his brightest pupil parted
company," From the seminary Bushnell was called to the

HORACE BUSHNELL 235
North Church in Hartford, — the only church he
ever served. It was not long before his people
knew that a man of power was among them. We
have some of the sermons that he preached in
the first year of his ministry, and they are nota
ble sermons. That one so well known to many
of us, entitled " Duty not Measured by our own
Ability," must have given to the most mature
and cultivated men in his congregation a power-
fiil impression of the intellectual vigor of their
young minister. Dr. Munger says : " His first
volume — ' Sermons for the New Life ' — covers
a quarter of a century ; but, so far as style, thought,
and doctrine go, it would be difficult to assign a
date to any of them. That on ' Living to God
in Small Things ' was preached in the first year
of his ministry ; and it might have been preached
in the last, for he produced none more mature
and effective. That on ' Every Man's Life a
Plan of God' — an early sermon — made an
impression as deep and wide as any preached in
the country, with two or three exceptions."
By such work as this the young minister soon
made a place for himself in the esteem and affec
tion of his congregation from which it was not
possible to dislodge him. There was not much
controversy in his earlier years : he was getting
rooted and grounded in the love of his people.

236 HORACE BUSHNELL
The dispute between the Old School and the
New was raging about him, but he did not
take part in it. At New Haven they suspected
him of Old School tendencies. The distinction
set up in that debate did not enlist his interest:
he was going deeper.
Two or three of the public addresses which he
delivered during the first ten years of his minis
try are important. His Phi Beta Kappa oration
at Yale College in 1837, on "The True Wealth
or Weal of Nations," is notable for the clearness
with which it discerns and the vigor with which
it exposes the inadequacy of the political economy
whose interest centres in commodities, leaving out
of sight the welfare of men. There is," he says,
" in the new science of political economy, careful
as it is in its method, and apparently unanswera
ble in its arguments, an immense oversight,
which is sure to be discovered by its final effects
on society, and to quite break up the aspect of
reality it has been able to give to its conclusions.
It deifies, in fact, the laws of trade, not observing
that there is a whole side of society and human
life which does not trade, stands superior to trade,
wields, in fact, a mightier power over the pubHc
prosperity itself just because it reaches higher and
connects with nobler ends. Could these price
current philosophers only get a whole nation

HORACE BUSHNELL 237
of bankers, brokers, factors, ship-owners, and
salesmen to themselves, they would doubtless
make a paradise of it shortly, only the.'^e might
possibly be no public love in the paradise, no
manly temperance, no sense of high society,
no great orators, leaders, heroes. . . . What,
then, it is time for us to ask, is that wealth of
a nation which includes its weal, or solid well-
being? that which is the end of all genuine
policy and all true statesmanship? It consists,
I answer, in the total value of the persons of the
people. National wealth is personal, not material.
It includes the natural capacity, the industry, the
skill, the science, the bravery, the loyalty, the
moral and religious worth of the people. The
wealth of a nation is in the breast of its sons.
This is the object which, according as it is
advanced, is sure to bring with it riches, justice,
liberty, strength, stability, immobility, and every
other good, or which, being neglected, every
sort of success and prosperity is but accidental
and doubtfiil." *
This was written and spoken just twenty years
before John Ruskin's " Political Economy of
Art," and twenty-three years before that great
chapter on " The Veins of Wealth " in " Unto
this Last." in which the same doctrine is burn-
ingly upheld, almost in the same words. It is a
* Work and Play, pp. 50-52.

238 HORACE BUSHNELL
loud call, you see, for the ethicizing and humaniz
ing of political economy. That science must
submit to the ethical test, not less than theology.
Nothing that concerns human kind can evade that
judgment. In another address on " The Growth of Law,"
delivered before the alumni of Yale six years
later, he strikes a deeper note. Here he finds a
law of moral progress in history. From the first
there are signs in nature that " there is to be a
growth of law and a growth into law, and the
moral imperative is thus to obtain a more and
more nearly spontaneous rule in the world " ;
that " there is a work of progressive legislation
continually going forward, by which the moral
code is perfecting itself, , . , Moral legislation
is, in fact, one of the highest incidents of our ex
istence. Not that man here legislates, but God
through man ; for it is not by any will of man
that reason, experience, and custom are ever at
work to make new laws and refine upon the old.
These are to God as an ever-smoking Sinai under
his feet ; and, if there be much of dissonance and
seeming confusion in the cloudy mount of custom,
we may yet distinguish the sound of the trum
pet, and the tables of stone we shall see in due
time distinctly written, as by no human finger," *
The whole oration is a masterly exposition of
* Work and Play, pp. 81, 92.

HORACE BUSHNELL 239
the great law of moral evolution, God is in his
world, and Bushnell has found him here, unfold
ing his purposes in the common life of men.
The Right to which he has owed allegiance is
not, then, some abstract edict of a distant tribu
nal : it is God, coming to light in the Hfe of hu
manity. Well, indeed, may the orator predict
that under such a conception the imagination will
be " fired by the vigor of a faith that sees, in all
things visible, vehicles of the invisible, in every
thing finite a symbol of infinity," How large
a portion of Dr, Bushnell's most kindling
thought is flashed out in this luminous sentence !
How far ahead of his time his mind is travelling
in this great oration 1 And what a trumpet-note
is this from his closing words to his brethren of
the alumni : " First of all let us, as scholars,
have faith in the future- No man was ever in
spired through his memory. The eye of genius
is not behind. Nor was there ever a truly great
man whose ideal was in the past. The offal of
history is good enough for worms and monks,
but it will not feed a living man. Power moves
in the direction of hope. If we cannot hope, if
we see nothing so good for history as to reverse it,
we shrink from the destiny of our race, and the
curse of all impotence is on us. Legions of men
who dare not set their face the way that time is

240 HORACE BUSHNELL
going are powerless : you may push them back
with a straw. They have lost their virility, their
soul is gone out. They are owls flying toward
the dawn and screaming, with dazzled eyes, that
light should invade their prescriptive and con
genial darkness," *
It is the truth enforced in this oration, the
truth of the vital and organic relation of God to
the life of the world, — what we call to-day the
doctrine of the immanence of God, — which really
underlies the first of Dr, Bushnell's treatises that
brought him under heavy censure, his " Christian
Nurture," Not that this truth was frankly
avowed in that book : Bushnell had not yet got
so far as that. His contention " that the child is
' to grow up as a Christian, and never know him
self as being otherwise " ; " that the aim, effort,
and expectation should be, not, as is commonly
assumed, that the child is to grow up in sin, to
be converted after he comes to a mature age, but
that he is to open on the world as one that is
spiritually renewed," — rests, in his argument,
rather on the covenant with the regenerate than
on the clear recognition of the universal Father
hood, Nevertheless, his thought is all the while
diving down to this profounder depth,
" All society is organic," he maintains, " the
Church, the State, the school, the family, . . . The
* Work and Play, p. i is.

HORACE BUSHNELL 241
child is only more within the power of organic
laws than we all are. We possess only a mixed
individuality all our life long. A pure, separate,
individual man, living wholly within himself and
from himself, is a mere fiction." And it is really
because God is in his world, in the human world,
the life of every part of the social organism, work
ing in all men to will and to do according to his
good pleasure, that this doctrine of Christian
nurture is justified. Bushnell felt it deeply, if he
did not say it : he implied it, if he did not fully
express it ; and his critics were quite right in accus
ing him of " naturalism." Dr. Charles Hodge,
while recognizing much value in the book, still
charged him with " resolving the whole matter
into organic laws, explaining away both depravity
and grace," and presenting the whole subject " in
a naturalistic attitude." That was a little more
than the truth, but it was partly true. Bushnell
was finding God in organic laws, there was no
doubt about that. There was a clear prophecy
in its arguments of that epoch-making treatise
which was coming by and by, on " Nature and
the Supernatural as together constituting the one
System of God."
It may seem that what Dr. Bushnell was doing
in " Christian Nurture " and in " Nature and
the Supernatural " had no very close relation to

242 HORACE BUSHNELL
that ruling purpose of his whose workings we are
trying to trace. What did he do in these books
to ethicize theology ? The relation of these dis
cussions to his ethical purpose seems, doubtless,
more remote ; but it is not less real.
The doctrine respecting the relation of chil
dren to the kingdom of heaven which he
assailed in " Christian Nurture " was one whose
ethical complications were dubious. All these
little children were assumed to be, until their
conversion, in a state of nature, which was a
state of alienation from God and of hostility
to him. He might not hold them guilty of
Adam's sin : that dogma had been modified
by the New Haven theologians ; but, until
their conversion, they were outside of his king
dom of grace. There were no legal barriers, per
haps, to keep them out ; but they were out, all the
same. To the fatherly love and care of God they
were strangers. The religion of that day, as
Dr. Bushnell said, " takes every man as if he
existed alone ; presumes that he is unreconciled
to God until he has undergone some sudden and
explosive experience in adult years, or after the
age of reason ; demands that experience, and only
when it is reached allows the subject to be an
heir of life. Then, on the other side, or that of
the Spirit of God, the very act or ictus by which

HORACE BUSHNELL

243

the change is wrought is isolated or individual
ized, so as to stand in no connection with any
other of God's means or causes, — an epiphany,
in which God leaps from the stars, or some place
above, to do a work apart from all system, or con
nection with his other works. Religion is thus
a kind of transcendental matter, which belongs
on the outside of life and has no part in the laws
by which life is organized, — a miraculous epi
demic, a fire-ball shot from the moon, something
holy, because it is from God, but so extraordinary,
so out of place, that it cannot suffer any vital
connection with the ties and causes and forms
and habits which constitute the frame of our
history." *
All this theory which Bushnell is impaling falls
in with the conception of religion as having a
compartment all to itself in our lives, as being
a wholly separate interest from our other affairs.
That conception is sure to issue in a defective
morality. And what shall be said of the char
acter of a God who leaves the little children of our
homes to be practically orphans, — in their spirit
ual relations, — destitute of a heavenly Father's
care until they have grown old enough to pass
through the ordeal of conversion ? It is not
true of the best earthly parents that they maintain
a waiting attitude toward their children, holding
* christian Nurture, p. 187.

244 HORACE BUSHNELL
back tenderness and loving kindness until the
children are old enough to ask for it. It would
seem that the heavenly Father must love the
little children in the days when their conscious
ness is dawning as much as we love them then,
and must want them to know it.
I do not want to try to tell just what the atti
tude of God toward the unconverted children was
believed to be in that theology which Dr. Bush
nell was repudiating in " Christian Nurture," and
which rose up to denounce his teaching as dan
gerous : I am afraid that I could not make any
statements about it which would not seem unjust
to those who held it ; but it certainly seems to
me that the God whom that theology assumed
was a being of a very defective character. He
was not what Dr. Bushnell would call " a right
God " : he did not deal with the little children of
our homes in a way that satisfies our notions of
justice ; for we have learned to believe that love
is a debt owed by every moral being to every
other moral being, and that he who fails to re
ceive love gets less than is due him. The only
explanation which that old theory could offer of
God's relation to unconverted children must have
involved the idea that his goodness is different
in kind from our goodness, and that is the es
sence of the worst immorality. The only reply

HORACE BUSHNELL 245
to that is Mill's indignant outburst : " I will call
no being good who is not good in the sense in
which I apply that term to my fellow-men ; and, if
such a being sends me to hell for not loving him,
to hell I will go." The fact that such a concep
tion of God underlay this doctrine was the real
reason why Bushnell made war upon it : it was
his ethical thoroughness that found voice in
this revolutionary treatise.
I think, also, that the Rev. Charles E. Mc-
Kinley is entirely right in saying that Bushnell's
conception of the whole matter of religion in the
family " was so strange, so foreign to current
modes of thought, that a complete new doctrine
of the Spirit's methods of activity was necessary.
The positions taken in ' Christian Nurture ' made
the work on ' Nature and the Supernatural ' im
perative. Some total reconstruction of the con
ception of the relation of the human world with
its vital forces to the divine world had to be under
taken. Is human nature part of a spiritual
province, the scene of the spirit's constant activi
ties, or is it alien territory, to be invaded now and
then for purposes of grace from some celestial
stronghold?" This was the question which
" Nature and the Supernatural " undertook to
answer ; and the writer from whom I have just
quoted goes on to say, in words that are as

246 HORACE BUSHNELL
true as they are beautiful : " Bushnell has com
pelled us, in theory at least, — and theory and
..practice are not always contrary, — to make for
i the Holy Spirit a dwelling-place in the homes of
men, where he may come, not now and then as a
heavenly stranger, to work a miracle of grace,
but as a familiar Presence to abide, working daily
in us and ours what is well-pleasing unto God.
In our New England firmament the author of
this doctrine of Christian nurture was the morn
ing star of that glad new day when joyous faith
should realize once more that God is in his world ;
that heavenly grace comes into human lives on
the common ray of daily sunshine as well as on
the lightning's blinding flash, while the very at
mosphere about us is charged with holy energies,
because, ' Now are we the children of God.' " *
But the work for which Dr. Bushnell is best
known lies in another field of thought. His
name to the theological world is most identified
with his teachings respecting the redeeming work
of Christ. " Bushnellism," as a term of reproach,
as a badge of heresy, describes a theory of what
Jesus Christ has done to save men from their
sins. In their attempts to "improve" the Calvinis
tic theology the New England theologians had
not neglected the doctrine of the Atonement,
?Bushnell Centenary, pp. 109, no.

HORACE BUSHNELL 247
Attempts in that direction were made at a very
early day. William Pynchon, the founder of
Springfield, was constrained by his ethical in
stincts to challenge the doctrine prevailing in his
time ; and he wrote a treatise on " The Meritorious
Price of our Redemption," which he sent over to
England to have printed. The authorities of the
" Great and General Court " of Massachusetts
got wind of this heresy which was sprouting in the
distant wilds of Agawam, and they determined to
nip it in the bud. A theological quarantine was
decreed, incoming ships were watched, the con
signment of books to Pynchon was seized on its
arrival at the wharf and taken to the theological
pest-house, and after examination the books were
publicly burned here on Boston Common. Dr.
Bushnell had an impression, I think, that the
heresy of Pynchon was akin to his own, but it
was nothing of the kind : the heresy of Pynchon
was rock-ribbed Orthodoxy, even as compared
with the later New England doctrine against
which Dr. Bushnell protested. The heresy of
Pynchon consisted merely in denying that Christ
suffered the actual pains of hell in his conscience.
He did not deny the principle of legal substitu
tion : his theory, as the title of his book implies,
was a kind of commercial theory ; but his moral
sense revolted against the notion that the Son of

248 HORACE BUSHNELL
man was tormented with remorse on account of
the sin of the world. That was why they burned
his book on Boston Common.
There was need enough that New England
Calvinism should be " improved " in this particu
lar theory, and the work had been going on from
Pynchon's day. Edwards introduced some valu
able mitigations into its rigidity, and others who
followed him had helped in the same direc
tion. The doctrine of a limited atonement had
been abandoned ; it was now believed that Christ
died for all men, and not merely for the elect;
and the New Haven theologians had accepted the
Grotian theory that the sufferings of Christ were
not penal, not intended to appease the wrath
of God, not legally substituted for the pen
alties due to men, but rather meant to be such an
.exhibition of God's abhorrence of sin as would
satisfy his general justice, and permit him, with
out endangering his government, to forgive pen
itent sinners. It must be admitted that this
"governmental" scheme is one of the weakest
pieces of theological casuistry that logic has ever
invented. It was meant, of course, to eliminate
the doctrine of the legal substitution of the inno
cent for the guilty, the immorality of which had
been strongly felt. To say that God inflicts the
penalty due to the sinner upon the Saviour, and so

HORACE BUSHNELL 249
ees the sinner from guilt, seems a monstrous
foposition ; to say that God's justice is satisfied
J such a substitution is a horrible imputation upon
m. The New England theologians recoiled
om the theory, but they could not rid themselves
" the idea that there was something judicial in
le transaction. In handling this matter, they
ere grievously embarrassed, wavering often be-
reen affirmation and denial. I remember not
sry many years ago hearing Mr. Joseph Cook,
I a lecture on the Misrepresentations of Ortho-
oxy, say in a very impressive way : " Orthodoxy
misrepresented as teaching that the sufferings
f Christ were penal. They were not penal.
"hey were a sacrificial chastisement, in some sense
enal." Orthodoxy which wobbles like that is in
mger of being misunderstood. Orthodoxy was
ying, no doubt, to be ethical ; but it was mak-
ig a bad failure of it. The Judge of all the
irth was represented by it as saying, in effect, to
le sinner: "It would endanger my government
I should forgive you without inflicting suffering
ti some one. I must express my abhorrence of
n. I have therefore chosen an innocent victim.
iT^hen you witness the suffering which I inflict on,
im, you will have such an impression made upon
our mind of my hatred of sin as shall enable me
) forgive you." It would seem that there might

250 HORACE BUSHNELL
be some confusion in the mind of the sinner as to
the exact ethical significance of such a procedure.
Jt would be hard to invent a theory by which
ethical distinctions would be worse confounded.
Surely, the deity to whom such principles of action
can be imputed is not the " right God " to whom
Bushnell's allegiance is vowed. It was to main
tain the justice and honor of the God whom he
loved and worshipped that he lifted up his voice
in protest against the current theories of the
atonement. It was in the year 1848, when Europe was
seething with revolution and a wave of awaken
ing thought was passing over the human mind,
that Dr. Bushnell's thoughts were kindled upon
this great theme. In February of that year he
passed through one of those experiences which
are vouchsafed to prophets, — what seemed to him
a mystical unveiling of the real meaning of the
message which had been given to him to deliver.
It came to him in the watches of the night. Mrs.
Bushnell tells us of it : " On an early morning in
February his wife awoke to hear that the light
they had waited for, more than they that watch
for the morning, had risen indeed. She asked,
'What have you seen?' He replied, 'The
gospel.' It came to him at last, after all his
thought and study, not as something reasoned

HORACE BUSHNELL 251
out, but as an inspiration, — a revelation from the
mind of God himself." It is not rare for God
thus to give his best gifts to his beloved in their
sleep. In those subconscious moments which
follow a wrestling with some great theme, the
truth so long sought swims into the seeker's ken,
and what was long opaque is transparent as crys
tal. It was a great moment in Bushnell's life.
" I seemed," he said, "to pass a boundary. I
had never been very legal in my Christian life ;
but now I passed from those partial seeings,
glimpses, and doubts into a clearer knowledge of
God and into his inspirations which I have
never wholly lost. The change was into faith, —
a sense of the freeness of God and the ease of
approach to him."
Here was the vision, and the tasks were not
far away. Three theological seminaries, Cam
bridge, Andover, New Haven, almost simulta
neously invited him to give their commencement
addresses. The invitations were promptly ac
cepted ; and the three great addresses which were
afterward grouped in his volume, " God in Christ,"
were delivered, — the one on the Atonement, at
Cambridge Divinity School, July 9 ; the one on
the Divinity of Christ, involving his theory
of the Trinity, at New Haven, August 15 ; the
one on Dogma and Spirit, at Andover, in
September.

252 HORACE BUSHNELL
It must not be supposed that Dr. Bushnell en
tered upon these great tasks in a polemical temper.
Far from him was any such purpose. What he
most devoutly wished was that he might so in
terpret the great truths with which he was deal
ing as to win for them the consent of all to
whom he spoke. If he exposed what he regarded
as the inadequacy of existing views, it was that
he might present more intelligible and more in
spiring theories. His spirit in all this work was
irenic and comprehensive. The controversy
which followed was not of his desiring.
Yet the testimony must be clear respecting the
unsound morality of the theories which he is
seeking to supplant. As to the Old School the
ories of the atonement, which represent Christ
as suffering the penalty of the law in our stead,
he says, in his Cambridge address : " They are
capable, one and all, of no light in which they do
not even offend some right moral sentiment of
our being. Indeed, they raise up moral objec
tions with such marvellous fecundity that we can
hardly state them as fast as they occur to us.
Thus, if one evil or pain must be repaid by an
equivalent, what real economy is there in the
transaction ? What is effected save the transfer
of penal evil from the guilty to the innocent?
And if the great Redeemer, in the excess of his

HORACE BUSHNELL 253
goodness, consents, freely offers himself to the
Father, or to God, to receive the penal woes, or
some sufficient part of the penal woes, of the
world in his person, what does it signify, when
that offer is accepted, but that God will have his
modicum of suffering somehow, — if he lets the
guilty go, will yet satisfy himself out of the
innocent? In which the divine government, in
stead of clearing itself, assumes the double igno
miny, first, of letting the guilty go, and, sec
ondly, of accepting the sufferings of innocence.
In which Calvin, seeing no difficulty, is still able
to say, when arguing for Christ's three days in
hell, ' It was requisite that he should feel the
severity of the divine vengeance, in order to ap
pease the wrath of God and satisfy his justice.'
I confess my inability to read this kind of lan
guage without a sensation of horror." *
The New School theory, which teaches that God
expresses his abhorrence of sin by the sufferings
inflicted on Christ, he thus challenges : " I con
fess my inability to see how an innocent being
could ever be set, even for one moment, in the
attitude of displeasure under God. If he could
lay his frown for one moment on the soul of in
nocence and virtue, he must be no such being
as I have loved and worshipped. . . , Does any
one say that he will do it for public govern-
*God In Christ, pp. 195, 196.

254 HORACE BUSHNELL
mental reasons ? No governmental reasons, I
answer, can justify even the admission of inno
cence into a participation of frowns and penal
distributions. If consenting innocence says, ' Let
the blow fall on me,' precisely then is it for a
government to prove its justice, even to the
point of sublimity ; to reveal the essential, eter
nal, unmitigable distinction it holds between in
nocence and sin, by declaring that, as under law
and its distributions, it is even impossible to
suffer any commutation, any the least confusion
of places." *
As to the illustrations of this theory which
were sometimes attempted to be drawn from
human governments, he makes short work of
them. " If Zaleucus, for example, instead of
enforcing the statute against his son which re
quired the destruction of both his eyes, thinks
to satisfy the law by putting out one of his
own eyes and one of his son's, he only practises
a very unintelligent fraud upon the law, under
pretext of a conscientiously, literal enforcement
of it. The statute did not require the loss of
two eyes : if it had, the two eyes of a dog would
have sufficed ; but it required the two eyes of
the criminal, — that he, as a wrong-doer, should
be put into darkness. If the father had con
sented to have both his own eyes put out in-
*God in Christ, p. 199.

HORACE BUSHNELL 255
stead of his son's, it might have been very kind
of him ; but to speak of it as public justice,
or as any proper vindication of law, would be
impossible. The real truth signified would be
that Zaleucus loved public justice too little, in
comparison with his exceeding fondness for his
son, to let the law have its course, and yet, as if
the law stood upon getting two eyes, apart from
all justice, too many scruples to release his sin,
without losing the two eyes of his body as he had
before lost the eyes of his reason.
"According to the supposition, the problem
here is to produce an expression of abhorrence
to sin, through the sufferings of Christ, in place
of another, through the sufferings of the guilty.
Now the truth of the latter expression consists
in the fact that there is an abhorrence in God
to be expressed. But there is no such abhorrence
in God toward Christ ; and, therefore, if the ex
ternal expression of Christ's sufferings has no
correspondent feeling to be expressed, where
Hes the truth of the expression ? And, if the
frown of God lies upon his soul, as we often
hear, in the garden and on the cross, how can
the frown of God, falHng on the soul of inno
cence, express any truth or any feeling of jus
tice ? " *
There it is ! The essential immorality of that
* God in Chriat, pp. 199, 200,

256 HORACE BUSHNELL
doctrine of judicial substitution is touched with
the spear of Ithuriel, and what is uncovered will
never again be hidden. The one thing to which
Orthodoxy had clung was the idea that there was
a judicial element in this transaction ; that suffer
ing (you need not call it penalty) was inflicted
by the Father upon the Son to satisfy the ends
of general justice. That position Bushnell
stormed, and carried. This was his heresy, —
this explicit and unflinching denial that there
could be in a just government any such thing
as a judicial substitution of the innocent for the
guilty. The vicariousness of love, the identifica
tion of the Saviour with the sinner which involves
the Saviour in the woes and pains of the sinner,
all this he mightily affirmed ; but that the Father
in heaven inflicted judicial pains upon his well-
beloved Son in order that he might pardon guilty
men, — this conception he smote with the wrath
of the great love that was kindled in his soul
on that February midnight. The motive that
inspired him was his passionate sense of the
divine justice, his determination to preach none
other than a right God, — a God whose judg
ments would commend themselves to every
man's conscience. It was this, and nothing
else, that made him a heretic. This was the way
by which he went forth from the Congregational

HORACE BUSHNELL 257
camp, bearing the reproach of Christ. For, al
though he was not formally cast out of fellow
ship, there were for him after this many lonely
years when not one of his Congregational breth
ren in Hartford would exchange pulpits with
him, when his presence in any ecclesiastical
assembly was thought to bring a sort of con
tagion, and when many hard and false things
were continually said of him. Fast friends he
had through all these years, even among Con
gregational ministers ; but they were few.
I will not enter into the details of the trial
through which he was now forced to go. His
own Association of ministers called him to account
for heresy, and, after a long and patient exami
nation of his teachings, concluded that, although
they were not in accordance with the current
Orthodoxy, the divergence was not so great but
that he might be tolerated. That verdict was
not satisfactory to others outside of his Asso
ciation, and an attempt was soon made in the
State Association to deal with the local Associa
tion because of its tenderness toward him. Thus
began a long series of endeavors to get him out
of the fellowship and to have his doctrines con
demned and his name erased from the list of
Congregational ministers. These attempts were
not successfiil ; but the result of all this was to

258 HORACE BUSHNELL
make him an object of suspicion, and to withdraw
from him almost wholly the sympathy and per
sonal friendship of the great majority of his
brethren in the ministry. In 1867, after he had
laid down the pastorate, when he was an old man
and broken, I invited him to come to North
Adams, and preach the sermon at my installa
tion. His answer was a caution, most kindly
intended. It would not be politic for me to
have him there : I might be compromised by
the report that I was his friend. It was quite
true : even then the brand of the heretic was
upon him ; and, although he was respectfully
treated by the council which then assembled, it
was evident that suspicion of him was still alive
in the hearts of his brethren.
This was not due to any bad spirit which he
had shown ; for, as all do testify, he bore himself,
under the attacks which were made upon him in
the ecclesiastical bodies, with meekness and wis
dom. Respecting the most exciting of these
meetings, one minister says, " Of Dr. Bushnell's
bearing and spirit I can only recall the general
impression that he showed a calm, dignified.
Christian spirit, and wonderfully maintained his
self-poise." Another says : " Dr. Bushnell bore
it patiently and cheerfully ; but there were times
when he appeared depressed, and keenly felt

HORACE BUSHNELL 259
the want of confidence his ministerial brethren
evinced in their intercourse with him."
All this, let us not forget, was for simply and
resolutely contending that the Judge of all the
earth will do right, and that no conduct can be
imputed to him which involves injustice.
Dr. Bushnell's heresies respecting the Trinity
as developed in the New Haven address, sprung
from the same source. The chief theological
value of the doctrine of the Trinity, as maintained
by Calvinistic teachers, was to furnish the dramatis
•persona for the doctrine of the atonement. For
that forensic transaction there must be distinct
consciousnesses and wills in the godhead : the
consciousness and will of the Judge and Punisher
must be different from those of the substitution
ary victim. In the speculations about this trans
action the language of the theologians often de
generate into stark tritheism, as in Edwards's
treatise on the Trinity, in which he constantly
speaks of the three " persons " of the godhead
as " they," and tells in the most circumstantial
way how, in the councils of eternity, " they " con
ferred and arranged together about how the work
of redemption should be carried on. Against all
the conceptions which involved such a notion as
this, or covertly implied it, Bushnell's intellect
as well as his moral sense was at war. He saw

26o HORACE BUSHNELL
that any proper view of the unity of the godhead
would make the forensic explanations of the
atonement incredible ; and that was one reason
why he sought to replace the tritheistic trinity by
a trinity of revelation, which held for him the
practical truths by which his faith was nourished,
and avoided the contradictions which the other
doctrine presented both to reason and to faith.
I am not concerned to maintain that Bushnell
gave us the final statement either of the doctrine
of the vicarious sacrifice or of the doctrine of the
Trinity. What I desire to point out is that he
eliminated the elements in those doctrines which
were an oflFence to the moral sense of men, and
made possible a reconstruction of theology upon
a better foundation and in harmony with the
ethical convictions and the spiritual needs of
men. My own belief is that much of the con
structive work that he did is also very valuable.
Not only in " Christian Nuture " and in " Nature
and the Supernatural," but in his two books on
the Atonement, there are interpretations of the
spiritual laws which will remain as permanent
contributions to Christian thought. I doubt
whether any American of the last century has
enriched Christian philosophy with a larger num
ber of vital and fruitful suggestions.
Of all this I can say nothing. I have only

HORACE BUSHNELL 261
tried to show how valiantly he battled for a
"right God," how faithfiilly he kept the knightly
vow he made in the hour of his conversion, — to
beHeve in none but a righteous God, and to be
faithfiil to him forever.
I should be guilty of a great omission if I left
the impression that Bushnell was the only Chris
tian teacher on this continent who bore witness
against those special immoralities of theology
with which his name is linked. The Unitarian
protest in the earlier part of the last century was
mainly a protest against these very immoralities.
The metaphysical questions involved were by no
means the crucial questions. What Dr. Chan
ning and his associates were most concerned to
secure was a moral theology, — a theology which
did not offend their deepest ethical convictions
by requiring them to ascribe to God principles
of action which they believed to be unrighteous.
Dr. Munger says : " The immediate source of the
movement was a reaction against the inhumanity
of Hopkins and Emmons, or more generally
against Calvinism, however presented. In short,
the movement was not theological, but humani
tarian, and was incorrectly named." And Dr.
Gordon, in words that are familiar, but that be
long here, testifies, " Against a Trinitarianism
that was Tritheism, in opposition to a view of the

262 HORACE BUSHNELL
person of Christ that slighted his humanity and
dishonored the Eternal Father, in the face of
opinions that made history godless and terrible,
that construed salvation as outward, forensic,
mechanical, that regarded religion as alien to the
nature of man, at war with the intellectual and
moral wealth of the world, — the Unitarian pro
test was whoPesome, magnificent, providential."
It is evident, then, that the Unitarians had
been fighting the same battle that Bushnell was
fighting ; and it is more than probable that, if the
dogmas against which he began his warfare in
1 848 had been modified a generation sooner, the
division of the Congregational body would never
have taken place. We all honor to-day the
fidelity to their ethical convictions of the men
who went out from the Congregational camp ;
but some of us deeply deplore the separation.
Always, in such a rupture, not only is love put
to shame, but truth suffers : each party magnifies
out of due proportion the points for which it
contends, and is wont to close its mind against
the essential truths which are held by its antago
nist. The Orthodox and the Unitarians have
both suffered in their way : each party has made
more than was profitable of the tenets which it
has held as against the other ; each has been im
poverished by rejecting precious elements cher
ished by the other.

HORACE BUSHNELL 263
I wonder if we have not nearly come to the
point at which the weapons of controversy can be
laid aside and the spirit of criticism give place to
the spirit of appreciation ; at which the desire to
magnify the things wherein we agree, and to dis
cover, each in the treasure of the other, that
which we can appropriate and use, shall make us
brethren in deed, if not in name. If such a
spiritual friendship should bring into closer and
more helpfiil relations the two branches of our
Congregational brotherhood, I cannot but feel
that good would come to both of them and to
the kingdom of the truth. Surely, we need not
fear that in such a loving endeavor to understand
one another and help one another anything really
precious would be lost ; for it must be that, when
we are working and praying together and bearing
one another's burdens, we are more likely to find
out the truth as it is in Jesus than when we are
engaged in criticism or controversy. And, if the
spirit of peace and concord should lead us into
closer friendship with each other and with the
Lord whose name we bear, we shall all confess
that no one has done more than Horace Bush
nell to make possible such a consummation.

VIII
Hosea Ballou and the Larger Hope

HOSEA BALLOU AND THE LARGER
HOPE.
" How is it," Sir James Mackintosh was once
asked by a student of English politics, " that I
never hear a word about the blessings of liberty
and the glory of the British Constitution in your
debates ? " " Because," was the reply, " we take
all that for granted." So, if one turns to the
utterances of those who broke with the ortho
doxy of the eighteenth century in asserting the
final victory of good over evil, he will find in
them comparatively little in defence of the right
to religious liberty and freedom of thought and
of conscience. The pioneers of the larger hope
were also pioneers of religious liberty in America.
But they said little about it, because they be
lieved so much in it. They took all that for
granted. They were so absorbed in the procla
mation of the truth they were called to declare
that they had neither the time nor the mind to
discuss their right to utter it. They wasted no
words in arguing their right to proclaim the
larger vision and the higher truth. They broke
through the theological bounds, took possession
of the new ground, and went to work to clear it

268 HOSEA BALLOU
up for permanent occupancy. Their brave self-
assertion was in itself the largest sort of victory
for liberty. While others took to dissenting
about liberty, they took the liberty of dissenting.
They ignored all protests, threats, anathemas,
and went straight about their task of opening up
a theological territory wide enough to take their
stand on the love and fatherhood of God, and its
assurance of good to the whole family of man
kind. . They led the pioneer's life ; and their lot
was one of spiritual privation and intellectual
loneliness, with few theological neighbors, and
the nearest of these rather distant and reserved.
But their little clearing grew ; and new settlers
began to move in and take up the region round
about, and sent word back to the older commu
nities of the spirit that here was a land flowing
with religious milk and honey. And the result
has been that, after a hundred and more years,
immigration has become so fast and forward that
the theological heirs of these early settlers are
kept busy in the probate court of history,
proving priority of occupancy and title. It is
always a privilege for one who has entered into
their labors to rehearse the story of their protest
and its significance, to a jury of candid Christian
minds. There was need, when they began it, of pro-

HOSEA BALLOU 269
test and revolt. The atmosphere of the eigh
teenth century in America was heavy and de
pressing. One need not accept the extreme and
bitter denunciations of the age common to the
evangelists who attacked its sins and shortcomings.
But, even in the cold light of historic inquiry, the
facts do not indicate any theological or spiritual
stir and vitality. The religious tendencies were
depressing. Professor Williston Walker has writ
ten of the times : " Taken as a whole, no century
in American religious history has been so barren as
the eighteenth. The fire and enthusiasm of Puri
tanism had died out on both sides of the Atlan
tic, , , , While New England shone as compared
with the spiritual deadness of Old England in the
years preceding Wesley, the old fervor and sense
of a national mission were gone, conscious con
version, once so common, was unusual, and re
ligion was becoming more formal and external,"
In spite of repeated revival seasons ; in spite of
the labors of Wesley and Whitefield and Ten-
nant, with their searching evangelism ; in spite of
Edwards and Hopkins, whose relentless theology
ought to have driven their contemporaries pell-
mell to conversion, — the century dragged on with
out any real touch of heavenly fire, any real
accent of the Holy Ghost, It is the opinion of
Dr, Walker that, " religiously estimated, even

270

HOSEA BALLOU

Boston was not what it had been in the days
of its founders. The old Puritan enthusiasm
had departed ; and, though the Sunday congrega
tions were large and Sunday was observed with
a strictness which surprised English visitors, the
Thursday lecture, once so popular, was greatly
neglected." That was a sure sign of moral de
generacy and recession, and it was the cause of
open comment and sorrow. Judge Sewall once
noted in his diary, April 16, 1697: "Mr.
Cotton Mather gives notice that the lecture
is hereafter to begin at Eleven of the Clock,
an hour sooner than formerly. Reprov'd the
townspeople that attended no better : feared
'twould be an omen of our not enjoying the
lecture long, if did not amend." The same state
of things seems to have recurred a half-century
later. But there must have been amendment, in
part at least ; for the Thursday lecture persists, in
its perennial freshness.
But, whatever laxness may have marked the
manners or the observances of the people, there
was none whatever in their creed. The old the
ology held fast, with a tenacity unyielding at any
point. How sure men were that it was the very
word of God may be inferred from the answer of
Samuel Hopkins, when asked, at the end of his
life, whether he would make any alterations in

HOSEA BALLOU 271
the sentiments expressed in his " System of Divin
ity." " No," was his stalwart reply, " I am will
ing to rest my soul on them forever." Its hold
must have been deadly, or men would have re
volted headlong at the awfiil preaching of Ed
wards. The eflTort to vindicate this mighty man
and give him a sweeter repute in our day can
never efface the horrors of his theology, nor miti
gate the intellectual perversity which could so
misread and malign the gospel. "We revolt,"
says Professor Walker, giving exact references to-
verify his paraphrases, " as we read Edwards's
contention that the wicked are useful simply as
objects of the destructive wrath of God ; as he
beholds the unconverted members of the con
gregation before him withheld for a brief period
by the restraining hand of God from the hell into
which they are to fall in their appointed time ; as
he pictures the damned glowing in endless burn
ing agony, like a spider in the flames ; and height
ens the happiness of the redeemed by contrast
between the felicities of heaven and the eternal
torments of the lost, visible forever to the saints
in glory." " No wonder," adds the chronicler,
" that one of his congregation was led to suicide,
and others felt themselves grievously tempted."
The unnaturalness of any religious experience
born of such preaching is admitted to-day.

272 HOSEA BALLOU
There could be no thorough emancipation of
the human spirit as long as the intellect was held
in the bonds of a religious pessimism so abject.
The revivals of the eighteenth century were but
the gasping of men's affections for spiritual fresh
air, the convulsive throes of souls asphyxiated by
the devitalized theology which enveloped them.
It is the fashion still to speak of the religious
phenomena of Edwards's day in the middle years
of the century as " The Great Awakening," The
phrase is a misnomer. There was in all this stir
no awakening. The churches were only walking
in sleep, and dreaming the awful nightmare of
Calvinism as they walked.
But the real awakening was at hand. Night
mares are generally the prelude to arousal. A re
action was inevitable, A new spirit was asserting
itself in the very heart of the territory thus given
over to depression and to fanatical error. Already
the heralds were abroad, the forerunners of the
kingdom of heaven. The excesses of current
theology were working out their own intellectual
retribution. All through the strict Calvinistic
literature of the century one may read warnings,
protests, denunciations, directed against an evil
tendency called "Arminianism." It was a word
which covered a multitude of sins. It meant
very much what " free thinking " stood for fifty

HOSEA BALLOU 273
years ago, or what is called " infidelity " to-day.
It was the synonym, in the eyes of the rigor
ously orthodox, for everything which savored of
departure from the old standards and customs.
Lowell says of a later term, " The word ' tran
scendental ' was the maid of all work for those who
could not think " ; and in like fashion it may be
said that " Arminianism " was used in the same
way by all who could not discriminate. But,
briefly, it was the designation of the broader spirit
which began to show itself in men's minds, in pro
test against intolerance and irrational theology and
narrow spiritual life. Voices were lifted up here
and there to deny the perplexing and repulsive
theology of the age. Jonathan Mayhew, pastor
of the West Church in Boston from 1747 to 1766,
was an outspoken Unitarian, and held unmistak
ably the larger hope for man. Charles Chauncy,
the distinguished pastor of the First Church,
wrote and spoke voluminously as a champion of
the belief in the divine unity, and the salvation
of all souls. Jeremy Belknap, for twelve years
settled over the Federal Street Church, was an
avowed believer in the same liberal faith. Nor
was New England the only region where the new
voices were heard. Jacob Duche, first chaplain
to Congress, and William Smith, the founder of
the University of Pennsylvania, were likewise out-

274 HOSEA BALLOU
spoken in their liberal views. While in Virginia
Robert Yancey, announcing that he would preach
a discourse in defence of his faith in universal
salvation, was heard by an immense throng,
many of whom were provided with ropes and
grapevines " to mete out justice to this inno
vator." But those who came to lynch remained
to applaud, and to give consent to the new
message. Thus there was asserting itself In the churches
of America here and there, by the lips of scat
tered witnesses, a testimony to the larger thought
of God and of man. But as yet it was unorgan
ized and sporadic, a force which had not begun
to concentrate and to mass itself, like the electric
ity which charges the clouds of a summer sky be
fore they form for the thunder-squall. There
was as yet no thought of attacking the old the
ology by forming a new sect. There was no
impulse toward organization, for there was no
common ground for these individual protestants.
Even John Murray, when he began to preach in
this country the doctrines he had imbibed at the
feet of James Relly in England, had no thought
of creating a new sect, nor of even forming a so
ciety, or church, of believers. Indeed, Murray
was as good a Calvinist as anybody until he came
to " the last things," when he drew the conclusion

HOSEA BALLOU 275.
of universal salvation instead of the usual one of
majority damnation. And he at first preached
this heretical conclusion so cautiously, clothing it
in such familiar Scripture and in such accepted
theological phrases, that he was not suspected of
being the arch-heretic he really was. Elhanan
Winchester, too, was sufficiently orthodox save in
the larger conclusion he drew as to the destiny
of the whole human race. The dissentients, the
progressives, the " liberals," and the new-puri- ¦
tans were once more repeating the effort, as con
stant as it is fiitile, to keep good their place in the
familiar and beloved dwellings of orthodoxy, at
the same time that they took up their new pos
sessions on the frontiers of truth. And, as
always, the effort was foredoomed to fail.
But during the last quarter of the century or
thereabouts the stream of liberal tendency In the
American churches began to divide along lines of
poHcy and temper ; and, curiously enough, the two
parties divided in their methods and spirits just
as they did in the matter of emphasis upon dif
ferent phases of the new thought. One was in
clined to lay the greater stress upon the unity of
the Divine Nature and the right of free inquiry.
The other gave greater weight to the doctrine
of the Divine Love as the assurance of the final
harmony of the whole moral creation. And the

276 HOSEA BALLOU
former party were disposed to avoid controversy,
eschew preaching directly upon the great theme
at issue, and, as Dr. Freeman of Boston once
wrote, "content themselves with leading their
hearers, by a course of rational but prudent ser
mons, gradually and insensibly to adopt it."
The latter, on the other hand, were outspoken
and aggressive from the first, and boldly pro
claimed their great hope with a positiveness and
a fervor which attracted instant attention and op
position. This was the beginning of that differ
ence in attitude which has divided the forces of
Christian liberalism in America, and kept them
sundered for a full century. The wing which
was destined to form the Unitarian body would
say, to use Dr. Atwood's apt statement, " One
God, the Father." The wing which took up the
Unlversalist position would say, " One God, the
Father." But the former party would proceed
cautiously, make no breach In the churches,
would Inquire, like Nicodemus, by night, sow the
seed secretly, and build the temple of the new
faith silently, so that there should be " neither
hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard In the
house while it was building." But their alHes of
the other wing were for blowing the trumpet and
warning the people, and. If need be, would " set a
man at variance against his father, and the daugh-

HOSEA BALLOU 277
ter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law."
It was natural that such a difference in temper
and method should lead to a different manner of
growth in the two parties. Accordingly, we find
that those who stood first of all for the larger
hope were the more quickly forced to organize,
to formulate a fighting faith, to gather their fol
lowers and equip them for offence and defence.
Their sentence was for open war ; and, long before
their brethren of the more pacific temper had been
driven from the safe and home-like shelter of the
old communions, they were an embattled host,
determined in their resistance to the old system
from which they had escaped, and in a truly
apostolic spirit showing again a loyal conformity
to the terms of the Great Commission, and
ready to be witnesses of the truth " both in Jeru
salem and In all Judea and in Samaria, and unto
the uttermost parts of the earth." True, they
were an Ineffective band, unorganized, and without
discipline and leadership. As one of their sons
in the faith has said, " They were done with
Calvinism and were waiting to see what next."
But like the patriots a few years before, their
brothers and countrymen, who had resisted the
doctrines of an overbearing king without knowing
whither their boldness would bring them, they

278 HOSEA BALLOU
found new light as they went, and the way was
opened as they trod in it.
Now there was one man who, first of all the
liberal leaders In America, wrought the great ideas
which were possessing the minds of many men
into something like a definite system, a coherent
theology, a rational and related whole. When
the Calvinism of Edwards and of Hopkins was
almost absolute, and the Arminianism which was
merely its negative was either lame In its premises
or impotent In Its conclusions, this man thought
out all the essentials of the great system which
was to displace Calvinism as the religion of the
masses. Hosea Ballou comes into the view of
the student of the Broad Church theology at a
time when that theology was little more than an
attitude of men's minds. It meant revolt against
the harshness which was enthroned under the
name of God. It meant denial of the tritheism
of the age, and a reaching after a more rational
interpretation of the divine nature. It meant a
discontent with the pessimistic view of human
nature. It meant. In many quarters at least, a
rejection of the idea of the doom of the majority,
and a brave belief in the salvation of all men.
But it was not as yet consistent with Itself It
was negative, not positive. It lacked definiteness
and logical order and coherency. It was still

HOSEA BALLOU 279
little more than an attempt to patch the old gar
ments of traditional orthodoxy, and to put a new
spirit into the dried and cracking skins of the
obnoxious creeds. But in the thought of Ballou
a work of transformation and simplification was
going on, more radical than had taken place in
the mind of any American theologian. He made
his way out of all the bewildering and artificial
theology of the schools and the traditions, freeing
himself from their sophistries and from their
terrors, seeking and finding the light of a higher
truth for himself and for all men. In 1805, in
his " Treatise on Atonement," Hosea Ballou gave
to the world the first American book which em
bodied the outHnes of the Broad Church theol
ogy, a religious classic, presenting an original, a
simple, a natural account of the meaning of the
gospel, which after a hundred years is just be
coming the working creed of the church in
America, In 1771, ten years before Channing's birth,
thirteen years after Edwards had died, this man
was born in Richmond, N.H, His origin was
humble, his early life was one of toil, poverty,
and scanty resources, both material and intel
lectual. He had only such schooHng as poor
boys in country regions could obtain in those
days, and a term at a small academy when he was

28o HOSEA BALLOU
nineteen. But, as he matured, he began to show
the traits of genius which no circumstances could
cloud, no obstacles hinder. Like all providen
tial men, he had a power which we cannot account
for by anything in his surroundings or his ante
cedents. His environment only gave direction
to his genius : it in no wise accounts for it. His
father was a Baptist clergyman, and the lad was
reared in the atmosphere of a strict Calvinism,
Baptized at eighteen, his interest in the faith he
had learned as a child became more lively; and
his reflections were greatly stimulated by hearing
for the first time the doctrines of one Rev, Caleb
Rich, a Baptist preacher whose Calvinism had
the new conclusion of universal salvation, and who
was making some converts in young Ballou's cir
cle. He had never heard the utterance of the
larger, hope before. He knew no books or lit
erature upon the subject. He was a lonely soul,
wrestling In the dark with the great primal ques
tions of life, of destiny, of human nature, and
of God's will. Like many another soul in such
plight, he turned with a Puritan simplicity and
singleness of heart to the one Book ; and with
his Bible, his own reason, and the illumining spirit
pushed on to conclusions which left him far
enough from the faith of his fathers. Let it be
remembered that Ballou was as much a " Bible-

HOSEA BALLOU 281
man " as Dwight Moody himself Only he was
trying to frame a theology out of what he found
in the book, not to find In the book a vindication
of his own theories or the traditions of men.
Before he was thirty years old, he had found light
and peace. The old theology had for him be
come but a memory. He had rejected every one
of its essentials, and had substituted for them a
system which anticipated In almost every particu
lar the creed of the Christian liberals of our day.
In the " Treatise on Atonement " one finds
theology reconstructed, simplified, rationalized,
modernized. It was not merely a monograph
upon its title theme. It was a restatement In
divinity, a revival of the gospel teaching, a com
prehensive system of thought. It was the first
American book, as its author was the first
American theologian, to thoroughly restate the
great New Testament teachings, and relate them
to the fiindamental, radical truth that " God is
Love," It asserted the unity of the Divine Nat
ure, and Love as the essence of that Nature, the
source of creation's life, the test of all spiritual
activities. It taught the fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man through sonship to God.
It decisively declared the doctrine of salvation by
character, rightness in the soul manifested In
righteousness in conduct. It was the first of

, 282 HOSEA BALLOU
American books to teach the atonement as the
reconciling of man to God, — the doctrine which
is so fast obtaining in all the churches, with Bush
nell as its putative sponsor. It put the relation
of sin to punishment in absolutely new light,
declaring it to be instant, constant, inevitable, as
cause to effect, as seed to fruitage. And it as
serted the final harmony of all souls with God, as
the necessary culmination of a universe whose
centre and circumference are determined by the
love of God,
That was the gist of the " Treatise on Atone
ment," and that the consistent, perspicuous mes
sage of Ballou to his fellow-men. And that mes
sage was put forth ten years before Channing and
the Unitarians had found their voice, or even
their minds. It was in the air a generation be
fore the ordination of Bushnell, and seventy years
before Beecher was thundering in Plymouth pul
pit, in belated echoes of its mighty notes. All
that modern thought holds dearest, its most
luminous, most reasonable, most Inspiring affirma
tions, were written aforetime in that epoch-making
book. And there was added to these cardinal
points of the new theology, that which none but
he and the apostles in the larger hope had the
courage to believe and to proclaim, but which
must always be the conclusion of any system

HOSEA BALLOU 283
which begins with the love and fatherhood of
God, the prophecy of the
" One far-off divine event.
To which the whole creation moves,"
It Is entirely true that for fifty years before
Ballou the elements of this faith had been in the
air. Many minds had groped for it, many had
almost grasped it. Many voices had been lifted
in the wilderness, forerunners of the awakening
that was to come. But they had so far fallen
short of a comprehensive system, of a logical
rationale of the dawning faith. Either they had
begun right, but had not thought on to the glo
rious end, or they had tacked a stupendous con
clusion to weak and inadequate premises, or they
had built well the arch upon its abutments and
left out the keystone. Hosea Ballou was more
thorough than any of them, while in him the
thoughts of many hearts were revealed. There
are always many portents of the dawn before the
sun is really up. The light comes in by slow
degrees ; but at last there Is a moment when
we cry, " The day ! " There were many tokens
of the widening sympathies which were one day
to fellowship the Gentiles coming to Christ, —
Philip preaching to the Ethiopian ; Peter's
visit to Simon the tanner and to Cornelius ; the

284 HOSEA BALLOU
mission to the Greeks at Antioch, But the
great truth that the gospel was for the Gentile,
for any child of God without respect to race
or tongue, was never seized in Its fulness and
power till Paul gave It his aggressive champion
ship. It is not enough that a truth should be in
the air : it never becomes effective till somebody
takes it out of the air and presses it home upon
human hearts and understandings. The relig
ious prophet is the man who has the insight to
know what is in the air, and condense it Into
speech, and precipitate it upon men's hearts,
Christianity itself was "in the air" before the
star in the East shone over Bethlehem, But
it needed the spirit of the Christ himself to
realize to men's minds the meaning of these
preludes of the truth, and frame it into the
harmonies of the gospel. He vitalized the
thoughts of many generations, and out of his
own spirit gave them like a word original and
new to men.
That was Hosea Ballou's great service to
America, First, he wrought out a definite
thought concerning God and his moral creation.
And then he went forth, in the power of the
spirit, to preach that thought unto the uttermost
parts of the earth. He recognized the real voice
of God in the many voices of his time, and

HOSEA BALLOU 285
then he lent his own voice reverently to Interpret
God's voice.
It was the first work of Ballou to convert to
his own thought the men of his own party,
to make the scattered Unlversalists of his day
accept his new and larger point of view. Nor
was it a long nor a difficult task. Within ten
years from the issue of the " Treatise " there
were but two Trinitarians in the Unlversalist
ministry in America, In the words of John W,
Chadwick, "He published his book on the
Atoneihent in 1805, at which time Boston Uni
tarianism was all latent ; and it was not until
1815 that Channing, by his letter in reply to
Worcester, obliged his Unitarian friends to show
their colors and to pass for what they were. By
that time, thanks to Hosea Ballou, the Unlver
salists were a homogeneous anti-trlnitarian body,"
By that time, too, the policy of Ballou and his
associates had become definite and unmistakable.
They had come to realize that, if they were to
prevail and their truth was to gain a hearing and
to win the minds of men, they must carry on a
vigorous, unremitting, unflinching warfare on Its
behalf. They perceived how thoroughly the
churches were possessed of the gloomy 'spirit of
Calvinism ; and they realized, too, with a hard
sense which does them credit, that this kind

286 HOSEA BALLOU
goeth not out save by fasting and prayer, — yea,
and by the exorcism of hard buffeting and relent
less contradiction. The revival of early Christian
theology was not to come about of itself. It was
not an accident : it was a work. No great vic
tory in this world ever happens. It is won.
And the winning means toil and warfare, hard
blows and stern privations. That truth had come
home to the men with the larger hope in their
hearts before the end of the eighteenth century.
For them, clearly, there was no quarter, as there
were no quarters any longer, in the established
communions. If they would maintain them
selves, an aggressive propaganda was absolutely
necessary. They went forth on their crusade. They were
plain people, many of them with small education,
but great in their courage, their devotion, and
their profound belief in the faith they taught.
Like all Protestants of their day, they made the
Bible their court of appeal ; but they were fiill of
that homely rationalism which insists on reading
Scripture through the eyes of common sense and
human sentiment. They believed in religious
liberty and the right to private judgment too pro
foundly to debate about them. Necessity was
laid upon them ; and it was woe unto them if they
preached not that gospel of theirs ! They went

HOSEA BALLOU 287
to the people. They rallied them in churches
when they could, in halls and school-houses and
court-rooms when churches were denied them.
They cornered those whom they were accustomed
to call " the friendly opponent," by which term
they meant the average believer in the popular
creeds, in the country store and In the stage
coach and in his own house. They made a pul
pit of the hay-field and the shoemaker's bench.
Their preachers expounded the word, and the
laymen passed on the message. Pamphlet, book,
and newspaper went from hand to hand. The
land was traversed from Maine to Ohio. As
numbers increased, churches were organized,
houses of worship were reared, organization was
effected. They braved the odium of popular dis
trust and ecclesiastical hatred. They persisted in
the face of ostracism and of persecution. They
were undaunted by the show of superior numbers
and of religious Influence. And the result of
it all was that the people heard their message.
Their seed was sown broadcast.
It is a poor and narrow criticism of their work
to-day to say that it was controversial, that it
was destructive and polemic and aggressive. It
had to be all this, or a great opportunity would
have been lost, a great transformation unwrought.
There must always be protest and challenge of

288 HOSEA BALLOU
the old thought before a lodgment can be found
for the new. The rooted and obstinate Calvin
ism of the eighteenth century could no more have
been moved in any other way than the old forests
of New England could have been cleared off to
make way for its farms and villages, its cities and
its shops, without the sharp edge of the axe and the
mattock and the Industrious brawn of the woods
man behind them. The gentle erosion of disap
proving silence and dissenting neutraHty would
have been about as effectual against the dominant
creed as dewfalls in washing away the ledges of
Katahdin. This was the rude truth which was
forced upon Channing and his associates in 1 8 1 5.
They were compelled to take the very course
they had deprecated in the followers of Ballou.
But, by the time they were finally embarked as
a denomination, he and his comrades had been
for forty years carrying on a campaign of aggres
sive enlightenment.
With the schism in the Congregational churches
and the exodus of the Unitarian wing, the men
who had been fighting the same battle of ideas
looked for the re-enforcement of sympathy of fel
lowship and of co-operation. They were lonesome,
naturally; and they craved spiritual friendship.
They were hard pressed, and they would have
welcomed moral support. But it never came

HOSEA BALLOU 289
The Unitarian of the early century preferred his
brethren from whom he was parted by all his
convictions, to the men who stood nearest to him
in thought and in theological aim. And the cool
ness was not unnoted, nor did it pass without
protest. There Is a pathetic sermon of Hosea
Ballou's in which he gently chides the Unitarians
of his day. In the mild spirit of the text, " Never
theless, I have somewhat against thee," and, after
showing how nearly identical Is the faith of these
new " come-outers " with his own, wonders that
they will not own that they believe in the salva
tion of all souls, and that they will give no aid
nor comfort to those who do. And he mourns
that the fraternal courtesies which are freely ex
changed by Unitarians with those who count
them heretics are withheld from those who would
count them as allies. It is a touching witness to
the disappointment and yearning of a large heart,
consecrated above all things, and especially above
all personal ends, to the spread of the gospel of
the larger hope and faith In the name of the In
finite Love,
For, beyond all question, the foremost figure
of this new crusade, the most commanding and
the most forceful, was Hosea Ballou, now of
Boston, As his thought, by this time, had won
the intellectual assent of his brethren, so his

290 HOSEA BALLOU
apostolic spirit and his great genius as a preacher
made him easily first among the heralds of the
new way. He was one of the greatest preachers
America ever had. Wherever he went, heretic
though he was, crowds flocked to hear him. His
fame grew with his years. Maligned, hated,
feared, by the conservatives of his day, he had
such charm of speech, such persuasiveness, such
self-control and gentleness of spirit, such absolute
simplicity of word and thought, that the common
people heard him gladly, " The measure of a
man," says some one, " is his ability to multiply
himself" He left a wonderful record of souls
touched by his spirit and illumined by his
thought into the freedom of a happier faith. His
converts were as the sands of the sea, a multi
tude no man could number. He pleaded with
a logic few could withstand against the harsh and
dreary theology of his age. His discourse made
the love of God seem credible, and the brother
hood of man seem actual, and the victory of God
seem inevitable. He was fairly Socratic in the
skill with which he led the objector to his teach
ing into logical corners whence there was no es
cape. He was thoroughly Pauline In the zeal
with which he proclaimed the broad gospel of the
love that never falleth. His dignity was habit
ual. But it neither withdrew him from his fellow-

HOSEA BALLOU 291
men nor hindered for a moment the play of a wit
that was warmed by humor, a humor edged with
wit. But the most characteristic of his traits, and
that which clings like a rich fragrance about his
memory, was the absolute simplicity and homely
quaintness of the man. He was a son of the soil
of New England. The garb of his mind was
plain, his speech was the dialect of the people,
his logic the shrewdness of their common sense,
piercing at last the sophistries of a thousand
years. There Is one man in the nation's his
tory In whose class he falls, in temper, in method,
in effectiveness, Abraham Lincoln and Hosea
Ballou belong in the same genus. Both men
sprung from the plain people, appealed to the
plain people, and uttered the heart of the plain
people. Both drew their inspiration, not from
the schools, but from experience, and from a
first-hand grapple with the great life-problems.
Both possessed the same sweet reasonableness,
the same indomitable faith, the same unerring
perception of the work committed to their hands.
And both exercised the same personal charm, the
same indisputable sway of inborn leadership. As
Lincoln forced the conflict which was to precipi
tate Civil War, but through that war rebuild the
very foundations of the nation, so Ballou brought

292 HOSEA BALLOU
on the fighting which was to rend the churches
only to reconcile them ultimately on the basis of
a higher truth. And, as Lincoln emancipated
the nation from the thrall of a slavery which
bound two races in common and degrading fet
ters, so Ballou was the leader in a tremendous
liberation of the intellect and spirit of the Ameri
can Church, and gave back to the Lord's free
men the real enjoyment of his fatherhood, with
held from them by a usurping theology since the
days of Origen and Clement and Gregory of
Nyssa, The lasting claim of Lincoln to the
world's honor and homage rests on his unerring
perception that the great call of the hour was for
the preservation of the Union, and the unswerv
ing and dogged persistence with which he clung
to that one aim. The world will yet pay Its
honors to Ballou for his equally sagacious selec
tion of the supreme issue in theology, and his
lifelong labor to convince the American religious
world that the heart of the gospel is the as
surance of Love at the core of the universe,
working through all the ages to an absolute and
unqualified success in its purposes.
For this, and nothing less, was the real " Ballou
theology " so often supposed to be something
less and different. It is one of the puzzles of
history how the tradition should have arisen

HOSEA BALLOU 293
here in Boston, where Ballou was so long a
power and a presence known of all, and among
those who heard his speech and read his pages,
that the " Ballouian theology " was the mere
affirmation of no-future punishment, or even of
the salvation of all souls. It was a rounded,
mature, and comprehensive scheme of thought ;
and it was a system which remains untouched in
its substance, whatever view be taken of the rela
tion of this life to the next.
One feature of the theology of Ballou has
never received the recognition it deserves. It is
the spirit running all through it, which reconciles
it to the order and law of the rest of the divine
administration, which makes It seem one with
nature. Dr. Munger has recently declared the
secret of Horace Bushnell to be that he saw all
things as a part of one great scheme of nature.
He quotes as applicable to Bushnell what Har-
nack said of Luther : "He liberated the natural
life and the natural order of things," That was
Hosea Ballou's secret as well. He straightened
the twists out of the theology of a thousand
years, and made it as natural as It came from
Jesus' lips. His theology Is in harmony with
the nature of things other than theological, not
at odds with them. It belongs by right in the
universe revealed by science. Whatever ground

294 HOSEA BALLOU
he took with regard to miracle and the attestation
of the gospel, he was fifty years before Parker in
the " naturalization of religion," His theology
was what Emerson said miracle, as pronounced
by the church, was not, — " one with the blowing
clover and the falling rain," It is marvellous to
see how modern he is in all the substance of his
thinking. His speech bears the mark of his
times, but not his ideas. His conception of God
and his providence, of the great cardinal facts and
processes of spiritual life, — sin, repentance, retri
bution, forgiveness, — nowhere clash with the new
thought, but rather anticipate It by a hundred
years. So that one can turn back from the pages
of Martineau and Emerson, of Savage and of
Cone, of Munger and Brooks, to the thought
of Ballou, and not experience any change of
climate or serious shift of intellectual environ
ment. It is surprising to find how close were
his views of sin, of moral evil, of necessity and
free will, of penalty, of justice, of the implications
of love, to the modern point of view. There Is
scarcely one of the modern ideas on which you
may not see the sign-manual of Hosea Ballou,
written more than a century ago.
So we are prepared to see that he was not a
man of one idea, and that a narrow one. He
did not, as some will have it, make a " special

HOSEA BALLOU 295
issue " against the doctrine of eternal punish
ment, or even against the doctrine of future retri
bution. The later views he held, exaggerated
and misconstrued by those who disliked them,
have been seized upon as representing all his
thought, and forced into a prominence they do
not deserve. In his own view the essential thing
about moral retribution is not its duration, but
its certainty and its adequacy. And the strength
of his thought was put forth to prove, not that
men are converted — as he believed — In the early
stages of the future life, but that they are disci
plined throughout all the days of this present
life. He labored to convince the world that
"the righteous shall be recompensed in the
earth much more the wicked and the sinner,"
Only he laid the emphasis on the words " shall
be recompensed." He insisted, in flat and
heroic contradiction to the popular teaching of
his time, that the mills of God are grinding here
and now ; that sin and its penalties are coincident ;
that every day is judgment day ; and that, in the
substance of the soul as well as its environment,
sin works inevitable and immediate confusion
and disorder. The chief odium of his teaching
was not on account of his views of the future,
but on account of his insistence that the present
is the scene of judgment and punishment. That

296 HOSEA BALLOU
was an Idea abhorrent to the orthodoxy of his
time. That it has become a commonplace of
later thought is chiefly due to the blows he
struck in the early years of the nineteenth
century. But he never lost sight nor grasp of the cen
tral truth in his thought, that the fatherhood of
God Involves the final harmony of all souls.
And he deserves the honor of all clear thinkers
for the vigor with which he insisted on tHe
premises, and then drew the conclusion. There
were many in his day who were faintly discerning
the real meaning of God's fatherhood. There
were a few who were possessed of the larger faith
in "the restitution of all things," But Ballou
was the first to link the two ideas in their logical
relation, read all their great implications, and
argue " the new theology," a hundred years
before it was so baptized, from premise to con
clusion. And he made men feel the folly of
accepting a premise unless they were prepared to
go on to the end of the logical process. It was
Ballou's teaching that, if God is a father to aU
men, he owes all a father's care, a father's
patience, a father's protection. To have created
them for good, and then to have suffered them to
come short of that good by an eternity in perdi
tion, would have been the most unfatherly of

HOSEA BALLOU 297
acts. He is bound by every consideration we
can conceive as binding upon a fatherly heart to
secure to them a destiny of salvation. And so
the futile though well-meant, efforts of the new
theology men to square their theories with their
eschatology, and reconcile their doctrine of God's
fatherhood with their dogma of endless punish
ment, would have drawn the sharpest fire from
Ballou's unfaltering mind. Had he lived to see
the modern attempts to mitigate the horrors of
endless perdition In the interests of the fatherly
character of God, he would have been quick to
perceive and to expose its weakness. For it
does not relieve the situation of any of Its repel
lent features to admit the salvation of Infants or
of the great majority of adults or of good pagans
or of those who may repent after the breath has
failed and before the spirit has left the body.
Neither does it help matters to shut one's eyes
to the possible outcome, and resign one's self
to a severe agnosticism about the future fate of
souls. It does not change the radical relations
of the current doctrines of future punishment to
the divine love to say that one cherishes an
eternal hope — which, if eternally a hope, will
never be reaHzed — of the final good of all.
These are but temporary halting-places at which
the reason bent on and bound for the truth

298 HOSEA BALLOU
stops in deference to old prejudice, which gets
out of breath in the rapid march away from
ancient error. If you take your departure on
theological waters from the great truth of God's
fatherhood, you make no landfall this side the
assurance of the final good of all his children.
The Scripture and the philosophy which led
Henry Ward Beecher to denounce and to vitu
perate the Calvinistic dogma of predestination to
damnation ; which leads Newman Smyth to be
lieve in a chance beyond death for the heathen
who have not heard of Christ in life; which
made Frederick Farrar eternally hope for the
great salvation in which he did not believe, —
this Scripture and this reasoning carry the mind
straight on to the conclusions of Ballou, that all
the family of the One Father will finally rejoice
in his love. To decree the damnation of his
intelligent creatures is no greater crime in Deity
than to permit it ; to lose a few souls or a single
soul is as dark a blot on Divine Love as to lose
ninety-nine one-hundredths of a race ; to deny
the chance to the home heathen which is ac
corded to the pagans who live in distant parts is
a mockery of the universal justice ; and the same
ridicule and denunciation of a material hell
which are used so unsparingly to-day in so many
uneasy pulpits apply with equal cogency to any

HOSEA BALLOU 299
doctrine which admits the more awful possibility
of the eternity of sin and mental suffering. In
short, if you go the mile with Dr. Lyman
Abbott in his eager championship of the uni
versal fatherhood of God, you can assign no
good reason for not going the twain with Hosea
Ballou In his faith in the final holiness of all
souls. If you stop short of his glorious conclu
sion, you do it by main force. You defy the
logic which has brought you the length you have
gone, and set at naught the principle you have
yourself accepted as valid. When we consider
how few there are who have either the vision or
the courage to look straight on from the begin
ning of theological truths to the end, we shall
have some preparation for estimating the large
ness of this man, and his disciples who followed
the logic of love to its sublime conclusions.
But let it be said with renewed emphasis that,
while the courage and the theological straightfor
wardness of these men is to be credited with the
rapid increase of faith in the final harmony of all
souls with God, that was not the only article of
their creed, the sole issue they made with the or
thodoxy of their day. They were not the prison
ers of a solitary idea. They moved in a large
field, entirely apart from the creed they had left
behind. This could not be said of Murray and

300 HOSEA BALLOU
Winchester : It was true of Ballou and the follow
ing he led, which so soon amounted to a whole
denomination. They and their heirs and assigns
to the present day were and have been Broad
Churchmen, In the widest sense of the term.
There is not an idea or a principle which com
mands the assent of advanced and advancing
Christian men to-day, saving the questions of
miracle and Biblical criticism, which was not pro
claimed for substance of doctrine by the Unlversa
lists of the early nineteenth century. They were
Unitarian before Channing, They were rational
before Hedge, They Insisted on the interpretation
of the Bible as literature before Matthew Arnold
was born. They were asserting and practising
liberty of conscience and obedience to the soul's
highest instincts long before the men were out
of college who met at Emerson's call and were
dubbed "The Transcendental Club," They had
practically called the Bible "a record of revela
tion" in the Winchester Confession in 1803, two
generations before Dr, Briggs's day. They had
grown, garnered, and threshed all the seed which
Henry Ward Beecher scattered broadcast before
that providential man had escaped from school.
The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man,
the divine nature In the human, salvation by char
acter, love the root of all righteousness in God

HOSEA BALLOU 301
and in man, — all these gracious and convincing
doctrines were formulated, were defended, were
enforced, in the hearts and minds of Americans by
the men who held the faith in the salvation of the
whole human race, from the time that Hosea
Ballou put forth the "Treatise on Atonement"
in 1805,
To strive for the establishment of these great
conclusions was to have an immense share in
the founding of religious liberty. For the true
emancipation of the spirit of man is not at
tained in gaining the right to think : it Is delayed
until he has learned to think aright. Sometimes
he has used his intellectual freedom in philo
sophical waywardness, and sometimes it has proved
a passport straight to pessimism. We are com
ing to think more sanely of religious liberty in
regarding it not as something final, an end to
be attained for its own sake, but as a means to
an end. We seek truth for the good it will do,
the joy it will bring, the deeper life it signifies ;
and for the same reason we crave the freedom
and the right to seek. We want liberty for what
it will yield, as opportunity, means, environment.
" What vantageth the freeman's lot
If shrine and home he buildeth not.
And what avails the freest heart
Except it choose the better part ? "

302 HOSEA BALLOU
Hosea Ballou enlarged the sphere of religious
freedom in America in a double way. He made It
easier for men to think the highest things of God,
and he made It easier to believe that the things
he thought were true. The largeness of his work
we are not even yet prepared to appreciate. But
one thing is certain. To attempt to write the his
tory of religious liberty In America without the
most generous consideration of Hosea BaHou's
influence and work, his thought and his mission
ary labors, is as if we undertook to write the his
tory of political freedom In our country with only
casual mention of New England and this " darling
town of ours," liberty-loving Boston,
By and by, when there shall be an unprejudiced
study of the sources of American religious thought
in the nineteenth century, Ballou's name will be
rescued from the obscurity into which It has been
permitted to lapse, and he will be recognized as
the great forerunner of the faith of the twentieth
century. He was the clearest thinker of his time,
for he saw the inevitable conclusion of the whole
matter of theology, even as he penetrated to the
heart of the matter. In making the love and father
hood of God pre-eminent in his thought. He
was the most courageous thinker of his time in
that he dared to take his stand on the new ground
long before the others had nerved themselves to

HOSEA BALLOU 303
follow. He was the most comprehensive thinker
of his time, as appears from the fact that there is
scarcely a point in the subject-matter of the " new
theology " which he did not traverse with a sure
instinct for the propositions which a hundred
years of thought are approving to the Christian
world. He was the peer of Channing in the
power to discern and to proclaim the will and
work of God. He differed from Channing, as
Lincoln differed from Daniel Webster. But, as
Lincoln's plain words wrought a work which not
even Webster's eloquence could compass, so the
homespun dialectics of Ballou had a power with
the people which not even the shining discourse
of Channing could exert. Boston will yet come
to a sense of his greatness as a prophet of the
larger faith ; and side by side with the pastor of
old Federal Street she will place the preacher
of School Street who for thirty years stood in her
borders, a witness to the truth once for all de
livered to the saints, with unswerving trust in God
and In the reasonableness of his world and in the
omnipotence of his love,
" He knew to bide his time.
And can his fame abide.
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide,"

IX

Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Doctrine
of the Divine Immanence

RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND THE
DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE
IMMANENCE,
Many happy coincidences suggest themselves
as we meet at this time and in this place to com
memorate the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
He was the descendant of no less than eight gen
erations of Puritan ministers, and his father's
name is on yonder tablet as the fourteenth minis
ter of this ancient church. On a spring evening
a hundred years ago this devout and gracious
William Emerson wrote in his diary, — " May
25, 1803, this day, whilst I was at dinner at
Governor Strong's, my son Ralph Waldo was
born," Little did the father realize that this entry
marked the most important incident of his twelve
years of ministry, or that a century later the
twenty-fifth day of May would be observed
throughout this and other lands as the hundredth
birthday of the most distinguished representative
of American literature. In this church, then,
with its noble covenant of 1630, still in force,
where all that is temporary in religion is omitted
and all that is permanent is expressed, in the
piety of the parsonage and in its straitened

3o8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
circumstances after his father's death, in the
discipline of the Latin School, amid all the tra
ditions of Puritan simplicity and of Thursday
lectures, the boy's inclination to plain living and
high thinking was set, "What a debt Is ours,"
he wrote thirty years later, " to that old religion
which in the childhood of most of us dwelt like
a Sabbath morning in the country of New Eng
land, teaching private self-denial and sorrow ! "
With a peculiar fitness and timeliness this church
of his childhood speaks the first of the many
words of commemoration which will be heard in
this centennial year.
The influence of Emerson has experienced all
possible vicissitudes. First came a period of
friendly perplexity or embarrassed hostility,
when those who felt called to attack his teach
ing found themselves disarmed by his gracious
and unresisting temper. " I esteem it," wrote
the saintly Henry Ware, Jr., "particularly un
happy to be thus brought into a sort of public
opposition to you ; for I have a thousand feelings
which draw me toward you. On this account I
look . . , with no little sorrow to the course which
your mind is taking." The judgment of other
contemporaries was less mercifial. Professor Alex
ander, of Princeton, wrote of the Divinity School
Address : " We want words with which to ex-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 309
press our sense of the nonsense and impiety which
pervade it. It is a rhapsody, obviously in imitation
of Thomas Carlyle, . , , but without his genius,"
The Christian Examiner regarded the Address as
being " neither good divinity nor good sense " ;
and the Daily Advertiser, in an article attributed
to Professor Andrews Norton, remarked : " Silly
women and silly young men, it Is to be feared,
have been drawn away from their Christian faith,
if not divorced from all that can properly be
called religion," It is Interesting to consider
what further emphasis Professor Norton, the
representative theologian of the Harvard Divin
ity School, might have added to his words of re
buke if he had been assured that even the least
of his successors in the faculty of that school
should devote a Thursday lecture in the First
Church of Boston to a eulogy of Emerson ! The
impression made on the Methodist sailor-prophet.
Father Taylor, was more confused, but more typi
cal of the general feeling, " Mr, Emerson," said
Taylor to Governor Andrew, "is one of the
sweetest creatures that God ever made. He
must go to heaven when he dies ; for, if he went
to hell, the devil would not know what to do with
him. But he knows no more of the religion of
the New Testament than Balaam's ass did of the
principles of the Hebrew grammar,"

310 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Controversy, however, whether reluctantly pro
posed or indignantly sought by Emerson's con
temporaries, was impossible to him. To attack
him was like smiting a feather pillow, which
yielded softly and presently took its old shape.
No rejoinder or self-defence could be extorted
from him, " I could not," he wrote to Henry
Ware, "give account of myself if challenged,
I could not possibly give you one of the argu
ments you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine
of mine stands. For I do not know what
arguments mean In reference to any expression
of thought, I delight in telling what I think;
but if you ask how I dare to say so, or why it Is
so, I am the most helpless of men," What could
the theological rationalists do with an adversary
who retreated behind the defence of helplessness!
So fought they as men beating the air. Their
contention was with an atmosphere, which could
not be argued against, but which must be either
excluded or breathed. Even the satisfaction
which might be derived from the sense of persecu
tion was banished from Emerson's serene and
sagacious mood. " Let me never fall," he wrote
In his journal, " into the vulgar mistake of dream
ing that I am persecuted ^yhenever I am contra
dicted. ... A few sour faces, a few biting
paragraphs, are but a cheap expiation for all these
shortcomings of mine."

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 311
Such a temper of detachment, tranquillity, and
patient confidence could not but hasten the second
phase of Emerson's influence, — the period of
imitation. That efflorescence of romanticism and
naturahsm which appeared in New England
about 1840, and which appropriated to itself —
with questionable accuracy — the title of Tran
scendentalism, was a very varied growth. Some
times, as in Emerson, It was a genuine application
of the philosophy of Kant and FIchte, of Coleridge
and Wordsworth, Sometimes it was, as Mr,
Frothingham, In his History of Transcendental
ism, has remarked, little more than that a " feeling
was abroad that all things must be new in a new
world," Orestes Brownson wrote in 1 840, " All
are able to detect the supernatural because all
have the supernatural in themselves," Margaret
Fuller published "The Dial from 1840-44; and
the " Orphic Sayings " of Alcott bewildered or
amused, as the temper of the reader might receive
them. The Scriptures of other religions, Chinese,
Buddhist, Persian, were for the first time access
ible, and enlarged the horizon of religious sym
pathy and unity. " Tell me, brothers," wrote one
of the poets of TranscendentaHsm, Christopher
Cranch, — " Tell me, brothers, what are we,
Spirits bathing in the sea
Of Deity."

312 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The reversion to simplicity took shape in the
Brook Farm enterprise in 1842, where some
seventy spirits found a modest substitute for bath
ing In the sea of Deity in farm labor and high con
verse by the -sluggish brook of West Roxbury.
Hawthorne was there for a single month ; but, as
he frankly wrote, " chopping wood and turning
the grindstone all the forenoon disturbs the equi
librium." " A man's soul may be buried under a
dung-heap just as well as under a pile of money."
" Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five
golden months in- providing fodder for cows and
horses ? It is not so ! " All these dreams and
schemes were laid before Emerson as the high priest
of Transcendentalism. Many a young minister,
catching the method — or lack of method — of
Emerson, but quite unvisited by the spirit of
Emerson, cultivated the manner of Orphic utter
ance, of disconnected aphorism and vague aspira
tion, talked in a large way of " Socrates, Jesus,
and Mohammed," or even of " Socrates, Jesus,
and myself," and poured upon his undlscern-
ing and diminishing congregation an unfertiliz-
ing stream of Emerson and water. Many a young
writer fancied that the secret of Emerson was a
trick of style, just as one observer is reported to
have said that the power of Phillips Brooks was
in the use of his hands ; and much prose and

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 313
verse was written which had nothing in them of
Emerson but his fragmentarlness, and, instead of
living actors, gave us jerky puppets. Mystics
like Jones Very sought out the seer at Concord.
Reformers came to discuss Brook Farm or the
still more helpless scheme of Frultlands. All
these issues and echoes of Transcendentalism,
however, were confronted by the singular sanity
and serenity of Emerson's mind. He could not
be induced to become a fanatic, a communist, a
vegetarian, a Delphic oracle, or a come-outer. He
disappointed many an agitator. He was a con
servative among the apostles of the "Newness."
" At the name of a society," he wrote, " all my
repulsions play, all my quills rise." " I wished,"
he said of Brook Farm, " to be thawed, to be
made nobly mad ; . . . but this scheme was only
arithmetic and comfort. . . . Not once could I be
inflamed : . . . my voice faltered and fell." Jones
Very charged him with coldness. " You see the
truth better than others, yet I felt that your
spirit was not quite right. It was as if a vein of
cold air blew across me." What really met the
young poet's hectic mood was a vein of wisdom
and restraint, an air of Yankee shrewdness, which
like a keen wind across the Concord meadows
swept away from Emerson all unhealthy introspec
tion, and kept him rugged, sagacious, alert, con-

314 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
trolled, the despair of imitators and the disap
pointment of the dreamers and schemers of his
day. As the influence of Emerson receded a little
into the region of history, still another attitude of
mind concerning him became conspicuous, — the
attitude of criticism. Sometimes It approached
the manner of condescension, as In the judgment
of Matthew Arnold : " Emerson is not one of the
great poets, the great writers. Emerson cannot
be called with justice a great philosophical writer."
Sometimes it has a more audacious air of patron
age, as when an American critic remarks that
Emerson, " had the juvenile pedantry of renas
cent New England," and "was Hmited by the
national inexperience." Sometimes it Is the frank
confession of the man of system that the man
without a system is not the man for him. This
is the impression made on so great and so sym
pathetic a critic as Martineau. " The failure of
coherent continuity of thought," writes Martineau
of Emerson " leaves his fine material in an un
organized and fathomless condition. Much as I
love the man, I seek in vain to learn from him.
The fault is probably in me."
But what has been the fate of Emerson's in
fluence, as it has thus survived these periods
of hostility, of imitation, and of criticism ? Ob-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 315
viously, it has been a steadily growing influence.
The spiritual life of the modern world finds itself
more and more nourished by Emerson's writings.
His cardinal doctrine, which once appeared to
many critics perilous to Christian faith, has
become the common property of all rational
Christians ; and, while more than one system of
philosophy has had its day and ceased to be, the
loosely scattered seed of Emerson's prose and
verse, though much of it fell on stony and shallow
ground, has found an increasing area of congenial
soil and an abundant harvest. In the year 1870
I happened to be one of the very small group of
college students who listened to the only course
of Emerson's lectures which made any attempt at
academic form. In these university lectures,
where, if any where, one should look for conscious
system, and which made one part of a scheme
of graduate instruction in philosophy, Emerson
began by disclaiming any attempt at system.
" System-makers," he said, were " gnats grasping
the universe." What he had to offer was but
" anecdotes of the intellect," a " farmer's almanac
of mental moods," " a tally of things to
thoughts." We were to " watch the stream of
thought, running along by it a little way," but
seeing only a little, knowing that " the stream is
hollowing out Its own bed." I can well recall

3i6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
the hopelessness with which the young note-
takers, fresh from one course on the British
Logician and another on the Critique of the
Pure Reason, closed their note-books with a
sense of being let out of school, and ran gladly
along by the stream of thought, while this serene
observer pointed out its eddies and shallows, its
destiny and obstacles, its light and shade. " This
subject," concludes one lecture, " is to be finished
next time " ; and the dingy note-book comments
flippantly, " To what subject does he here
refer ? " Yet here is the strange conclusion of
this unacademic, unscholastic influence, — that,
when thirty years later Harvard University seeks
for a name to set on a building to be devoted to
philosophy, it is the name of Emerson which
seems most representative of the intellectual
ideals of America. Psychologists and metaphy
sicians, teachers of theology and of sociology,
men of the academic habit and of technical dis
cipline, all have agreed that the comprehensive
purpose of philosophy will be best indicated by
the recognition of insight, sagacity, and fearless
ness as the conditions of philosophic progress, and
of ethical idealism as its goal, and that these
fiindamental principles will find peculiar inspira
tion in a building which shall be known as " Em
erson Hall."

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 317
What then, we ask ourselves, are the charac
teristics which through all these vicissitudes of
opposition and criticism have perpetuated the
influence of Emerson and made him, as Matthew
Arnold said, " the friend and aider of those who
would walk in the spirit " ? How is it that
Emerson Is a prophet of religious liberty ? What
is the way of spiritual freedom which he has
shown, and whither does It lead ? Dismissing
for the moment our literary judgments of Emer
son as essayist or poet, guarding ourselves from
the charm of incidental aphorisms and the dis
tinction of occasional thoughts, what is it that has
penetrated religion and philosophy like an atmos
phere, and has invited thousands of hearts to
throw open their doors of welcome, as when one
stands upon his threshold and breathes the morn
ing air of the first day of approaching spring?
It might be anticipated that an answer to this
question would be by no means easy to reach.
Climatic influences are difficult to analyze. An
atmosphere is lost when it is decomposed. It
would seem to be as hard to fix and define the
shifting occasionalism of Emerson as to report all
the moods and gusts and clouds and sunshine of
a New England April day. This diversity, how
ever, is but the form of Emerson's teaching.
Beneath it lies an unusual singleness, one might

3i8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
almost say, a monotone of thought. It is as if
in our shifting spring one kept a thermometer
where it was sheltered from sudden changes, and
was surprised to find the temperature of the day
so nearly uniform. That which gave to Emerson
his sense of power, and made him able to say,
" If the single man plant himself on his instinct
and there abide, the whole world will come round
to him," was his confidence in two fundamental
principles, which became clear to him — one might
almost say, seemed were revealed to him — in early
life, and which sustained him throughout his
career. It is, in fact, quite startling to recall how
young a man he was when he first clearly an
nounced these principles, " Nature," appeared
in 1836, when its author was but thirty-three
years old ; the first Phi Beta Kappa oration, in
1837; the Divinity School Address, in 1838;
the lectures on "The Present Age," in 1839;
those on "The Times," in 1841; and In these
early writings the doctrine of Emerson concerning
man, God, life, and duty, is set forth with such
lucidity and absoluteness that nothing was left for
his remaining forty years of life but to amplify,
apply, illustrate, and reiterate, with infinitely vary
ing notes of expression, the creed he had so soon
attained. His career was like some great work
of thematic music, where the fundamental move-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 319.
ment is first boldly struck, and then, with an in
creasing richness as the various instruments take
up the. theme, the original motif is heard
through all the diversities and complexities of the
master's art. And what were these two spiritual
axioms which were announced before Emerson
was forty years old ; the themes on which his
thought, like an artist's fingers, dwells with loving
reiteration, and to which, when he is seventy-six
years old, he returns in his lectures on " The
Preacher," as an initial theme is restated at a
symphony's close ? They were : first, the prin
ciple that truth should be detached from person
ality, — the doctrine that the soul knows no
persons ; and, secondly, the principle of the
present revelation, — the doctrine of the imma
nence of God. Let us try to estimate the signi
ficance and permanence of these two foundations
of Emerson's thought, which are distinguished by
him as cause and consequence, but which in
reality appear to be simply the negative and the
positive aspects of a single truth.
The doctrine that the soul knows no persons
is a negative proposition. It is a protest against
the substitution of the person of Jesus for the
ideals of the soul as the source of spiritual power.
" Christianity," Emerson says, " as it is commonly

320 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
taught, is not the doctrine of the soul, but an
exaggeration of the personal," " It has dwelt, it
dwells, with noxious exaggerations about the per
son of Jesus," " By his holy thought Jesus
serves us, and thus only," "The preachers do
not see that they make his gospel not glad," " Do
not degrade the life and dialogue of Christ , , ,
by insulation and peculiarity. Let them lie as
they befell, alive and warm, part of human life
and of the landscape and of the cheerful day,"
It was a protest which the New England Protest
antism of fifty years ago needed to hear. Pro
vincialism and Pharisaism threatened both Evan
gelical and Unitarian preaching, "Admiration
for [Christ] ," said Emerson, " runs away with
reverence for the human soul, , , , and inclines
the manly reader to lay down the New Testa
ment, to take up the Pagan philosophers,"
" The base doctrine of the majority of voices
usurps the place of [immediate inspiration] ; and
miracles, prophecy, poetry, the ideal life, the
holy life, exist as ancient history merely," " The
idioms of [Christ's] language , . , have usurped
the place of his truth, and the churches are built
not on his principles, but on his ' tropes,' " Thus,
what has come to be called a " Christocentric "
theology appeared to Emerson both degrading
of the nature of Christ and restrictive of the

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 321
nature of man. Yet, when this reaction from
traditionalism was enlarged by Emerson into a
positive axiom, it became a doctrine which re
ligious thought during the last fifty vears has
largely outgrown. To advance from the his
torical proposition that Jesus is a spiritual leader
rather than a dogmatic authority to the philo
sophical proposition that the soul knows no
persons Is to take a long step. It is one thing
to fix the place of Jesus in history : it is quite
another thing to eliminate the person of Jesus
from the movement of history. Yet this seemed
the step which Emerson was inclined to take, and
this was certainly the Inference which less guarded
minds derived from the doctrine that " the soul
knows no persons." "The dogma of the mystic
office of Christ being dropped," . . . said Emer
son, " 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis
on his personality ; and it recedes, as all persons
must, before the sublimity of the moral laws."
Much more sweeplngly Theodore Parker af
firmed : " It is hard to see why the great truths
of Christianity rest on the personal authority of
Jesus more than the axioms of geometry rest on
the personal experience of Euclid or Archimedes."
And in his later edition he added, in more auda
cious form, "If Christianity be true at all, it
would be just as true If Herod or Catiline had

322 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
taught it." This detachment of truth from per
sons became the shibboleth of Transcendentalism,
and what in Emerson was a trumpet-call to the
defence of the human soul became in others a
shrill scream of ignorant egotism. The new and
imperfect acquaintance with Oriental religions con
tributed to this emancipation from the Christian
tradition. It was vaguely fancied that these
other Scriptures met needs of the heart which
Christianity did not satisfy, and that religion, to
be free, must be detached from the person of
Jesus. I remember a fellow-student of theology
whose soul still wanted a person to interpret it,
but who had read just enough fragments of Em
erson to make him fancy that Christian loyalty
was getting old-fashioned, saying to me one day,
" I have found the Messiah 1 " " And who is
he?" I asked. "Zoroaster," he answered with
out even a smile.
What is the historical outcome of this aspect
of TranscendentaHsm ? I think we must con
clude that it represented a temporary reaction of
thought, and that the process of the years has
brought us where — whatever may be held of
the truths of science, as independent of the char
acter of scientific men — the detachment of truth
from personality in matters of ethical and spir
itual concerns is seen to be impossible. The

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 323
whole movement of thought during the last gen
eration renews the assurance that progress is
made through personality ; that, instead of the
soul knowing no persons, the soul is known best
through persons ; that spiritual truth must be
discerned by spiritual men ; that, as Bunsen said,
" personality Is the lever of history " ; that,
as Phillips Brooks constantly affirmed, " every
man's power is his idea multiplied and projected
through his personality." It is the reward of
the pure in heart, says Jesus, that they shall
see God. The vision of the perfect truth is
reserved for the perfect man. The lens of the
instrument must be pure before the stars come
into view. Character creates insight. The truth
Is inseparable from the person. This is a teach
ing which the influence of Jesus himself illustrates
and confirms. Nothing could more distort the
gospel than to say that " Christianity would be
just as true if Herod or Catiline had taught it,"
for it is impossible to conceive that they should
have taught it, Herod was not likely to say,
" Blessed are the poor In spirit," or Catiline,
" Turn the other cheek also," The teaching of
Jesus, alike for those who heard it and for those
who read it, is an expression of the character of
Jesus, The person incarnates the truth. The
word Is made flesh. The loyalty of the Christian

324 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
world is not to Impersonal truth, but to truth
expressed through personality.
This interdependence of the message and the
man make the whole history of ethical and re
ligious thought. The truth that interprets,
strengthens, makes free, has behind It the free,
strong interpreter. No spiritual message can
permanently direct the world which does not
issue from a true pure life. The soul of the
world not only knows persons, but knows no
other guides. Indeed, no finer witness of this
spiritual principle can be named than Emerson
himself Incisive, illuminating, enlarging as his
message is, who can separate it from the person
which, on every page, is so unconsciously dis
closed, — the unworldly, detached, serene, grave,
yet smiling master ? Who does not recognize
that the thought of Emerson is directed by his
character, that the soul of his writings is the soul
of a person, that the purity of his heart gives
him discernment of the Eternal ? Here, in fact,
is Emerson's own proof of immortality, in verses
which to thoughtful readers have brought more
rational consolation In sorrow than perhaps
any word since the New Testament, The
whole argument of the " Threnody " is based
upon the principle of personality, Emerson
had seen in his home the spiritual traits which

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 325
must survive and remain recognizable. This, he
wrote, is
" The verdict which accumulates
From lengthening scroll of human fates,
Saying, IThat is excellent.
As God lives, is permanent ;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain.
Heart's love will meet thee again ! "
In an unpublished address of Phillips Brooks,
he remarks, " What impresses us most in the
most God-like men we ever see is the inability
to tell in them what of their power is intellectual
and what is moral." That was precisely what
Impressed one In Phillips Brooks himself, and
what perplexed those who debated whether he
should be called a thinker or merely a noble per
son. He was both. The peculiar refinement
and Insight of his thought proceeded from the
peculiar elevation and discipline of his character.
The unflecked lens permitted the larger view.
The pure in heart saw God. It was the same
with Emerson. Out from behind his wise judg
ment comes the wise, shrewd, observant teacher.
When he says, " That is best which gives me to
myself," we believe it, because he thus possessed
himself and needed few other possessions. How
could he teach sanity, patience, the dignity of

326 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
common things, the law of the scholar's life, the
divinity of the natural man, if he had not made
these principles the habits of his life, the com
panions of his daily walks, the marks of his own
character? In a passage in "Nature" it seems
to be rather the person that makes the truth than
the truth which uses persons. "We create," he
writes, " our own world through the perfection of
our own soul." "Talent," he goes on in his
essay on " Worship," " links with character."
" The moment of your loss of faith will be the
solstice of genius." Emerson, in short, is a
singular contradiction of the thesis that the soul
knows no persons ; for his influence is in the
highest degree that of a person, of whose un
stained and responsive soul the essay and the
poem are the disclosure and expression.
The doctrine that the soul knows no person
would seem, then, to be difficult to maintain.
Indeed there are many indications that Emerson
himself felt no command to follow the logic
of his phrase. Other minds — more systematic
perhaps, but less sagacious — might use his doc
trine to depreciate the personality of Jesus or to
deny the personality of God, but neither criti
cism nor pantheism disturbed the balance of
Emerson's thought. His recognition of the spir
itual leadership of Jesus Christ is glad and un-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 327
restrained. "Alone in all history," he says,
" Jesus estimated the greatness of men. Having
seen that the law in us is commanding, he would
not suffer It to be commanded. Boldly with
hand and heart and life he declared it was God.
[His] name is not so much written as ploughed
into the history of the world." He was " the
only soul In history who has appreciated the worth
of man." "All the maxims of Christ are true to
the core of the world." " Since the parrot-world
will be swift to renounce the name of Christ, . . .
it behooves the lover of God to love that lover
of God." The same reverence for personality
appears in his thought of God. " I cannot find,"
he says, indeed, " any truth in saying that God is
personal." But why is the soul of things thus
Impersonal to Emerson ? It Is because he de
fines personality by limitation. "To represent
God as an individual," he says, " is to shut him
out of my consciousness. He is then but a great
man. I feel that there is some profanation in
saying he is personal." Yet in the same passage
of his journal he reaffirms the higher personal
ity. " I deny personality to God, because it is
too little, not too much. . . . [He is] the life of
life, the reason of reason, the love of love."
Here there Is no thought of a soul without a
person, but only the expression of a doubt con-

328 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
cerning the use of a word, as of one who had
perhaps read the dictum of Strauss : " Personal
ity is separated existence. The absolute is the
all-embracing. . . . Absolute personality is thus a
contradiction in terms." How welcome to Emer
son would have been the movement of modern
philosophy which finds In Lotze its best expres
sion, and in which personality appears not as a
sign of limitation, but of completeness, and can
be affirmed not of the fragmentary conditions of
human life, but only of the completeness and con
tinuity of God ! " Personality," says Lotze, in
the final words of his great work, " can be com
plete in an infinite being only : ... of the person
ality of finite beings we have little right to speak.
It is an ideal. Like every Ideal, it is in Its ful
ness his only who is Infinite ; and, like every
perfect good, it is ours only conditionally and
imperfectly to share."
It may then be surmised that the doctrine of
Emerson which detaches truth from personality
was not the teaching which most shaped his
thought ; and it Is quite evident that the later
progress of religious philosophy has led to a new
appreciation of the personal element in God, in
Christ, in history, in philosophy, in modern life.
When we turn, however, to the second principle
of Emerson's spiritual philosophy, our judgment

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 329
must be quite reversed ; for here we meet the
positive, abiding, timeless aspect of his thought.
" Men have come," says Emerson, " to speak of
the revelation as somewhat long ago given and
done, as if God were dead." Over against a back
ward-looking, historical, unasslmilated faith Emer
son presents the human soul, the moral law, the
present, immanent, self-revealing God. " The
poor Jews," he wrote, " of the wilderness, cried :
Let not the Lord speak to us ; let Moses speak
to us. But the simple and sincere soul makes the
contrary prayer : Let no intruder come between
Thee and me; let me know it is Thy will, and I
ask no more." " The nameless Thought, the
nameless Power, the super-personal Heart, —
[we] shall repose in that." In a word, Emerson
is a mystic, one of that long succession of teachers
of all religious faiths who are witnesses of the
present Holy Spirit, the life of God in the soul
of man. Extravagant, excessive, ecstatic, quietls-
tic, unappreciative of the life of thought and con
duct may mystics have been ; yet they form a
thread of the pure gold of natural piety, which
runs through the whole fabric of religious his
tory, and gives it richness, beauty, and strength.
Hindu Yogis and Greek ascetics, neo-Platonlsts
and Persian Sufis, mediaeval priests and French
Quietists, English Quakers and German Romanti-

330 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
cists, — a strange procession they make as they
march across the stage of history, with their
different garb and actions, their various habits and
dreams ; yet all unite in the one confession
that without mediation or Indirection, the spirit
of the Eternal speaks to the waiting mind of man.
Whether It be Philo, the Jew, affirming that
" Contemplation of the divine essence is the
noblest exercise of man," or a Christian Platonist
repeating, " The soul receives the hidden word
which God utters In the Inward place," or the
unknown mediaeval author of the " Theologia
Germanica," — the book which Luther set next to
the Bible and Saint Augustine, — saying, "He who
is Imbued with the eternal light ... is a partaker
of the divine nature " ; whether it be Jacob
Boehme, saying, " The spirit of man contains a
spark from the power and light of God," or
Madame Guyon writing in her autobiography,
" My soul passed wholly and altogether into Its
God, even as a little drop of water cast into the
sea receives the qualities of the sea," — it is aU
one song of confident, personal faith ; and this
lyric of the soul is taken up in grave, re
strained, yet unfaltering utterance by Emerson.
" The relations of the soul to the Divine spirit,"
he says, " are so pure that it is profane to seek to
interpose helps." " Whenever a mind is simple

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 331
and receives a Divine wisdom, old things pass
away." " God builds his temple in the heart."
"In all ages, to all men it saith, I am, and he
who hears it feels the impiety of wandering from
this revelation to any record or any rival."
Emerson, then, is a mystic. It is one of the
most curious and instructive facts in religious
history that each vigorous movement of spiritual
progress, having had its era of theological recon
struction, emerges at last into some expression of
mysticism. It is like a plant that first takes firm
root upon the earth and slowly develops its hard
stem, and then, as if by the miracle of a single
night, blooms in a flower which seems of quite
another nature from the stalk on which it grew.
Out of the formal theology and ritual of the
Mediaeval Church bloomed one day the beauty
of Tauler's preaching ; out of the severity of
English Puritanism started the consciousness of
the Inner Light in George Fox ; out of the New
England tradition of conscientious self-examina
tion and individual responsibility bloomed the
mysticism of Emerson. It is Impossible to
detach the flower from Its stock or to conceive of
Emerson as without a root In the Puritan tradi
tion. Differ as he may from the Puritan theology,
he could have appeared nowhere else than In a
Puritan Church.

33^ RALPH WALDO EMERSON
" We love the venerable house
Our fathers built to God,"
says Emerson's hymn. He is a product of New
England Congregationalism. His roots were in
this Church. The movement of religious liberty
had here its rugged growth of thought and con
duct, and at last bloomed in the fragrant flower
of the mystic's creed.
Emerson Is a mystic. That is the quality
which to many minds makes him Ineffective, per
plexing, self-contradictory, unconvincing. They
ask for orderliness, and he gives them paragraphs
where each phrase is, as he said, " an Infinitely
repelling particle." They look for argument,
and he replies that he does not know what argu
ment means when applied to a matter of thought.
They doubt his affirmation of the Eternal, and
he makes of their very doubt a witness of his
God: — " They reckon ill who leave me out ;
When me they fly, I am the wings ;
I am the doubter and the doubt.
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings."
Thus to the rationalist, the system-maker, the
"understanding" of man, — to use Emerson's
free adaptation of German philosophy, — as dis
tinguished from the reason, the mystic, with

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 333
his assurance of things not seen or proved, his
indifference to history, tradition, and association,
his open vision of the present God, remains un-
Interpretable, illogical, misleading, a philosophical
paradox, an eddy in the main movement of
religious history. Yet, on the other hand, here
is the quality which to thousands of readers gives
Emerson a unique place among the prophets of
the soul. The mystic does not guess or prove
or laboriously infer from the records of the past.
He knows, he sees, he experiences ; and his report
of God is as immediate and spontaneous as his
report of the song of birds in the Walden woods.
" It is a blessed thing," said Phillips Brooks,
" that In all times there have always been men
to whom reHglon has not presented itself as a
system of doctrines, but as an elemental life in
which the soul of man comes into very direct
and close communion with the soul of God."
That is what draws many a troubled mind to
Emerson. Amid the conflict of the churches and
the contentions of the creeds and the uncertain
ties of history here is a teacher who is sure of
himself, unruffled and serene, cheerful and sane.
The temples where men have tried to find God
may seem to lose their holiness ; but Emerson
says with Saint Paul, " The temple of God is
holy, which temple ye are." The sense of mean-

334 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
ing, beauty, communication, may have seemed to
desert the universe, so that one cries, " There Is
no speech or language, their voice is not heard " ;
but Emerson answers, " Within man is the soul
of the Holy, the wise Silence, the universal Heart,
the eternal One." There Is a quality of tlmeless-
ness in mysticism. When it sings of that : —
" Vision where all form
In one only form dissolves,"
one can hardly guess whether it is the voice of
Eckhart or of Emerson. When it makes its
confession, " There the holy essence rolls
One through separated souls,"
one hardly knows whether this is a hymn of
Alexandria or of Concord. The mystic in every
age is the consolation and support of moods to
which few thoughtful minds fail to rise, when
poetry has seemed more true than prose, and
imagination the open path to reality, and the
soul in its solitude has touched the Eternal ; and,
as Emerson sings, —
" Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity ;
Beauty through my senses stole,
I yielded myself to the perfect whole."

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 335
As one considers the subject of these Thursday
Lectures on the History* of ReHglous Libert^-, and
reviews the names which represent that history
in the United States, it is interesting to speculate
as to the personalities and influences which are
Hkely to sur%-ive. What personalities in Ameri
can life, one asks himself, may be reasonably
defined as world-personalities in the historv of
reHglon, and, among these, which are the influ
ences that are likelv to be constructive forces in
the religion of the fiiture ? It must be answered
that the contribution of this country to such
spiritual leadership is small. The names which
naturaUv suggest themselves belong, for the most
part, to special epochs or special communions
rather than to the race ; and, as the issues of one
age or church are historically determined, these
masters are rather reverenced than read, and their
works are crowned %vith honor, and with dust.
Out of the earlv history there emerges but one
personal influence which still affects. In any con
siderable degree, the reHgious world, — the influ
ence of Jonathan Edwards. But the spiritual
vision and devout illumination of Edwards,
though thev stamp him as of the highest order of
reHgious genius, are so inextricablv involved with
the history of Calvinism that, with the decline
of general confidence in that theology, the work

336 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
of Edwards recedes into history, and offers but
slight spiritual nourishment to the thought of
the modern world. The nineteenth century in
the United States bore many men of spiritual
power ; but, for the most part, their influence
has had necessary limitations. Bushnell's thought
has experienced a steadily expanding influence;
and his doctrine of Christian nurture is now, for
the first time, obtaining just recognition and ac
ceptance; but Bushnell's work was so largely
devoted to the correction and enrichment of the
specific doctrines of New England theology that
its effect has been felt in the history of doctrine
rather than in the literature of universal religion.
Beecher, the most gifted of American preachers,
stirred his generation to the love of man, of
country, and of God ; but the vocation of a
preacher, while it permits the joy of a profound
immediate effect, almost necessarily involves a
transltoriness of influence, and the words of
Beecher, in part because they expressed with such
precision the heart of his own time, must accept
the preacher's fate of temporariness. Theodore
Parker's vocation, though fortified by learning and
passion, was that of warfare among the special
conflicts of his own age ; and his work may be
remembered under the title which is written on
the grave of Lassalle, — " Thinker and fighter."

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 337
It is difficult for those who have hung upon the
passionate eloquence of Phillips Brooks to believe
that his influence also must share the fate of the
preacher's calling. Wherever his majestic pres
ence stood and the contagion of his faith was
felt, the world will never seem again without
illumination ; and the • lift of this whole com
munity to a higher spiritual level and a broader
horizon of truth Is a gain which cannot be lost.
It was quite within his power to become a great
constructive theologian, and more than once he
turned with eagerness to opportunities for this
career ; but he was held by circumstances to the
preacher's vocation, and his place in our religious
history seems to be not that of a theologian or
reformer, but, as he would perhaps most desire,
that of the consummate flower of modern Chris
tian prophecy.
There remain but two names in the religious
history of the United States which may be reason
ably expected to have a permanent place in the
religious literature of the world The significance
of Channing is obscured in this community by his
relation to a single body of Christians. To read
him has seemed dangerous to many who disap
prove of Unitarianism, and superfluous to those
who are already Unitarian. Few Boston Unita
rians of this generation would hesitate to name

338 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Channing as their representative ; but fewer still,
perhaps, have read him. It is necessary to stand
a long way off from these local issues to see
Channing at his full size. When the Chevalier
Bunsen, in his great work, was describing " The
Progress of Man's Faith in the Moral Order of
the World through the Personalities of History,"
he remarked: "We pass to consider the prophet
of man's religious consciousness to the United
States, — Channing." " Channing is an antique
hero with a Christian heart," " He Is a man
like a Hellene, a citizen like a Roman, a Chris
tian like an apostle," That is the impression
made on great numbers of thoughtful minds in
many countries, as they read one of the many
translations of this calm interpreter of the duty
of man and the nature of God, The dominating
influence of Channing on the preaching and
philanthropy of the present time is like the
round dome of a mountain, which does not show
its height until one stands where he can see the
outline of the whole range of lesser hills. The
other spiritual influence which is evidently in
creasing in importance as the years go by, is that
of Emerson, It is vain to consider which of
these men was the greater. It is like debating
the merits of Greek and Gothic architecture.
Channing is classic, symmetrical, convincing,

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 339
noble ; and to many minds his Hellenic spirit
best expresses the perfect plan of life. But tem
peraments there always are, and leaping instincts
in the most temperate of minds, which respond to
the Gothic ideal, the daring, visionary, high-
vaulted, imaginative, mystic reach of the soul.
"The Grecian," says Mr. Lowell,
"gluts me with its perfectness,
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,
The one thing perfect in this hasty world.
But ah ! this other, this that never ends.
Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb.
Imagination's very self in stone.
With one long sigh of infinite release,
I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth."
It is the very daring of the art of Emerson, the
richness of each fragment, the lift of thought,
even the dimness of expression, like the dim
vista of a Gothic aisle, that make him the quiet
ing resort of many a troubled mind. One enters
Emerson, and the noise of business and ambition
ceases. " Why so hot, little man ? " say the cool,
dark sentences; and the slighter incidents of life
let go their hold as one sits In the dark and owns
himself a happy Goth.

X

Theodore Parker and the Naturalization
of Religion

THEODORE PARKER AND THE
NATURALIZATION OF
RELIGION.
In his recent book on " What is Christian
ity ? " Professor Harnack wrote these words :
" How often and often in the history of reHglon
has there been a tendency to do away with some
traditional form of doctrine or ritual which has
ceased to satisfy inwardly, but to do away with it
by giving a new interpretation ! The endeavor
seems to be succeeding: the temper and the
knowledge prevailing at the moment are favor
able to it, — when, lo and behold, the old mean
ing suddenly comes back again. The actual
words of the liturgy, of the official doctrine,
prove stronger than anything else. . . . There
is no tougher or more conservative fabric than
a properly constituted religion : it can yield to a
higher phase only by being abolished. No per
manent effect could be expected in the apostolic
age from the twisting and turning of the Law
so as to make room for the new faith side by
side with it, or so to approximate the old relig
ion to that faith. Some one had to stand up
and say, ' The old is done away ' ; he had to

344

THEODORE PARKER

brand any further pursuit of it as a sin ; he had
to show that all things had become new. The
man who did that was the apostle Paul, and It is
in having done it that his greatness in the history
of the world consists."
Eighteen hundred years later the need again
clamored for a champion. Some one had to
stand up and say, " The old Is done away " ; he
had to brand any further pursuit of it as a sin ;
he had to show that all things had become new.
The man who did that In the later days was
Theodore Parker, and it is in having done it that
his greatness consists.
Consider the theological position here in New
England In 1841, four years after he had entered
the ministry, the very year In which he delivered
his famous " Discourses on Matters pertaining to
Religion." The earlier preaching of the Unitarians had
driven the orthodox ministers to a more definite
and tense holding of their opinions. They had
drawn their skirts more closely about them lest
they be accused of touching the unclean heresy
with so much as the hem of their garment. They
declared their doctrines with more than usual
unction. Lyman Beecher had come to Boston
with the express purpose of denouncing and re-
fiiting Unitarianism on its own ground. Young

THEODORE PARKER 345
Parker attended his ministrations for a year.
Possibly this experience added material for his
later feeHng ; for he confessed that " the notorious
dulness of the Sunday services, their mechanical
character, the poverty and insignificance of the
sermons, the unnaturalness and uncertainty of the
doctrines preached on the authority of a ' divine
and Infallible revelation,' the lifelessness of pub
lic prayers, and the consequent heedlessness of
the congregation, — all tended to turn a young
man off from becoming a minister." This preach
ing was artificial, philosophical, dogmatic. It was
not lacking in fervor and emotion ; but it was the
proclamation of a system rather than of a life ;
and as such was repugnant to this man whose
arteries throbbed with warm, red blood.
On the other hand, he found among the
Unitarians much of what was unreal to him.
There was a use of conventional theological
vocabulary, and the practice of many of the
ancient customs and usages. He felt that they
had not yet freed themselves from the very
orthodoxy against which they contended. They
were hatched, indeed ; but to many of them the
shell still clung in patches. They used the old
words, but with new interpretations. This im
parted a sort of fuzziness to the edges of their
thought which both confused and Irritated Parker.

346 THEODORE PARKER
He had no terms of refined Latinity for sin, nor
had he the slightest inclination to call a spade a
"usefiil agricultural Implement employed in ex
cavations." Moreover, he found the Unitarians
at variance among themselves, — at one in their
main contentions with orthodoxy, but widely
separated on the positive statements of their
belief Parker clarified the situation by driving the
orthodox into a more concentrated position,
and by demanding from the Unitarians more
exact statements of their ambiguous terminology.
If the orthodox were to link his name with that
of Voltaire and Tom Paine, and call him " infi
del " and " atheist," at least they knew why they
did so. If Unitarians found it often difficult
and sometimes impossible to exchange pulpits
with him, they, too, at least knew why.
It is said that a solution of rock-salt will pass
from the liquid to the crystallized state if touched
at the right moment by something outside itself
Such a transformation was effected in the fluid
theological opinions by the great South Boston
sermon on " The Transient and Permanent in
Christianity." It was delivered in May, 1841,
on the occasion of the ordination of Mr. Shack-
ford, and was heard by many ministers. The
effect was tremendous. Boston was thrown into

THEODORE PARKER 347
uproar like that In the city of old, when men
threw dust Into the air and shouted long and
loud in praise of their ancient gods. It became
a " test of faith to exchange pulpits with him."
The Boston Association of Ministers debated
the question whether he were a Christian, and
should he not be expelled, but were mercifully
restrained from formal action. Four years later
Parker addressed a letter to this Association,
asking for definitions of four terms, — salvation,
miracle, inspiration, revelation. This letter called
forth a host of replies, many of them sharp and
stringent, some of them satirical, a few of them
courteous and discriminating, but all of them re
gretting the way in which Mr. Parker handled
sacred themes ; for he had translated the time-
honored and ancient terminology into the ver
nacular. That this should seem to them so blame
worthy Indicated the validity of his contention.
Perhaps this will suffice for the present to
justify the quotation from Harnack with which I
began. " Some one had to stand up and say,
' The old is done away ' ; he had to brand any
further pursuit of It as a sin ; he had to show that
aU things had become new." Of course, he was
dreaded and misunderstood by friends and foes.
Let us now consider Theodore Parker's equip
ment for this clarifying process. He came from

348 THEODORE PARKER
a race of men whose habit It was to clarify the
air. His grandfather had been sergeant in the
French and Indian War: he had learned to see
clearly the injustice of England's treatment of
the colonies ; and, when the old bell rang the
summons to resist the British on Lexington
Green, this John Parker, weak with the illness
which later ended his life, drew up his troop of
seventy neighbors, ordered them to load with
powder and ball, not to fire unless fired upon,
but adding those memorable words, " If they
mean to have a war, let it begin here." The
fowling-piece which he had carried, and a musket
which he captured from a grenadier, hung
crossed on the wall of his grandson's study, — an
abiding inspiration. And " of nothing in his
own career was Theodore so proud as of Captain
John Parker's deeds and words at the battle of
Lexington." Parker's father was a " quiet, thoughtful, silent
man, of strong sense, of great moral worth, re
liable, honorable ; worked every day and all day ;
taught his children to speak the truth ; always
had a book in his hand in the evening." He was
an intelligent observer of natural things ; he
thought for himself, and reached sensible con
clusions ; was often called upon to arbitrate in
disputes, administer estates, and assume the

THEODORE PARKER 349
guardianship of orphans. "He was a religious
man, of the grave, earnest sort, — without much
emotion ; an avowed Unitarian before Unitarian
ism as a system was preached ; a stout Federalist
when there were but four besides himself In the
whole town."
Theodore's mother was " a handsome woman
of slight form, flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a
singularly fresh and delicate complexion." She
lived much in her imagination and feelings,
was of a poetic and romantic temperament, of
deep and earnest religion, which came not in the
armor of theological creed, but bubbled up from
her trusting heart, a well of water springing Into
eternal life. " She knew God as an omnipresent
Father, whose voice was conscience, whose Prov
idence was kindly, — the joyous soul of all things,
animating nature and enlightening mind, — filling
the world with tides of energy that were as
vast as the ocean, and bright as the rivulets."
This description of his parents is in the main
from Theodore himself, — the just and tender
estimate by a noble man of the noble two who
gave him birth. And from it we can readily see
how he came naturally by his courage for his
sensible opinions, and by those subtle intuitions
, which weighed more with him than the fabric of
logic.

350 THEODORE PARKER
Once, when a little boy of four years, he was
tempted to strike a spotted tortoise sunning him
self in the shallow water of a wayside pool.
" But all at once something checked my little
arm," he writes, " and a voice within me said,
clear and loud, ' It is wrong.' I hastened home
and told the tale to my mother, and asked what
it was that told me it was wrong. She took me
in her arms and said : ' Some men call it con
science, but I prefer to call it the voice of God
In the soul of man. If you listen and obey it,
then it will speak clearer and clearer, and always
guide you right ; but, if you turn a deaf ear or
disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and
leave you all in the dark, and without a guide.
Your life depends upon heeding this little voice.'
. . . And I am sure that no event in my life has
made so deep and lasting an Impression on me."
I have ventured on the telling of this oft-told in
cident because it shows so well the strongest
Influence upon his childhood, and reveals the re
sponsiveness to that influence which grew stronger
with the years.
Theodore Parker was a natural little boy, liv
ing in a sweet and genuine atmosphere. He was
a natural youth, when at the age of twenty-two
he opened his private school in Watertown, and
taught his boys religion from the texts of their

THEODORE PARKER 351
daily tasks or from the living things that
thronged their pathway through the woods. And
how natural and wholesome was the spirit in
which he sought the high office of the ministry
is manifested through the questions which he
asked himself on the threshold of Harvard Di
vinity School : —
1. "Can you seek for what is eternally true,
and not be blinded by the opinions of any sect,
or of the Christian Church ; and can you tell the
truth you learn, even when it Is unpopular and
hated ? I answered, ' I can.'
2. " Can you seek the eternal right, and not
be blinded by the status of men, ecclesiastical,
political, or social ; and can you declare that
eternal right you discover, applying it to the
actual Hfe of men. Individual and associated,
though it bring you into painful relations of
men ? Again I swiftly answered, ' I can.'
3. "Can you represent in your life that truth
of the intellect and that right of conscience, so as
not to disgrace with your character what you
preach with your lips ? I answered, ' I can try,
and I win.' "
How genuine and lofty and searching these
questions and answers ! and so utterly simple
and human ! A nature that had lived out under
the sky ; a temperament which was the amal-

352 THEODORE PARKER
gam of hard sense and religious intuitions ; a
manly energy that sought truth only in the in
ward parts ; and a courage to bring such truth
with its cautery and Its balm to the sins and
aches of men, — such was the natural equipment
with which Parker entered upon his work of
naturalizing religion.
Familiar as we are with his mature thought, it
is strange to read of his early conservatism. Yet
at the outset of his theological course he gave
this outline of his opinions : —
" I believe there is one God, who has existed
from all eternity, with whom the past, present,
and future are alike present ; that he is almighty,
good, and merciful, will reward the good and
punish the wicked, both in this life and the next.
This punishment may be eternal. ... I believe the
books of the Old and New Testament to have
been written by men inspired by God, for certain
purposes ; but I do not think of them as inspired
at all times. I believe that Christ was the Son
of God, conceived and born in a miraculous
manner, that he came to preach a better religion
by which men may be saved."
It was not long, however, before some of this
seemed unreal to him ; and one by one the
ancient landmarks were removed, until he dwelt
at ease in the unfenced field, — which is the

THEODORE PARKER 353
world. He began by doubting the authority of
the early Fathers. Then he saw the common-
sense position of certain of the German critics, who
questioned the Mosaic authorship of the Penta
teuch and the validity of Messianic prophecy.
But he accepted these new ideas slowly. We
find him making excuses for the barbarous
slaughter of the Canaanites : we find him taking
up the cudgels in defence of Mosaic authorship
as against the critics, and demurring at opinions
on New Testament matters which became the
accepted truth not many years afterward. In
spite of Professor Andrews Norton's private
assurance that all " German scholars are raw and
inaccurate," he read as many of them as he could
lay his hands on ; and he lamented that In the
library " there was almost none of the new
theologic thought of the German masters." He
had much time for private study ; and to his
knowledge of Greek, Latin, and German lan
guages he added Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Ice
landic, Chaldaic, Persian, Coptic, Arabic. Weiss
says that " he always seemed to have a language
under glass." And Professor Andrew Peabody
declared that " the mass of his acquisitions and his
facility in their use, in classical learning, history,
philosophy, and theology, were almost unprece
dented." His years and work at the Divinity

354 THEODORE PARKER
School had forced his conservatism from one
outpost to another until finally it was ready to
capitulate on any terms he would give it. And
on the day of his graduation he wrote : " God has
prospered me in my studies ; and I am now ready
to go forth, but not without dread and fear.
What an immense change has taken place in
my opinions and feelings upon all the main
points of inquiry since I entered this place 1 "
He had come to believe that no part of the
Bible could be called " the Word of God," save
in the sense that all truth is God's word. He
had come to believe that "the Christian Church
is no more divine than the British State or an
Austrian's farm." He had studied the historical
development of religion, and " found no tribe of
men destitute of religion who had attained power
of articulate speech." He had come to see that
miracles were unnatural, and therefore were to be
discredited. But in this process of examination
and development three great primal intuitions
stood forth as facts of consciousness, — God,
the Moral Law, and Immortality. For him the
proof for these depends upon no logical process
of demonstration, but is given by the instinctive
action of human nature itself Hence these are
strictly natural, and constitute " the foundation
of religion, which neither the atheist nor the more

THEODORE PARKER 355
pernicious bigot, with their sophisms of denial or
affirmation, could move or even shake."
God, the Moral Law, Immortality, — if Theo
dore Parker could be said to have had a creed,
these must be called the great articles of it. But
he had no creed, — no theology apart from his re
ligion, no system of truth apart from his expe
rience. What he calls " natural religion " Is that
body of truth which is normal to and apprehended
by the experience of the normal man. But the
experience of the normal man must include that
man's Intuitions as well as his sensations. Here
he breaks with the German naturalism, whose
" theology, philosophy, and worship are of the
senses, and of the senses alone." That system
does not seem true to him, because it leaves out
of account or discredits that which to him is
fiindamentally real, — the immediate conscious
ness of the Deity. He has been accused of
Pantheism, but the accusation has come from the
lack of distinction between what is In a subject
and the subject itself. Light Is In the air, but
light is not the air. God is in nature and man,
but nature and man are not God. Parker's great
truth was this of Divine Immanence. " The in
fluence of God in nature," he writes, " in its
mechanical, vital, or instinctive action, is beautiful.
It admonishes while it delights us. It is our

356 THEODORE PARKER
silent counsellor, our sovereign aid. But the
inspiration of God In man — when faithfully
obeyed — is nobler and far more beautlflil. It is
not the passive elegance of unconscious things
which we see resulting from man's voluntary
obedience. That might well charm us in nature :
in man we look for more. A single good man,
at one with God, makes the morning and evening
sun seem little and very low. It Is a higher
mode of the divine power that appears in him,
self-conscious and self-restrained."
He has been accused of Transcendentalism ; yet,
while he had large sympathy with the Transcen
dental movement, and numbered among his most
intimate friends many of that famous group, he
is more definite than they, and was able to keep
well on this side of the vagaries of their thinking.
Dr. Peabody wrote of him, " On the most funda
mental of all religious truths, — that of the per
sonality of God, with the correlative truth, the
reality of the communion of the human spirit
with him in prayer, — he seems never to have en
tertained a doubt ; while in this entire region of
thought they were utterly befogged and adrift,
though some of them ultimately came out into
clearer Hght, and upon solid ground." It is true
that the teaching fascinated him, because it prom
ised so much more than the barren and limited

THEODORE PARKER 357
results of Naturalism. He lived within a mile
of Brook Farm ; but he never joined In that enter
prise, though he was a frequent visitor. That is
typical of his attitude toward Transcendentalism
as a whole. His passion for statistics, his sense
for practical utilit\-, his habit of induction from
close observations, restrained him from that nebu
lous upper-world. He saw that " Transcenden
talism has a work to do, to show that physics,
politics, ethics, religion, rest on facts of necessity,
and have their witness and confirmation in facts
of observation." He was at one with the move
ment so long as it kept to that legitimate work ;
but the parting of their ways was marked by the
sign-board : " This way to Guesses. This way to
Facts." Parker's theology was the description of his
experience. "After preaching a few months in
various places," he declares, " I determined to
preach nothing as religion which I had not expe
rienced inwardly and made my own, — knowing it
by heart." And Chadwick writes of him, " It
was not his philosophy or theology, it was his
reHglon, the product of his organization, his tem
perament, and his experience, that convinced men
as could no argument, and made them evangelists
of the faith they had received," "You and I,"
cries Parker, "are not born in the dotage and

358 THEODORE PARKER
decay of the world. Wherever a heart beats with
love, where Faith and Reason utter their oracles,
there also is God, as formerly in the hearts of
seers and prophets. Neither Gerlzim nor Jerusa
lem, nor the soil that Jesus blessed, is so holy as the
good man's heart ; nothing so full of God, The
clear sky bends over each man, little or great ; let
him uncover his head, there is nothing between
him and infinite space. So the ocean of God
encircles all men ; uncover the soul of its sensu
ality, selfishness, sin ; there is nothing between It
and God, who flows into man, as light into air.
Certain as the open eye drinks in the light, do
the pure In heart see God, and he that lives truly
feels him as a presence not to be put by. This
is a doctrine of experience. There are hours when
the hand of destiny seems heavy upon us ; when
the thought of time misspent, the pang of affec
tion misplaced or unrequited, the experience of
man's worst nature and the sense of our own deg
radation, come over us. In the outward and the
inward trials, we know not which way to turn.
The heart faints and is ready to perish. Then
in the deep silence of the soul, when the man
turns inward to God, light, comfort, peace, draw
on him. His troubles, — they are the dewdrop
on his sandal. His enmities or jealousies, hopes,
fears, honors, disgraces, all the undeserved mis-

THEODORE PARKER 359
haps of life, are lost to the view ; diminished, and
then hid in the mists of the valley he has left be
hind and below him. Resolution comes over
him with its vigorous wing; Truth Is clear as
noon ; the soul in faith rushes to Its God. The
mystery is at an end. . . . Conscience is still
God-with-us. Prayer is deep as ever of old.
Reason as true ; Religion as blest. Faith ctlll re
mains the substance of things hoped for, the evi
dence of things not seen. Love is yet mighty to
cast out fear. The substance of the Infinite Is
not yet exhausted, nor the well of Life drunk dry.
The Father Is near us as ever, else Reason were
a traitor. Morality a hollow form. Religion a
mockery, and Love a hideous lie." In such an
immediate experience, Leibnitz' sneer that " God
has to wind up his watch from time to time, be
cause he could not see ahead far enough to establish
perpetual motion," Is utterly out of place. God
himself ?V the perpetual motion in all phenomena
and thought. Hence miracles are unnecessary
when all life is a continual miracle. Inspiration
cannot be restricted to a land, or a century, or a
group of men, when life itself is the perpetual in
spiration of God, There is no room for a super-
nature in a nature which Is Itself so vast.
Contrast this with the traditional theology
which thinks of God as apart from the world ; re-

36o THEODORE PARKER
vealing himself by dictational inspiration through
special men for a special purpose ; limiting truth
to such revelations ; holding men eternally re
sponsible for obedience to those revelations ; to
rescue them from the desperate consequences of
their disobedience, coming among them himself,
and attesting his presence and authority by mi
raculous signs and wonders ; arbitrarily choosing
a minority of the human race as worthy to receive
such benefits, giving them supernatural power to
make their calling and election sure ; thereby
saving them Into a heaven to which they have no
other right, for whose delights they have else-
wise no liking. Parker made that terrific con
trast ; and the whole system seemed to him so
unreal, so mechanical, so hostile, to the experi
ence of life as he knew it, that he felt that re
ligion thus taught was " a mockery, morality a
hollow form, and love a hideous lie."
In the Letter to his Parishioners from Santa
Cruz he writes : " I have preached against the
errors of this ecclesiastical theology more than
upon any other form of wrong, for they are the
most fatal mischiefs of the land, , . . It has
grieved me tenderly to see all Christendom mak
ing the Bible its fetich, and so losing the price
less value of that free religious spirit which, com
muning at first hand with God, wrote its grand

THEODORE PARKER 361
pages or poured out its magnificent beatitudes. . . .
So I have preached against the fundamental
errors of this well-compacted theological scheme,
showing the consequences which follow thence.
But I have never forgotten the great truths this
theology contains, invaluable to the Intellect, the
heart, and the soul. I have tried to preserve
them all, with each good institution which the
Church, floating over the ruins of the elder world,
has borne across the deluge, and set down for us
where the dove of peace has found rest for the
sole of her foot, and gathered her olive-branch
to show that those devouring waters are dried up
from the face of the earth. To me the name of
Christianity Is most exceeding dear, significant of
so great a man, and of such natural emotions,
ideas, and actions as are of priceless value to
mankind, I have not sat in the seat of the
scornful, I have taken exquisite delight in the
grand words of the Bible, which to me are more
dear when I regard them not as the miracles of
God, but as the work of earnest men, who did
their uttermost with holy heart. I love to read
the lessons of that human Hebrew peasant, who
summed up the prophets and the law in one word
of love, and set forth men's daily duties in such
true and simple speech. My preaching has been
positive much more than negative ; controversial

362 THEODORE PARKER
only to create, I have tried to set forth the
truths of natural religion, gathered from the world
of matter and of spirit, I rely on these great
Ideas as the chief means for exciting the religious
feelings, and promoting religious deeds, I have
destroyed only what seemed pernicious, and that
I might build a better structure in its place,"
Parker's whole controversy with existing theol
ogy was against its unreality and deadness. His
whole effort was to make theology real and alive.
Before the judgment-seat of these twin censors.
Reality and Life, he ruthlessly haled every state
ment, opinion, act, observance, claim. By their
decree must the prisoner stand or fall. Though
clad in the bright livery of an angel, if these con
demned, the culprit was shorn of its lustrous
robes and driven from before men. Though clad
in homespun, if by these upheld, it was clothed
in light as with a garment and set in the place of
kings. Dr. Cyrus Bartol called him " the sheriff
of ideas, the executor of God's law, the preacher
of righteousness." Sheriff he was, this man who
made every vagrant Idea on the street corner give
a good account of itself and forced every idle
fancy into the service of mankind. " Having
eternal principles in charge, he used the timely
opportunity to set them in gear." " Executor of
God's law " he was when he insisted upon the

THEODORE PARKER 363
humanity of even a runaway black man, and as
chairman of the Vigilance Committee he person
ally saw that such justice as was possible was
secured to that humanity. " Executor of God's
law" he was, this man whose sermon after sermon
thundered denunciation of public wrongs and In
the name of the eternal right demanded their bet
terment. And " preacher of righteousness " he
surely was, — a righteousness which exceeded the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees of his
day because it was character rather than ortho
doxy, life rather than belief, the indwelling God
shining clear and irrefutable through every pore
of human nature.
What manner of man was he who thus stood
like a great rock in a weary land, — dividing the
prevailing winds of doctrine and breaking their
force that storm-swept souls might find a shelter
in his lee ?
Men warned others not even to look upon his
face, lest the sight (like that of the Gorgon of
old) should turn them into stone. But others
said, " To be in his society was to be impelled in
the direction of all nobleness," This strong man,
who feared neither the wrath of God nor of men,
but dreaded lest he be untrue to either, had the
gentleness of a woman. His great heart of sym
pathy, which led him to demand humanness of

364 THEODORE PARKER
religion, made him unspeakably tender to the sor
rows and troubles of men. From far-off Indiana
came a letter from a Quaker whom he had never
seen, " Dear Theodore, — We are just returned
from the funeral of our child, and our hearts turn
first to thee for sympathy," To countless souls
he was as a friend that sticketh closer than a
brother. He had toys and pet names for the
children; and "when he went lecturing there were
never so many books stuffed in his grip-sack to be
read on the train but that a nook was found for a
little bag of candy whereby fretful children were
beguiled, while tired mothers got their sweetness
in the sympathy of the unknown friend pleading
with them to suffer the little children to come
unto him," All of this, and the rest, of which
time would fail me to speak, was the efflorescence
of his profoundly religious and devotional life.
Prayer was to him his vital breath. It came nat
urally and easily from a heart always ready, al
ways overflowing. It meant so much to him that
he prayed to God as our " Father and Mother."
Miss Alcott speaks of the prayer in the first pub
lic service of his which she ever attended. "It
was unlike any prayer I had ever heard, — not
cold and formal, as if uttered from a sense of
duty ; not a display of eloquence, nor an impious
directing of Deity in his duties toward humanity.

THEODORE PARKER 365
It was a quiet talk with God, as if long inter
course and much love had made it natural and
easy for the son to seek the Father — confessing
faults, asking help, and submitting all things to
the All-wise and tender — as freely as children
bring their little sorrows, hopes, and fears to their
mother's knee."
It was " natural " : that was the key-note of
Theodore Parker's life and work. With all the
wealth of his marvellous learning, he was not an
originator. His knowledge tended to fortify
and explain his own Inner life rather than to
furnish material for an enduring system of phi
losophy. Parker's great service was to furnish
a life in which religion was fervidly dominant
and vitally real. He was a man who thought,
indeed ; but, more than that, he was a man who
lived. His example was almost as powerful as
his word to render religion natural. His work
was sorely needed at that time. Such work will
be sorely needed again. But just In proportion as
a man Is so vividly necessary to his own day
must his greatest worth be limited to that day.
The brightness of his career is a lastingly lumi
nous spot ; but, after all, it is a spot, not a
universal Illumination, This does not mean that
we of this later time cannot read his words with
profit, and from them receive new Impetus

366 THEODORE PARKER
toward everything that is highest and best. We
can do so : men will always do so — in some
degree. The record of his life will strengthen
the purpose and fitness of other men to repeat
his work when the need again appears ; but his
work was not such as to make forever impossible
the appearance of that new need. Some day the
exigencies of the religious life will demand that
some one else shall stand up and say, " The old
is done away : all things are become new," But
the prophet who in that day shall be anointed to
his mighty task will find his work cheerier, his
heart braver, his spirit kept more sweet, because
yesterday Theodore Parker lived so well, battled
so strongly, and conquered so gloriously for the
humanizing of religion.

XI
Phillips Brooks and the Unity of the Spirit

PHILLIPS BROOKS AND THE UNITY
OF THE SPIRIT.
The profound feeling in regard to the char
acter and unique influence of Phillips Brooks has
found expression In a great variety of public
utterances. The accounts and descriptions of
his life and work are so admirable and abundant,
and derived from such a variety of sources, that
I may confine myself to-day to a single aspect
of his career. I shall not attempt even the
merest outline of a biographical review, I shall
not undertake to analyze his character or thought.
He was, undoubtedly, the greatest American
preacher of his generation. Beecher and Moody
may have aroused more Immediate popular inter
est ; but the great literature that has grown up
about Phillips Brooks, the unprecedented circu
lation of his printed sermons, as well as the im
mediate response of the thronging congregations
that hung upon his words, give ample testimony
to his wide-spread Influence and fame. The
secret of his power was in his vital sympathy,
his large humanity. We do not think of him
to-day as a theologian or as a church dignitary.
We think of him as the embodiment of all that

370 PHILLIPS BROOKS
is lofty In human character. As In physical stat
ure he overlooked us all, so his moral and spir
itual proportions were exceptional. His com
manding figure was the fit symbol of a generous
and magnanimous nature. His preaching was
not controversial or critical. He did not deny
or attack. He rarely fell into doctrinal discus
sions. He seldom tried to argue. He cheered
and persuaded his hearers, and never tried to
threaten or humiliate them. He had an over
mastering consciousness of the love of God and
a deep compassion for his fellow-men. To
quicken in their hearts his sense of the divine
love, to so quicken it that it should be a strength
in sorrow and In joy, a constructive energy build
ing up Christian character, a dynamic impelling
to public-spirited activity, that was " the Father's
business in which he had a partnership."
Because he set forth no dogmatic formulas,
men have supposed, and often said, that he was
not a theologian. But I think it can be justly
replied that no man was ever a great preacher
without having great convictions. " No preach
ing " — we read in the " Lectures on Preach
ing " — " ever had any strong power that was not
the preaching of doctrine." He did not indeed
present a special system of doctrine or preach
Christianity in philosophic form. He was not

PHILLIPS BROOKS 371
so much interested in the discovery of truth as In
the application of truth. Apart from his Inheri
tances and the pressure of his immediate envi
ronment, the strongest professional Influence that
he acknowledged was that of Frederick Denlson
Maurice ; and Maurice was theologically " an
impersonated fog." Dr. Donald has said that
the theology of PhlHIps Brooks was that of
Horace Bushnell, and that statement is readily
verifiable. With Bushnell he represented the
transitional period in the theological movement
of the last half of the nineteenth century. He
was not an Innovator. He accepted certain in
terpretations of the universe which appealed to
his temperament, and he concerned himself in
making these teachings fruitful and helpful in
daily life. He does not appear to have had more
than a languid interest in the Investigations into
the authenticity and authorship of the Biblical
books. Philosophical speculations about the re
lation of the natural and supernatural passed
him by. His mental make-up did not lead him
to become interested in these themes. Yet he
was an indefatigable student, widely read, much
travelled. He absorbed stores of knowledge from
his surroundings. He drew strength from na
ture, history, poetry, and human experience, and
with indescribable skill worked over all he gath-

372 PHILLIPS BROOKS
ered into material for sermons. Illumined by
original insight, constructed with utmost industry
and literary facility, his sermons are still an exhil
arating tonic to an age wearied with many per
plexing questionings and in peril of overwhelm
ing materialism. He was a prophet of the rich
ness of things both seen and unseen. He was
not narrowed, on the one hand, by any bondage
to antiquity, or, on the other hand, by the passion
for novelty, which excludes men from access to
the treasures of the past. He was not spoiled
by what he called " the silly side of ministerial
popularity " or frightened by any theological or
ecclesiastical terrorism. He had no need to assert
his right to be liberal or to declare his independ
ence. He simply took these things for granted,
and went on his way rejoicing. He did not try
to prove what he clearly saw ; but, like his Mas
ter, he held up the light, that it might show to his
fellow-men the way to the more abundant life.
He liked to discover the deeper significance of
ancient and apparently obsolete teachings, and to
reveal the symbolic and poetic meanings of old
dogmas which in their literal form did not appeal
to him. What has been called his liberalism
often consisted in putting new meanings into old
forms. He broadened slowly from precedent to
precedent. He fulfilled Goethe's saying : " He

PHILLIPS BROOKS 373
who wishes to have a useful influence on his
time should insult nothing. Let him not trouble
himself about what Is absurd : let him concentrate
his energy on this, — the bringing to light of good
things. He is bound not to overthrow, but to
build up," Phillips Brooks thus kept himself
with entire integrity in the currents of the
conservative liberalism of a select communion,
which he devotedly loved and happily served;
but all the time he felt himself In vital sympathy
with historic Christianity, with " the glorious
company of the apostles and the goodly fellow
ship of the prophets and the Holy Church
throughout all the world,"
I do not think that it can be truly said that
Phillips Brooks added anything of permanent
value to the substance of systematic divinity.
Save by high example of great duties simply
done, he did not help to solve the problem of
church government in a democracy. By the
might of consecrated manhood and by pure
healthy-mindedness, he lifted all the standards
of ministerial service ; but he added nothing
Important to scholarship. The sober judgment
of the new generation will turn aside from many
of his mystical conclusions ; but the spirit in
which he wrought and the impulse of his manly
and noble personality will remain as abiding

374 PHILLIPS BROOKS
Influences and blessings. He was the bearer of
good tidings, and thousands of men think better
of themselves and more of their God because
he lived and spoke. His Influence was like a
change of climate, " like the spring softness after
the harshness of a winter of austere theology,"
If, then, I am right in thinking that Phillips
Brooks made no direct contribution to the
science of theology and that the form of church
administration which he upheld and adorned is
really foreign to the spirit of a democracy,
wherein shall we find his right to stand among
the pioneers of religious liberty ? What was his
permanent contribution to the religious life of
America ? The one message which rings through
all the varied harmony of his public speech, and
which found verification in his own dealings with
his fellow-men, is the testimony to the " Light
that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world," His words were a thrilling revelation of
the present potency of a living God, He taught
that men might have a more abundant life, and
his very style caught vitality from his theme.
The splendid bearing, the tremendous vehemence
of speech, the absorbed consciousness of the truth
he was so eager to utter, and the equal uncon
sciousness of self, all made him the herald of the
larger life. There was contagious joyousness in

PHILLIPS BROOKS 375
his preaching and abounding optimism in his
thought, so that his sermons ring with the refrain
of his own song : " Yet In thy dark streets shln-
eth the everlasting light." He recognized that
the source of all enlightenment and inspiration
is one and the same, and that no human soul
is without connection with the divine fountain.
Amid the obvious diversities of forms and
opinions which exist among Christians it was
given him to discern the underlying faith that all
hold In common. Under the loud jangle of
theological disputation, his ear caught the swell
ing strain of the one religion. He dared to
believe that the faiths of the heart will, in the
long run, be more than a match for the pride of
dogma and the distractions of dispute.
This universal spirit In his thought found ex
pression very early in his career. Professor
Allen, in his monumental biography, feels that
the most remarkable year of his life was the
second year at the Theological School at Alex
andria. He says : " In no other year did he re
ceive so much from the world, from books, from
life, and from himself. In no other year did he
leave so marvellous a record of his genius. He
had come to the full possession of himself in the
greatness of his power." Now whoever reads
the outpourings of his soul in that year of study

3'](> PHILLIPS BROOKS
cannot fail to be impressed with the fact that he
had already transcended sectarian distinctions.
The records in his journal, the writing out of the
thoughts that burned within him, have all the
ethical sensibility, the spiritual imagination, the
power of expression, which characterized his ma-
turer years ; but, above all else, they have what
I have called a universal quality. No one could
tell whether these writings came from an Episco
palian, a Unitarian, or a Friend, or even whether
they were of Christian or Hebrew origin. Yet
everything is in them that made his final thought
most helpful and profound. They are the trans
lation of his own thought and spiritual experience
into terms of universal application.
What a rebuke there is for all bigotry and nar
rowness in the words, " Let us reverence our
neighbor's way of finding truth," or, " Until we
have learned the universal language of sympathy,
how may we hope to speak so that all may hear
us ? " He carried that spirit through all his
hurried, lonely life. In every man and every
religious movement he found " seeds of Christ "
which under no conceivable circumstance could
lose the possibility of germination, Phillips
Brooks held to the faith of his own Church, and
yet he neither believed, nor wished men to think
that he believed, that his Church was the only

PHILLIPS BROOKS 377
manifestation of the life of Christ on earth.
How clearly I recall my own conversations with
him when in that turmoil of spirit which comes
to many a young man as he tries to choose his
life's career ! In all my talks with him about the
possibility of my becoming a minister, he never
once suggested that I could be anything but a
minister of the Church Into which I was born ;
and he had just as much sympathy with me in
my hopes and purposes as if I had been a com
municant of his Church, How he gloried in the
rectitude and fortitude of his Puritan forefathers !
How he rejoiced in the free spirit of his Unita
rian neighbors and friends ! How his heart was
moved by the appeals of Moody or the philan
thropy of the Salvation Army ! No movement
of the human spirit toward God was without his
sympathy. He loved his own, but he loved also
those of other names, for they were all the chil
dren of one God ; and outside of all the boun
daries of the churches, beyond the confines of
Christianity itself, his great spirit roamed, " to
welcome the beginnings of day In the twilight of
heathenism," Did he not unconsciously describe
himself when he said of James Freeman Clarke :
"He belonged to the whole Church of Christ.
Through him his Master spoke to all who had
ears to hear. It is a beautiful, a solemn moment

378 PHILLIPS BROOKS
when the city, the church, the world, gathers up
the completeness of a finished life like his, and
thanks God for It, and places it in the shrine of
memory, a power and a revelation thenceforth so
long as the city and church and world shall last " ?
Or hear what Bishop Lawrence said of him in
the noble address which is, on the whole, the
most satisfying short account of his great prede
cessor's thought and service : "He was claimed,
and by right, as the spiritual guide of people of
all churches and of no church. His message and
influence passed over all denominational bounda
ries. No one church can claim him as exclusively
hers. He belonged to the Christian world of the
nineteenth century."
In this proclamation of what he would call
" the universal Christ," I repeat, is to be found
the enduring Influence of Phillips Brooks. In a
measure it was the reaffirmation of Channing's
doctrine of the dignity of human nature, or of
Emerson's gospel of the immanence of Deity ; but
It was these teachings expressed in the phrases
of Christian piety. "The essence of Christian
faith," he said, "is not the inspiration of the
Bible, not the election of certain souls or the per
dition of other souls, not the length of man's pun
ishment, not the doctrine of the Trinity, but sim
ply this, — the testimony of the divine in man to

PHILLIPS BROOKS 379
the divine in man, that lifts up the man and says,
' For me to be brutal is unmanly, to be divine is
to be my true self.' " Read again the marvellous
sermon on " The Light of the World," which,
with the persuasiveness which rarely illustrates
Cicero's definition of true eloquence as of the
nature of virtue, reaffirms the essential teaching
of Channing, " In so far," he declared, "as man
is not God's, he is not truly man. Whatever he
does in his true human nature, undlstorted, un-
perverted, is divinely done." Or read again the
sermon on " The Eternal Humanity," wherein
is set forth " the natlveness of righteousness in
man " : " Redemption is the perfection of hu
manity on its own human lines. Eternal life is
the deepening of the present life, and not merely
its substitute by another life." What clear and
luminous reflection of Emerson is in these words :
"All this change from the arbitrary to the essen
tial in religion has its connection with the other
habits of our nature, with its love of physical
science and Its study of nature and her laws. . . .
It chooses to look at God, not as a fitful Omnip
otence, choosing each hour's colors by each hour's
whims ; but as essential law, in whom all things
move by moral necessities, which he cannot
change unless he changes himself and is no
longer God " !

38o PHILLIPS BROOKS
The lectures on Tolerance contain the clearest
and most ample statement of Phillips Brooks's
convictions on these themes, though the spirit in
which the lectures were written can be traced
throughout all his printed words. " That little
book," said his biographer. Professor Allen, " is
a very personal one ; for he was vindicating his
own position, his mental freedom, his superiority
to narrow sectarian lines, his wide sympathies,
his own tolerance for all sincere and earnest
thought. He was guarding himself against be
ing travestied and misdescribed, either by bigotry,
on the one hand, or what is called 'free thought,'
on the other. His tone is at times tender and
pathetic. He was gentle and kind ; for he had
adversaries to conciliate, if possible. He knew
that his position was a difficult one to maintain;
but he was determined to make It clear, and to
enforce and recommend It by the fascination of
his eloquence and his wide observation and ex
perience of life. He took for his text, if we
may call it so, a passage from the writings of
Maurice, which he admits sounds like a paradox,
but will come to be an axiom, — ' It is the natural
feeling of all that charity is founded upon the
uncertainty of truth. I believe that it is founded
on the certainty of truth.' "
Tolerance, that Is, Is the result of a belief, not

PHILLIPS BROOKS 381
of absence of belief. It is not shallowness, but
depth of conviction, that produces the charitable
temper. True fellowship must recognize the
value of antagonisms, and seek the unity that lies
beneath and not above the puzzling questions of
spiritual experience. The advice to give a bigot
that you want to make liberal is not, " Hold your
special form of faith loosely and make less of it,"
but " Hold your special form of faith more deeply
and make more of it." If we can all learn to
hold our different forms of faith largely enough
and vitally enough, we shall find that they are
not walls to separate us from one another, but
rather avenues through which we may enter into
sympathy and comradeship.
How impossible it was for any man to isolate
himself from the abundant sympathy and help
fulness of this magnanimous nature ! He habitu
ally emphasized the virtues of his neighbors.
He had a generous confidence In another man's
motives and purposes, and a scrupulous care for
the reputation of every comrade. While his
mind was thus given to hospitality, there was
nothing weakly amiable in him. He was no
mush of concession. His denominational back
bone was straight and strong. He was perfectly
ready for a good intellectual fight. He did not
propose, for the sake of what is expedient, to

382 PHILLIPS BROOKS
give up what is right. He made the necessary
distinction between the inevitable and wholesome
differences of self-reliant men and the perennial
disposition to censorlousness. He recognized
that there are conflicts of opinion which are
signs of mental activity and moral integrity.
He did not undervalue them ; but, when divis
ion was seen to spring from prejudice or pride
or envy, when it resulted in a resolution to
deprive others of the freedom which all should
enjoy, then he burst out in righteous Indigna
tion. He knew well enough that thorough and
painstaking Investigation will often lead honest
minds to dissimilar conclusions. But at the
same time he knew how to denounce divisions
arising out of contentions. He deplored, not
the necessarily diverse aspects of Christian truth,
but the division of Christian energy of which the
enemies of public righteousness everywhere take
advantage. He deplored the waste of Chris
tian force, not the many-sidedness of Christian
conviction. Tolerant to the uttermost as he was, I venture
to say that the hardest thing for him to tolerate
was the growth of the sacerdotal tendencies in
his own communion. It Is a curiosity of ecclesi
astical nomenclature that what In these new days
is self-called " catholicity " appears to be Identical

PHILLIPS BROOKS 383
with intolerance. He Is supposed to be the best
" Catholic " and the most loyal " Churchman "
who turns his back most contemptuously on his
Christian brethren who are not of the Angli
can persuasion. Phillips Brooks committed the
crime, unpardonable in the eyes of the new Phari
saism, of regarding his fellow Christians of other
aUegiances as no less honest, no less precious In
the sight of God, than Episcopalians. He did
not have to apologize for the horribly democratic
saying, "Where two or three are gathered to
gether in my name, there am I in the midst of
them." To quote Dean Farrar, " Wherever he
saw the fruits of the spirit, he was convinced of
the presence of the spirit ; and no loud assertion
made him believe that the spirit was present in
factions which yield only the fruits of bitterness
and are chiefly conspicuous for the broad phylac
teries of uncharitable arrogance." When the at
tempt was made to change the name of the
Protestant Episcopal Church and call it the
Church of America, how Brooks flamed out In
scornful Indignation 1 He was a Protestant Epis
copalian, with the emphasis on the Protestant.
He had no patience with those who depreciated
the heroes of the Reformation. The superb lect
ure on Luther gave no comfort to the extreme
CathoHc party. He did not claim any particular

384 PHILLIPS BROOKS
sanctity for Episcopacy. He believed in the his
toric Episcopate because he thought it a good
form of church government, justified by its utility.
The doctrine of the apostolic succession was, he
said, " a doctrine of magic, not a doctrine of re
ligion." It is a great temptation to me to quote
some of the saucy things he said about the pom
pous ways and stupid decorum of bishops. He
was always poking fun at ecclesiastical millinery
and clerical pretensions. He exploded many a
gas-bag with a pointed jest. But to speak of
these things now might misrepresent the serious
ness of Phillips Brooks's message and the large
charity of his heart.
Our understanding of Phillips Brooks's spirit
will, however, be incomplete if we fail to recog
nize his attitude toward what is called Ortho
doxy. Dr. Crothers, who now most completely
represents In our community the genuine catho
licity which Brooks exemplified, has recently
called attention to the peril of conventionalizing
our heroes. It is the fate of great men to be mis
understood in proportion as they are admired,
and the result of idealizing is often the elimina
tion of some very essential characteristics. We
must not forget that to Phillips Brooks's contempt
for priestcraft was joined a very thorough-going
distrust of any orthodoxy whatsoever. The non-

PHILLIPS BROOKS 385
conformist conscience was his New England birth
right, and it was always strong in him. Did it
not find expression when he said, " We find that
the lower orders of the Church's workers, the
mere runners of her machinery, have always been
strictly and scrupulously orthodox, while all the
Church's noblest servants, they who have opened
to her new heavens of vision and new domains
of work — Paul, Origen, Tertullian, Abelard,
Luther, Milton, Coleridge, Maurice, Sweden-
borg, Martineau — have been persecuted for
being what they truly were, unorthodox"? In
such a heterodox saying as that — oft repeated in
different forms — or in the genuinely Iconoclastic
utterances of the essay on Orthodoxy may be
found ample justification for the feeling among
the more conservative members of his own de
nomination that he was essentially a heretic.
"Orthodoxy in the Church," he said, "is very
much what prejudice is in the single mind. It is
the premature conceit of certainty. It Is the
treatment of the imperfect as if it were perfect."
"We cannot but believe," he said again, "that
In the future the whole conception of orthodoxy
Is destined to grow less and less prominent. Less
and less will men ask of any opinion, ' Is it or
thodox?' More and more will they ask, 'Is it
true ? ' . . . Is not the sum of the whole matter

386 PHILLIPS BROOKS
this, — that orthodoxy, as a principle of action or
a standard of belief, is obsolete and dead ? It is
not that the substance of orthodoxy has been al
tered, but that the very principle of orthodoxy
has been essentially disowned. It is not conceiv
able that any council, however ecumenically con
stituted, should so pronounce on truth that its
decrees should, have any weight with thinking
men save what might seem legitimately to belong
to the character and wisdom of the persons who
composed the council. Personal judgment is on
the throne, and will remain there, — personal
judgment, enlightened by all the wisdom, past
and present, which it can summon to its aid, but
forming finally its own conclusions, and standing
by them in the sight of God, whether it stands
in a great company or stands alone." That is
the tone of a radical reformer. Theodore Parker
would not have said It more drastically. No
wonder that men who believed that their church
really had a "deposit" of final truth looked
upon the man who was capable of making such
utterances as a dangerous person.
I cannot discover that Phillips Brooks found
any satisfaction in the appeals for Christian union
which are commonly urged in this generation,
whether from the Vatican or from Lambeth Pal
ace. All these appeals assume that the dissen-

PHILLIPS BROOKS 387
sions of Christendom are to be healed by theo
logical sticking plasters. Phillips Brooks knew
that true Christian fellowship cannot be secured
on the basis of intellectual agreements. The
old way was to force men into Christian federa
tion by authority. PhilHps Brooks would have
us try the method of complete freedom of
thought and expression, and seek the brotherhood
of mutual service. He knew that true unity is
not a matter of organization or government or
doctrine, ritual, phrase, or name. Instead of
lamenting the differences among men, he thanked
God for the variety and fulness of human thought
and life. He did not look for uniformity, for
uniformity Is found only in things that are dead.
It is because men have life that they differ. The
seeds of wide differences in adult life appear in
the nursery of every home. Why should they
not appear and be welcome in the family of God ?
The variety of men's occupations is essential to
civilization. The diversity of their opinions, —
does not each contain some one aspect of that
many-sided truth which as yet is too vast for any
one individual or group to grasp ? All society is
made up of co-operating diversities ; and, the
more perfect the society, the more widely those
who compose it vary in the direction of their gifts
and faculties and accomplishments. Limit us to

388 PHILLIPS BROOKS
men of the same Intentions and thoughts, and we
become simply repetitions of one type. Give us
free access to each new manifestation of God in
one another's consciousness, and we partake of
the inexhaustible riches of the divine nature.
Phillips Brooks dared to believe the word of the
apostle : " There are diversities of gifts, but the
same spirit ; diversities of administration, but the
same Lord ; diversities of operation, but it is
the same God that worketh all in all, and his
own manifestation of the spirit is given to each
for the profit of all, that by the effectual working
in the measure of each part the whole may be
made perfect."
Let, then, the sects do their work, and have
God's blessing in doing it. No one wants
churches shorn of individuality. Wise men
do not war against diversities : they rather try
to enter into sympathetic understanding of
the special truth each household of faith has
inherited or achieved. Phillips Brooks vent
ured to hope that, with little or no diminu
tion of the present multiplicity of sects, we
may come into an ever-larger sympathy, each
cultivating his own little garden with loving and
assiduous care, but each rejoicing in the oth
ers' flowers and fruit, not always harping on
their barrenness and weeds ; loyal to our own

PHILLIPS BROOKS 389
traditions, reverent of the traditions and usages
that our neighbors cherish.
Starr King once used an analogy that aptly
illustrates the teaching of PhilHps Brooks. He
Hkened the diversities of the religious world to
the stops of an organ. The church is one,
like the organ : it is diverse and broken, like
the ranges of its pipes. The sects are the
stops. The value of each stop is that it breathes
out and modulates, with more or less compass,
a certain pervading quality of tone. Some stops
cannot be used together without painful discord ;
but, if more stops are added, they may broaden
and enrich the harmony. Some stops are nar
row in their range or give no sweeping, rounded
tone ; some, like the Methodist stop, waken,
when it is drawn, the emotional life ; some, like
the Calvinistic, shake the air with the mutter-
ings of judgment and the vibrations of the
law. One might, however, readily be led away
by this analogy. Of course, no one would
assert that the hostile dogmas of different sects
are necessary to the completeness and unity
of Christian truth. A dozen intellectual contra
dictions cannot combine Into catholic verity.
But the sentiments which difi^erent churches
stand for and work out, though they may be
connected with doctrines that are to many un-

390 PHILLIPS BROOKS
congenial, are essential to the fulness of re
ligious truth. Churches and sects exist by and
for the sentiments they appeal to and feed.
While, then, Phillips Brooks rejected almost
contemptuously the mechanical schemes of
church union that are noisily proclaimed, he
did, in the chaos of disunited independent sects
which now make up the Protestant fellowship,
discern the possibility of a genuine unity. A
Protestant Christian in these days, however
sympathetic his own temper. Is practically shut
up within the fold of a sect, which, if liberal, is
excluded by all the rest, and which, if illiberal,
excludes all others. Phillips Brooks did not try
to say, " Lo here, lo there, the Church " ; but he
did declare the essential characteristics of the
Holy Catholic Church, to which he daily con
fessed his allegiance. His quadrilateral was not
that of Lambeth ; but it was practically the quad
rilateral of principles set forth by a more logical
and constructive mind than his own, that of Dr.
Frederic Henry Hedge. First, a root in the
past, a sense of continuity, a pledge of perpetuity.
A catholic church must have — that is its con
servative side — some abiding rock upon which
to build its faith, some distinct starting-point for
its spiritual life and influence. Second, such a
church must Invite variety and practise freedom.

PHILLIPS BROOKS 391
It must be plastic enough In doctrine and dis
cipline to allow of change and growth. It must
not assume the InfalHbllity that breeds exclusive-
ness, or seek to confine Christianity forever to
special formulas. Christianity, though bound to
a common ideal and certain unchanging facts of
experience, is not a fixture, but a movement, not
a divinely established system of doctrines and
institutions, but a flowing administration of the
spirit in such forms and aspects as each successive
generation requires. Third, the true Catholic
Church must welcome and emphasize that spirit
which we best define under the term "mysticism,"
that element In religion which lays hold of un
seen and eternal realities, and enters Into com
munion with a spiritual world. It is the mystic
element in Christianity, represented by Thomas
a Kempis and Tauler and the Quakers and
Emerson and Brooks himself and all the poets,
which keeps the heavens open and the soul
awake and life divine. And, fourth, the Holy
Catholic Church requires some external organiza
tion. Such organization must be spontaneous,
and never too rigid ; but a Church without such
corporate organization and without symbols is
an impossibility. The religious sentiment, to be
sure. Is eternal ; but, if allowed to remain unfixed
and unexpressed, it may become an evil rather

392 PHILLIPS BROOKS
than a good. It preserves its identity by means
of outward symbols. It craves stated expression
and common rights. It requires some corporate
organism for its preservation. The spirit seeks
some letter In which to utter itself Stability,
freedom, idealism, organization, — these are the
cardinal constituents of the Church Universal,
to which we must add, as the complement and
ground of all, the charity which binds and per
vades and harmonizes, the love which Is the su
preme grace of the Christian dispensation. This
is an entrancing vision to those of us who are
involved in the perplexities and bickerings and
petty jealousies of modern Protestantism.
The Incluslveness of this vision found ideal
representation in the personality of Bishop
Brooks. His character, like his thought, was
rich in many varied qualities. As he said of
Maurice, he was at once moralist and mystic.
Like all men of great influence, he was an IdeaHst
and optimist and at the same time a judicious,
successful man of business, whose feet were firmly
planted on mother earth. There was the quick
poetic sensibility allied with the power to centre
the whole attention on the simplest details.
Prophetic gifts were united in him with great
executive power. There was the deep love of
all humanity and the capacity to make each Indi-

PHILLIPS BROOKS 393
vidual his -friend. Bubbling over with fun, he
still had deep reserves ; always courteous and
cordial, but of rare personal reticence. It was
not that he possessed any one gift in excess, but
that he held together so many different gifts in
perfect harmony. The things which are so often
separated In other men's lives were wedded m
him. Therein is found the largeness of his per
sonality. This unity of spirit that he taught and
lived was reflected, too, in the willing discipleship
he commanded. Men of all sects and parties
united In praising, not opinions and not theolo
gies, but consecrated manhood. More and more,
as men ponder on his life and teaching, they real
ize that the things that divide them into hostile
sects are transient and Insignificant beside the
deep faiths of the heart that unite them. More
and more they come to see that our theological
systems are but broken lights of the eternal, that
the universal elements in religion are the only
permanent elements, and that the river of spirit
ual truth cannot be made to flow in any one
regular and undeviating channel. With all neigh
borly associations, and the common experiences
of joy and sorrow, and the common admiration
of things true and lovely and of good report,
bringing men together, it will be hard indeed if
matters of falHble opinion can forever keep them

394 PHILLIPS BROOKS
apart. More and more intelligent people weary
of bigoted partisanship. They begin to appre
ciate how much good there is in schools of
thought or forms of worship alien from their own.
Men do not divide into factions over the Beati
tudes ; they do not contend about the Golden
Rule ; they do not plant their sectarianism on the
Lord's Prayer, or on that lofty teaching, " God
is a spirit, and they that worship him must wor
ship him in spirit and in truth " ; they do not split
into warring parties over the great conception of
God the Universal Father, and all men brothers.
These are the conceptions which, so far from
dividing men, make men ashamed of division.
Let us agree to live in these deep, central, vital
matters about which there can be no contention.
In the hour of noble resolve or high aspiration
who now thinks of the dividing lines of doctrine?
Theological divisions are no longer incompatible
with brotherly love and cordial fellowship. If
we remember the blessing on the peacemakers, if
we feel that preaching wrathfully or bitterly
poisons even truth itself, that our satisfaction may
be the Pharisee's pride, and the objects of our
enmity may enjoy the Samaritan's blessing, then,
surely, the seeming difficulty of diversity in unity
and unity in diversity will cease to oppress us.
Sectarianism and bigotry have so long held

PHILLIPS BROOKS 395
sway that they will die hard. You and I shall not
live to see their fall, but we may already see fly
ing here and there on the citadels of dogmatism the
white flags of truce and amity. The new church
that the prophetic vision of Channing and Emer
son and Brooks foresaw and foretold is already
potent in the minds and hearts of the leaders of
the Christian host. Its name is not yet revealed.
Its organization awaits the touch of the master
hand, but its spirit and aspiration are here. Al
ready it is true that the man who shuts himself
up in the close communion of a single sect, no
matter how noisily he may proclaim that he alone
belongs to the Church, is yet the real schismatic.
His is the real isolation. However large and
strong his special sect, he has cut himself off from
the greater company of Christians, the host of
those who are bound together not by external
organization, but by spiritual affinity and law.
The birthright church of all true Christian men
will yet achieve its winsome authority. It is
founded on the rock of man's spiritual nature.
Its fellowship Is the brotherhood of high ideals
and reasonable service. Its common life is in
the native and irrepressible tendency of humanity
to reverence and worship. Its common thought
is in the confidence that underneath are the ever
lasting arms. This universal religious conscious-

396 PHILLIPS BROOKS
ness will yet unite the hearts of bewildered and
wearied humanity in the humility of common
prayer and praise and in glad obedience to the
law of liberty. It will move men to public-spir
ited activity and deeds of benevolence and justice.
It will create Its prophets and preachers, burning
with enthusiasm for truth, its saints of tender
devotion and patient service, its reformers wak
ing men from dead forms to new faith and right
eousness. It will establish the true Church Cath
olic, the church not of Rome, not of England,
not of America, but the Church of the living
God.

5 ^1.-
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fels^