USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 25
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However one may sympathize with the position of the earlier liberal Christians,-"Channing Unitarians" as they have been called,-their position was no strong foundation on which to build a new church. Where the foundation was freedom, it was likely that freedom would excite dissent. Not long after the formation of the American Unitarian Associa- tion, doctrinal attention was aroused by the preaching of Theodore Parker. This brilliant and eloquent man in an ordination sermon denied the authenticity of all that is super- natural in the Gospel narrative, while he represented Jesus as preeminently the providential man, the greatest of all teachers of spiritual and ethical doctrine and duty. This sermon was received with alarm and disapproval on the part of Unitarians holding the views, described by Channing. Parker was more liberal than the liberal Christians, also he differed somewhat from them in thinking it needful to preach his doctrines. He was asked to withdraw from the Association of Ministers to which he belonged, which he declined to do.
DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCHES
The Congregationalists and the Unitarians did not hold the field of religious liberty for themselves. There were other bodies of the Church of Christ in Massachusetts. With the increase of population in the half century after the Revolution,
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such uniformity had become practically impossible. Of the sixteen churches in Boston at the close of the Revolution, eleven were Congregational, three Episcopal (including King's Chapel, which drifted out of that denomination), two Baptist, and one Methodist. Of the Episcopalians, Rev. John C. Ogden was ordained March 27, 1789, by Bishop Seabury. A few years later Edward Bass of Newburyport was conse- crated Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts. The body grew slowly, however. It had not the prestige of an estab- lished church, one serious disadvantage being that it was English. Slowly, however, its inherent power attracted to itself those who needed what it could give; so that in 1824 there were four Episcopal churches; and in 1850, eight.
The Methodist body grew rather more rapidly; but not till 1795 did the Methodists undertake to build an especial place of worship, in Ingraham's Yard (later called "Methodist Alley"). There the class already formed was gathered and continued to worship for thirty years. Their numbers grew until in 1806 they resolved to build another chapel in another part of the city. Their growth from this time on was rapid; by 1850 more than a dozen Methodist churches were in action in Boston.
The Baptists also increased rapidly in numbers. Their forerunners made trouble in the rigid Puritan times, and their first church was gathered in Charlestown as early as 1665. With the nineteenth century, however, a real increase began in eastern Massachusetts; so that when in 1811 it became desirable to establish a Boston association, twenty-four churches were near at hand to become members. The Baptist church is organized on the same basis as the Congregational. The Baptist churches of the neighborhood all belonged to the Warren Association, originated in Rhode Island. In another twenty-five years the Boston association had so increased that it was thought well to divide it.
The Presbyterian church was never an important element in Massachusetts. In doctrine it differed little from the Con- gregational, but it was based on a very different principle of church government. Clergymen passed readily from the pul- pits of one body to those of the other. The church in Federal Street, Boston, which had been originally (1727) Presby-
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terian, had become Congregational. It was not till 1827 that another Presbyterian church was gathered in Boston, and the body increased but slowly.
The later development of religious bodies in Massachu- setts will be treated in another volume of this work. The writings of Emanuel Swedenborg interested a much larger number than those who joined the body generally known by his name. It appears that the [ English] Quarterly Reviewe had remarked on the condition of affairs in the United States, and had ascribed it to the divorce of church and state which had naturally followed the Revolution. The genial critic added in the Quarterly: "The divorce has been productive of a pretty numerous crop of illegitimate sects, all equally thriving under the salutary and fostering neglect of the parent state. To recount them," it went on, "would be endless; Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Universalists, Moravians, Quakers, Dunkers, and Shakers, with a multitude of others whose names it would be unprofitable to enumerate." An article in the new North American Review in 1815 remarked on this point that there were more sects in England, under an established church, than in America where there was no establishment. The point was well taken; the growth and diversity of religious sects in Massachusetts was the natural result of a new and developing population which represented many phases of European civilization. Here and there a new idea seemed to need some institutional voice, but in the main (as in the case of the Unitarian denomination) the develop- ment of religious bodies was the growth of religious and administrative ideas which had long been current.
TRANSCENDENTALISM (1820-1850)
If there were no essentially new ideas in the religious de- velopment of the time, no important new conceptions rising from thinkers of the early days of the century, the case was very different with what we may call matters of philosophy. In that field there was much novelty of thought and specula- tion, as well as action. One of the most striking manifesta- tions of the application of moral ideas to political problems- the antislavery movement-will receive special treatment else- where in this work. The other fields of thinking and action
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were multifarious. The lectures and writings of Emerson, the so-called Transcendental Movement, the activities of Margaret Fuller, the appreciation and republication of Carlyle, the preaching of Theodore Parker, the Brook Farm experiment, the articles of Dr. Hedges on German philosophy in the Christian Examiner, are some of the more striking forms taken by the new spirit of inquiry and thought.
To this general activity of mind the name transcendentalism has been loosely given; and although the name seems to bring under one definite head a number of very different manifesta- tions of thought, and so produces an impression of unity where very little unity was really existent, yet the name itself implies an idea which was probably to be found in much of the novel thinking of the time and which was essential and basic in most.
This essential and basic idea was the conception that beyond (as one might say) and transcending the material world so familiar to all of us was the real world, the world of reason, the ideal world. All these people were idealists, except that "idealist" is a not uncommon word with a popular meaning, while "transcendentalist" is nowadays a technical word that means only one thing. This was not always the case. In its day, says Lowell, it was a "sort of maid-of-all-work for those who could not think"-like "pre-Raphaelite," he says, in his own day or, we might add, "socialist" in ours. Doubtless Lowell did not mean that Emerson, Channing, Hedge, Ripley, and others could not think; but that there were many devotees who could not and who used, as stereotyped catchwords, ex- pressions (and this in particular ) which they had heard from others who appreciated their meaning.
Lowell considers the beginning of transcendentalism to have been the appearance in the Edinburgh Review of Carlyle's article entitled "Characteristics."
This remark is not entirely accurate; the influence of Carlyle on these thinkers was undoubtedly important. But as the word "transcendental" itself shows, there is a trace also of another influence; namely, that of Kant, or more generally of the German philosophy of his time, perhaps more particularly that of Fichte. One of the striking manifestations of the
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movement-Brook Farm-was undoubtedly suggested by the work of Fourier. European influence, whether from England, Germany, or France, was of importance here; but it was of importance as acting on minds already disposed to experi- ment and thought. Whatever may be said of the conservatism of the Unitarian movement, undoubtedly a large element in society was not conservative.
NEW INTELLECTUAL FORCES
In the first number of the North American Review (1815) was a department a little curious in its implications ; namely, a series of letters to the editor with suggestions of various reforms. Such letters are doubtless often enough written to magazines or newspapers, but their appearance in the very first number of a periodical would seem to show that it was the thought of those responsible that there would naturally be a number of suggestions for social improvement as soon as there was a means for their publication. Whether representing the genuine interest of real correspondents or not, such letters seem to show a social tendency of the time.
In these early years of the century arose a considerable number of enterprises of intellectual interest. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences had been founded in 1780; it published a journal and was perhaps more definitely located in New Haven than elsewhere. It was followed, however, by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1791, by the Boston Library in 1794 (a proprietary institution, not the public organization of similar name), by the Boston Athenæum in 1807, the Boston Daily Advertiser in 1813, the Handel and Haydn Society in 1815, the North American Review in the same year, while in 1822 Boston was organized under a city charter. These institutions, which have all continued into their second century, were the result of a social life which needed expression and instruction in many of the recognized lines of human interest and endeavor.
THE LYCEUMS (1815-1860)
Another characteristic of the time, more widespread than any of the above though not so lasting, was the very common
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THE LYCEUMS
system of lectures known as the Lyceum System. All over New England appeared these lecture courses on instructive topics. They were called lyceums partly, perhaps, because of the alliteration, but chiefly for the reason that had given to half a hundred little schools among the Massachusetts hills the name of "academy"-namely, admiration of the Greeks. No characteristic of this remarkable people was more admired in those days than their love of literature and art. In Paris, before the Revolution, existed a literary establishment called a lycée, where "lectures were given every morning and even- ing on Literature and Science." In England at the same time societies called "lyceums" were in action, sometimes with lecture halls and libraries. In America, with its craving for intellectual food and form, it was natural that there should be institutions of something the same sort. It was also natural that they should soon change their character; and though there may have been a few lyceums in America having a Doric portico without and libraries and lecture halls within, the name was soon applied to the courses of lectures which came into being in almost every New England town.
Lectures, in the sense of gatherings of people to listen to the words of someone more gifted than the rest, were, of course, no new thing in the nineteenth century; but definite courses of lectures on subjects of literature and scholarship were then more common in England and America than they are now, except for our more extended and regularized form of "extension lectures." Some such lectures became embedded in permanent literature-as, for example, the lectures of Cole- ridge, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. That few publications of thoughts embodied in lectures in America can be mentioned was due chiefly to accident. Emerson is the conspicuous figure. He delivered many courses of lectures and they aroused and satisfied many hearers, among them James Russell Lowell. However, such courses of lectures were rarely published, al- though now and then passages from them appear in Emerson's various volumes of essays, which generally had a different origin. In the year before the opening of the Lowell Institute (the most important monument to the Lyceum System) twenty-six courses of lectures had been delivered in Boston, counting only those of eight lectures or more; while outside
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of Boston in Massachusetts 137 lyceums maintained annual courses with an attendance of 23,000. Theodore Parker, himself a noted lecturer, said of it: "This business of lectur- ing is an original contrivance for educating the people. The world has nothing like it. In it are combined the best things of the Church (i.e., the preaching) and the College (the in- forming thought), with some of the fun of the theatre. Be- sides, it gives the rural districts a chance to see the men they read about, to see the lions-for the lecture is also a show to the eyes. Now I think this is one of the most admirable means of educating the people. For ten years past, six or eight of the most progressive and powerful minds in America have been lecturing fifty to one hundred times in the year. Surely some must dance after so much piping, and that of such a moving sort."
THE CAUSES (1815-1860)
It would be a long task to attempt an account of the many causes which absorbed the attention and energy of the people of the day. From the most ordinary things of life to the most complicated-say, from the breakfast table to the institu- tion of slavery-all sorts of interests and activities aroused the intense interest of those who approved of them. One of the humblest has left a permanent record in literature and trade. Slavery has gone by, and as a cause is almost for- gotten; Women's Rights are no longer an issue; though Tem- perance and Prohibition are still unsettled questions, in spite of legislation and propaganda. Yet people are so used to graham bread, that it never occurs to them nowadays that at one time this simple article of food was the subject of pro- longed controversy; for in the 'thirties the theories of Dr. Sylvester Graham were among the much discussed topics of the time. People put aside the ancient but good advice to take no thought as to what they should eat or what they should drink; but from the very breakfast table they discussed whether they should drink tea or coffee or cold water only, whether they should eat whole-wheat or milled and bolted flour, whether animal food was humane and healthful, whether, while abstaining from alcoholic drinks, the intoxicant should still lurk in preserves and mince pies. They had as many
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CHARITIES AND REFORMS
fads on diet as nowadays, and they rolled the discussion on this inexhaustible topic like a sweet morsel under their tongues.
The active spirit of reform was working elsewhere in the world, especially in England. But in England were more things to reform, some of which aroused the most intense feeling; while in America they were not considered at all. Reform of Parliament was hardly a question with a people who had just made their own Constitution, and made it as they saw fit. Reform of municipal corporations, which de- stroyed the old-time privileges of thousands in England, could hardly exist in New England, where the municipalities were only just adopting the forms of government which seemed to them best. Reform of the Poor Law, which in England involved abuses reaching back for centuries, would hardly exist in Massachusetts, where there were so few poor (in the English sense) that almost any sensible arrangement sufficed to take care of them.
Therefore attention in New England centered itself on matters which were sometimes wider, like the general con- stitution of society, and sometimes narrower, like what one would have for breakfast. And, beginning with these most personal questions, there were unnumbered other causes. The great cause of the century, Antislavery, will be dealt with elsewhere; nor shall we here do more than mention the ad- vancing discussion of Temperance, thence of Total Abstinence, and thence of Prohibition. Women's Rights was one of the inextinguishable agitations; and Massachusetts was distressed over other parts of the world.
CHARITIES AND REFORMS (1810-1865)
Public meetings were held and newspaper organs established and subscriptions received for Greece, Kossuth, Prison Re- form, Homeopathy, Mesmerism, and provision for the help- less in numberless ways. It is hard to say whether the five or six hundred charitable agencies of Boston, alone, in the nineteenth century were reforms or new experiments. Among the permanent results of that aggressive humanitarianism are the Massachusetts General Hospital (1811), The Eye and
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Ear Infirmary (1824), The Perkins Institution for the Blind (1829), The Lying-in Hospital (1832), The New England Hospital for Women and Children (1863) : all examples of the extension of the simpler means of relief of the sick and defective that had arisen in an enlarging community. The Ministry at Large, established at the suggestion of Joseph Tuckerman, and the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches repre- sent the same spirit in the religious institutions.
George S. Hale, writing of the charities in The Memorial History of Boston, arranges such efforts in a table under twelve heads of which this reform is but one, whereas the scope of his twenty-seven subheads is shown by the fact that Temperance, Churches, and General Hospitals are each but one.
It may be vaguely thought that transcendentalism and Uni- tarianism were two effects of the same cause. But the fact that Emerson, so often thought of as a representative transcen- dentalist, at the outset of his career broke with official Uni- tarianism, suggests a very different view. The Unitarians were in the main distinguished by what we might call prac- tical piety; they, like most New Englanders, had read Locke with more sympathy than Plato. They were in the main liberal, as the word was understood in England at the time, rather than radical. They were willing and able to agree. It was, perhaps, some such characteristics as these that led Emerson to feel his lack of sympathy with his colleagues and his congregation, rather than any formal matter like the Lord's Supper.
One cannot include transcendentalism in any very definite statement of opinion, even if we could find such a statement as would include the ideas of all who had ever been called transcendentalists. The works of Kant and Fichte in Ger- many, of Wordsworth and Coleridge in England, the earlier writings of Carlyle which were soon reissued in America, are evidences of transcendentalism in Europe. In like manner the writings of Emerson and of Margaret Fuller, the publications of the Transcendental Club, the cryptic utterances of Alcott, the preaching of Theodore Parker, are all typical of the tran- scendentalism in America.
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THE DIAL
EMERSON'S PHILOSOPHY
Emerson himself was too fine a spirit to be bound even by so loose a tie as that of transcendentalism, though he was often attributed to that group. On the occasion of his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard in 1837, a young member of the college, who was afterward a great admirer of Emerson, was present. This was Edward Everett Hale, who had at that time read "Nature" with more interest (as he remarks) than most people. Hale was then a junior at Harvard and an ex- cellent, if youthful, example of the conservative literary and philosophical sentiment of the Boston of the day. He re- corded in his diary that the address "was not very good, but very Transcendental," and such was probably a common opin- ion among cultivated people at that time. Indeed, the latter idea was not far wrong. Emerson, it is true, would never have described himself by a word that signified other men's thinking. It was the essence of his theory of life that he was to think for himself. But he did have at the bottom of his heart the elements of the idealistic philosophy, and this philosophy per- meated all his thinking. Although he often disagreed, and that very decidedly, with others who were properly called transcendentalists, yet he was himself the best example of what a practical transcendentalist might be.
THE DIAL
Two manifestations of transcendentalism have preserved an interest which have made them almost legendary. One is the Dial and the other Brook Farm. The Dial was a quarterly "Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion," which was published from July, 1840, to April, 1844, under the editorship of Emerson and Margaret Fuller. It it still the most famous (in America) of those magazines which try to gather the finest intellectualism of the day, which the regular and more commercial magazines cannot afford to recognize. Yet its output in the way of lasting literature is very small. Some things of Emerson, of Thoreau, of James Freeman Clarke, and of Theodore Parker would perhaps arouse atten- tion at any time and anywhere. But in the main the Dial is chiefly of historic interest, and in this way it has very great
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interest indeed; for it was just what it was meant to be, the opportunity of expression (for good and bad) of all who were aroused to active expression by thinking nobly of the soul.
BROOK FARM
In the summer of 1840, George Ripley, at the time still an active clergyman, was staying at a farm in West Roxbury. He had for years had in mind the notion of an ideal com- munity, and as he looked about him this farm seemed the very place for such a body. He was already thinking of leaving his parish, and in the October of that year he resigned his charge. The next spring he and his wife and a number of friends moved out to the farm, and lived there during the summer. In the fall they formed the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education. It took the form of a really practical organization, to be based upon shares of capital stock amounting to $30,000 and other arrangements. Actually, these arrangements were mostly on paper; the really interest- ing thing about Brook Farm was that it brought together a number of interesting and gifted people who all believed more or less in the idea that one could and should support oneself by the fruits of the earth, and yet have some little time for oneself and others. At one time or another a great number of the best known transcendentalists (beginning with Emer- son, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and others) were pres- ent at Brook Farm either as members of the community or as students or as visitors-the latter being the greatest number. The backbone of the organization was made up of George Ripley and his wife Sophia, and Charles A. Dana (afterward editor of the New York Sun). The best known member of the community was Hawthorne (who owned shares of stock) ; the most distinguished student was George William Curtis, journalist and author. The theory was that the association bought the property (about 200 acres at the price of $10,500) and the associates worked it. Those who did not wish to work paid their board.
Brook Farm was not the only experiment of its kind. A year or so later a somewhat similar establishment was pro-
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jected by Alcott under the name of Fruitlands, and there was a community at Northampton about the same time.
THOREAU
Rather more successful than these experiments was one of a somewhat similar kind, though just reverse in its details; namely, Henry D. Thoreau's two years at Walden. Thoreau might have been thought of as a transcendentalist-at least he contributed to The Dial-but his experiment at Walden was of a very material kind. He wished to see how much energy one needed to keep the physical activities up to their utmost efficiency, so that one could spend the rest of one's time in pursuing activities of a higher nature. He found that he could live for a year on the proceeds of his work for eight weeks, or about 15 per cent of his time. None of the phalanxes or communities ever reached so interesting a result as this. They generally found that they could not keep going even when all hands worked all the time. They were constantly failing to make both ends meet, then reorganized and raised more money to maintain their establishment. Thoreau was no hermit (though now and then he calls himself one), but he was immensely interested in this question of how to man- age one's resources so as to gain the maximum of time to explore one's higher latitudes, as he put it.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
In a way, however, the whole spiritual history of his day may be epitomised in Emerson, either because it is indicated in his philosophy, or because he reacted against it. He was a Radical, if by that word we mean one who will go to the roots of things without regard to any conventional ideas or organizations, and proceed to promulgate ideas and con- ceptions entirely subversive of those ideas and organizations. Those are whimsically mistaken who think of Emerson as an optimistic idealist who was content to go through the world saying, "Aim High" or "Trust Yourself." Doubtless he did aim high, but when he said "Hitch your wagon to a Star," he meant that one should get in harmony with the Law of
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