USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 62
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88
As we have few landmarks of religious history in the ensuing season of political and military agitation, and as he was the only Boston Unitarian minister who did not survive the War of Independence, we will assume A.D. 1780 as the starting point for our historical outline, and will thus attempt to give record to the fortunes of Unitarianism for a century.
In 1780 nearly all the Congregational pulpits in and around Boston were filled by Unitarians.2 This condition of things may be accounted for on
1 [Sce Dr. Mckenzie's chapter in Vol. II., where will be found a likeness of Mayhew .- ED.]
" They were commonly called Arminians at the above-named date. The distinctive name of
Unitarian did not come into general use till early in the present century, though the specific dogma designated by that name had long been openly preached and professed.
468
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
several grounds. The Whitefieldian movement,1 with its extravagance, fa- naticism, and intolerance, had been followed by a strong reaction, especially among persons of education and refinement. Equally had the more pas- sive, yet more rigid, type of Orthodoxy encountered a growing repugnancy wherever it was not received with implicit and unquestioning faith. Nor had the Revolutionary War and the new political interests and relations been void of influence on religious belief and profession. The same spirit that had spurned civil rule from abroad was not slow to detect or suspect the coercive element in creeds and confessions of faith. A more liberal political régime, if not logically, yet not unnaturally, postulated a broader theological platform. Then, too, among the English Unitarians were some of the most prominent and active friends of the colonies during their conflict with the mother country. Meanwhile, in the disturbed condition of secular affairs, those who would else have been the guardians of reputed Orthodoxy had relaxed their vigilance. The clergy of the Revolution, to whom the country owes eternal gratitude, did not, as has sometimes been alleged, preach politics instead of religion ; but in their strenuous endeavor to hallow patri- otism by sermon, prayer, psalm, and hymn, those of them who held the traditional faith of their fathers laid less emphatic stress upon it, and were more tolerant of departure from it, than they would have been at an earlier or a later period.
Under these conditions and influences had grown up a generation of clergy and of laymen, who had not so much drifted from the old moor- ings as forsaken them from deliberate conviction, and on what seemed to them sufficient reason. I can find no proof that concealment - sometimes charged upon the clergy of that day - was practised by them. The ques- tion as to their theological belief can be answered in every instance by extracts from their printed sermons, and by direct testimony as to their undoubted utterances. The true state of the case is that their opinions were not generally regarded as heretical. They professed to agree with Samuel Clarke and his numerous sympathizers in the English Church, and were not without some apparent countenance in the writings of such Dis- senters as Watts and Doddridge. Indeed, they seem to have regarded themselves, in what was termed their " high Arianism," as differing in hardly more than an infinitesimal degree from their Trinitarian brethren, forgetting that between the Infinite Being and the greatest of the finite - which they deemed Christ to be - the distance is immeasurable. When there ensued a revival of the earlier theology, in the new-born zeal and fervor it seemed impossible that such lax doctrinal views could ever have been tolerated alongside of the Trinitarian faith, and hence the theory that they must have been held in secret. Yet if in secret, how could the fact be well known and thoroughly substantiated at the present day?
The liberal clergy of that period seem to have had little zeal, and the spirit of propagandism, whether as to their own belief or as to the common
1 [See Vol. II., ch. vi. - ED.]
1
469
THE UNITARIANS IN BOSTON.
Christianity, was wholly wanting. But they were devout men, of pure and exemplary lives, and diligent in their parochial and social duties. Christian ethics formed the chief staple of their preaching, but not without the con- stant and loving recognition of Jesus Christ as an infallible Teacher and an all-sufficient Saviour. It may be doubted whether there existed at that time any reasonable ground on which a sharp dividing line could have been drawn through the clergy of Boston and its vicinity. There were few, if any, whose Orthodoxy would half a century later have been recognized as sound, while the liberal clergy were much more nearly in sympathy with moderate Calvinists than with Unitarians of the Priestley school.
As regards the religious condition of these churches it would be equally difficult and unfair to apply the tests of our time. There was very little of religious activity within the several parishes. There were few or no meet- ings for social devotion or mutual instruction among the laity, nor was there any arrangement or accommodation for other than the public services. "Night meetings," as they were called, were held in general disesteem as of doubtful moral tendency ; and it is not many years since the death of a clergyman of eminent piety, and not given to boasting, who to the very last deemed it a title to commendation that he had never in his life been at a " night meeting." The Sunday-school had not begun to be, and the only approach to it was an annual or semi-annual " catechising,"-an occasion on which, the children of the parish being gathered in front of the pulpit, the minister asked questions from the catechism in use which were answered by the boldest or brightest of the flock, and closed the service by a short address and a prayer. Thus, to the two Sunday services there was very little of week-day supplement. But both those services were attended with unfailing regularity by all of every age who had not good reason for ab- sence; and the oldest Boston clergyman now living, who was pastor of a congregation second to none in wealth and fashion, says that during the greater part of his ministry occasional sermons, and those which were re- garded as of superior interest, were uniformly preached in the afternoon, as the number of persons necessarily absent was smaller than in the morn- ing. There were also preparatory-lectures (so-called), - religions services with sermons, - on some afternoon of the week preceding the celebration of the Lord's Supper. These were well attended, but for the most part by women. The Thursday (morning) lecture, at the First Church, still re- tained some vestiges of its old importance,1 as may be seen in the fact that among the printed sermons of the time, on subjects which most commanded the public attention, a great number were first delivered at that lecture.
The number of communicants in those churches was not small, though it included but few young persons. The rite of infant baptism was gener- ally observed, parents who were not communicants claiming this privilege for their children in some of the churches under what was called, by an unintended yet virtual irony, the "half-way covenant," 2 while in others no
1 [See Vol. I. p. 515. and II. p. 190,- ED.] 2 [See Vol I. p. 194 .- ED.] .
₹
470
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
profession or obligation of this kind was required. The form of admission to the full communion of the church was assent to a (so-called) covenant, embracing an avowal of Christian belief and a promise to live in accordance with such belief. The several forms of covenant -identical in their im- port-were most of them preserved intact from the foundation of the rc- spective churches, and contained no specification of dogmas; because, when they were first used, there was no suspicion or anticipation of dissent from traditional Orthodoxy.
As to the more private manifestation of religious faith and feeling, there was a much more distinct recognition of things sacred than now exists in general society. Daily family worship was a prevalent custom. There were few families in which there was not for the younger members a stated time on Sunday afternoon or evening for religious reading, recitation, or instruc- tion. Sunday was observed, not indeed with Puritanical severity, but by refraining from secular labor and business, from needless travelling, and from public and social recreations; while there were not a few who them- selves practised Sunday austerities and abstinences which they did not scek to impose upon others. At the same time, the moral standard among the members of these Boston congregations was at least as high as it has ever been in any community. Rigid honesty and incorrupt integrity character- ized the merchants and office-holders. Defalcation and embezzlement were almost unknown; fraudulent bankruptcy was hardly dreamed of; and a breach of contract exposed the offender to open shame. As regards intem- perance, there was probably less of hard drinking in the good society of Boston than in the same condition of life anywhere else; most of the lead- ing men in Church and State are known to have been strictly sober and self- restraining in their habits; and it was among the ministers and laymen of the Unitarian churches in and about Boston that the earliest temperance society in the world had its origin, its principal officers, and its most efficient members ..
As to all local charities Boston, though very far behind its present posi- tion, was a century ago in advance of its time. There was little enterprise, indeed, in seeking objects or inventing modes of charitable relief; but there was never wanting a general readiness to meet all known cases of poverty and suffering with prompt succor and faithful care.
In fine, it is but just to say, that, while Boston showed a wider departure from conventional orthodoxy of belief than any other community or vicin- age in the United States, it was at least on a level with the best in the observances, sanctities, and moralities of the Christian life.
The precise extent of Unitarianism in the Congregational churches of Boston it is very difficult to determine, on account of the slight stress laid on differences that came in subsequent generations to be considered as of vital importance. Probably the Old South Church consisted for the most part of Trinitarians and moderate Calvinists, though there is reason to believe that their minister, Dr. Eckley, denied the supreme deity of
471
THE UNITARIANS IN BOSTON.
Christ. On the other hand, the Brattle-Square Church - foremost among the Boston churches in point of liberal views and professions - had for its minister, in 1780, Dr. Colman, undoubtedly a Trinitarian ; and his immediate successor, Dr. Thacher, was always reckoned among the Calvinistic clergy. There remains no token to show that Mr. Wight, of the Hollis-Street Church, may not have been a Calvinist ; yet there is ample reason to believe that his congregation was of the more liberal type. There was a small l'resbyterian church in Long Lane, afterward Federal Street, consisting originally for the most part of persons of Scottish birth or parentage, who were extreme Calvinists ; 1 but in 1787 the Presbyterian had been exchanged for the Con- gregational form of church government, and a Unitarian minister was then inducted into the pastoral office.
In the towns that have now become a part of Boston, it is believed that the church in Charlestown was the only one which, by a majority, adhered to the carlier faith of New England; and even here, in 1788, a Unitarian minister was the agent in securing for the church the services of that re- doubtable champion of Orthodoxy, Rev. Dr. Morse, and preached his ordi- nation sermon. Rev. Dr. Gordon, the historian, well known to have been a Calvinist, was pastor of the church at Jamaica Plain in 1780; but his society, while admiring him for his patriotic devotion to his adopted coun- try, and loving him for his rare excellence, had but little sympathy with him in his theological opinions.
The First Church had for its senior pastor in 1780 Rev. Charles Chauncy, D.D., a descendant of the second President of Harvard College, a man of eminent ability and learning, and holding by a truly venerable character no less than by years the foremost place among his brethren.2 He was con- spicuous as the earnest antagonist of the dogma of eternal punishment, which, however it may have been called in question by individual thinkers, was generally regarded as an essential doctrine of the Gospel. With him was associated Rev. John Clarke, D.D., who possessed graces of style and an æsthetie culture to which his distinguished senior could lay but slender claim, and who while still in the meridian of life, though with a fully estab- lished reputation as a preacher and a minister, was struck down in his pulpit by a fatal attack of apoplexy.
In the Second Church the pulpit of the Mathers was occupied by Rev. John Lathrop, D.D.,8 who, without remarkable powers, filled a singularly large place in the community, rendered important service as an officer or a leading member of numerous public institutions, was trusted, honored, and beloved as a man of faultless excellence, and after a ministry of half a century left a name second to none in the reverence of his own and the memory of succeeding generations.
Rev. John Eliot, D.D., was at that time pastor of the New North Church. He was well known in connection with historical researches and labors, and
1 [Sce Vol. II. p. 225 .- ED.] 2 [A portrait of Dr. Chauncy is given in ch. vi. of Vol. II .- En.] 8 [His portrait is given in Drake's Boston, p. 311. - ED.]
472
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
at the same time had in his special calling a reputation for superior attain- ments as a scholar and ability as a writer, while his social gifts and the qualities of his character made his presence always welcome, whether in literary circles or in the homes of his parishioners.
The New South Church, which had been vacant from 1775, was filled in 1782 by the ordination of Rev. Oliver Everett, who, after a brief ministry, was succeeded by Rev. Mr. - afterward President - Kirkland.
In the West Church Dr. Mayhew had been succeeded by Rev. Simeon Howard, D.D., of whom the record runs that " his parishioners loved hin as a brother and honored him as a father; his brethren in the ministry always met him with a grateful and cordial welcome; and the community at large reverenced him for his simplicity, integrity, and benevolence." It seems to have been well known from the time of his ordination that he was a Unitarian ; and it is a token of the change that had meanwhile come over the theology of the Boston churches, that, while it was usual for ministers to apply for admission into the Boston Association, which he had omitted to do on account of the heretical reputation of his church, in 1784 the Association took the initiative, and appointed a committee to confer with him as to membership of that body.
In 1782 began a series of proceedings which brought Unitarianism prominently before the public. King's Chapel, the oldest Episcopal church in New England, had been left without a pastor by the flight of its royalist rector at the time of the evacuation of Boston ; and the Old South congrega- tion had held their services there, pending the repairs of their own house of worship, which had been used as a riding-school by the British troops. When this arrangement was about to terminate, the wardens of King's Chapel invited Mr. (afterward Dr.) James Freeman to become their minister. On resun- ing their stated worship, the majority of the proprietors found themselves no longer in the state of religious belief which the liturgy presupposes. They resolved, therefore, so to alter the established form of prayer as to exclude the recognition of the Trinity and the supreme deity of Christ. In aid of this enterprise Mr. Freeman preached a series of doctrinal sermons, which emphatically designated his own position and that of his church. The society still desiring to retain its connection with the Episcopal Church, Mr. Freeman applied for ordination to Bishop Seabury, of Connecticut, and then to Bishop Provoost, of New York, -to the latter not without reasonable hope of success; for American Episcopacy was still so far inorganic as to admit into its administration what would now seem the grossest irregularities. On the failure of these applications recourse was had to the doctrine of the Cambridge Platform, that the greater right of election, which resides in the members of the church, includes the lesser right of ordination. The validity of this ordination was assailed in the papers of the day; but it was warmly defended by Rev. Mr. (afterward Dr.) Belknap, who had just been installed as the first Congregational pastor of the church in Long Lane (Federal Street).
473
THE UNITARIANS IN BOSTON.
Dr. Belknap, not long afterward, performed a very important service for the non-Trinitarian churches in publishing a collection of psalms and hymns, which carly came into general use, and has been superseded only within the memory of many now living. This volume is of interest as an index of the religious belief and feeling of the churches that welcomed its advent. It is full of tenderly devout and almost adoring reverence for
REV. JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.1
Christ, and recognizes his exalted rank and his sacrificial death, but omits or alters such portions of the hymns selected as confer on him the titles exclusively appropriate to God, and such as imply a plurality of divine persons. In the preparation and introduction of such a book as this we
1 [This cut follows a portrait by Gilbert sion to copy it. Dr. Freeman was born in 1759, Stuart, belonging to Mrs. W. E. Prince, of New- port, to whom the editor is indebted for permis-
VOL. 111 .- 60.
and died in 1835. He was the grandfather of the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, D.D. - ED.]
474
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
have a clear refutation of the old charge of concealment; for no form of profession could be more public than the exclusion of wonted themes of sacred song from the stated services of the church.
During the last two decades of the last century, ecclesiastical quiet in the Congregational churches seems to have been wholly undisturbed. The differences of opinion were not ignored, but condoned. Ministers of both parties exchanged pulpits freely, sat together on church councils, and united in ordination and other public services. The first tokens, or rather pre- monitions, of a rupture occurred in 1808, in a controversy occasioned by the choice of Rev. Henry Ware, Sr., a well-known Unitarian, as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College. There can be but little doubt that this event either induced or hastened the foundation of the Andover Theologi- cal Seminary, and the establishment of the Park-Street Church, - the former destined to furnish earnest antagonists of Boston Unitarianism ; the latter specially designed to check its ascendancy and to counteract its influence.
In 1811 we find the first symptoms of objection to the wonted system of pulpit exchanges, which was not, however, generally discontinued till 1819. In 1815 appeared in Boston, as was supposed at the instance of Dr. Morse, a reprint of an English pamphlet comprising a history of American Uni- tarianism, from documents and information furnished by Dr. Freeman and others, and published by Rev. Mr. Belsham. This was designed as a note of alarm, and was reviewed in the Panoplist, with the purpose of identifying the Unitarianism of Boston with that of Belsham, Priestley, and other Eng- lish divines of the same extreme type. This identity was denied by the Rev. William E. Channing in a letter addressed to the Rev. Samuel C. Thacher, which led to a sharp controversy between Mr. Channing and the Rev. Dr. Worcester, of Salem. Mr. Channing was undoubtedly in the right as to the main intent of his first pamphlet; for, with possibly a single exception, the liberal clergy of Boston had as little sympathy as their Orthodox neighbors with the humanitarianism and materialism of their English brethren. But from this time the line between the two parties was distinctly drawn ; and on both sides the controversy became vivid and carnest, and, though generally courteous, occasionally assumed a bitterness which may be ascribed to the time rather than to the combatants, for the best men of that day carried into their political contests an intensity of acrimony and of personal abuse, such as now finds tolerance only and hardly in the least reputable quarters.
Meanwhile, important changes had taken place in the Boston pulpit. Dr. Channing's power as a preacher had raised the Federal-Street Church to a commanding position and influence. He was first remarked chiefly for the unction and fervor of his sermons on the claims, duties, and prerogatives of the spiritual life, and was reluctantly drawn into controversy, which with him was a supposed necessity, - never a choice. While no man of his time wielded a keener pen, his polemic writings were but an interlude in a life spent for the most part on that higher plane on which good men of
475
THE UNITARIANS IN BOSTON.
all parties throw aside their arms, and with which his memory is now so in- timately associated.
Mr. Buckminster, of the Brattle-Square Church, though decided and outspoken in his opinions, did not engage in controversy. He, if we may trust the recollections of those who were wont to hear him, was the Chry- sostom of America. In countenance, voice, and gesture he had all the best
REV. JOSEPH S. BUCKMINSTER.1
gifts of an orator; and these were hallowed by profound religious feeling, and enriched by faultless. rhetoric and a glowing imagination, which have not since been transcended, if equalled, in the Boston pulpit.
Buckminster was succeeded by Edward Everett, whose youthful, brilliant ministry gave promise of a not unequal fame, and whose subsequent career affords ample ground for regret that his first profession had not enjoyed in
1 [This portrait follows a likeness by Stuart, owned by the late George W. Lyman, Esq. - ED.]
476
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
after years the usufruct of the eloquence, learning, and ripened wisdom which have left their record in so many departments of literature and of public service. During his brief pastorate, -which lasted but little more than a year, - while he won high reputation as a preacher, he found time to write a defence of Christianity, in answer to an assault on the Christian rc- ligion and its records by George B. English. This is among the most able treatises on the Christian evidences which have appeared during the present century ; and it has almost faded from the memory of man, simply because it was so close a hand-to-hand conflict that it could hardly survive, in the interest of the reading public, the book which it annihilated and tore in pieces, and of which the fragments remain like flies embedded in amber.
Everett was succeeded by the Rev. John G. Palfrey, D.D., whose ministry of nearly twenty years was characterized by ability - though on a different plane- by no means inferior to that of the men whose place he filled, and who until recently survived in feeble age, with mind undimmed, and in the full enjoyment of an undoubting Christian faith and a sight-like · hope of immortality.
Among his coevals in the ministry we have space to name only Nathaniel L. Frothingham, D.D., a scholar, a poet of no mean gifts, and the master of a prose diction of rare and faultless elegance; Henry Ware, Jr., D.D., whose devotional fervor made his personal intercourse and his whole life a perpetual preaching of the gospel; Francis W. P. Greenwood, D.D., who has hardly been surpassed in the consecration of intensely vivid and lofty imaginative powers to the highest themes, and who made an invaluable con- tribution to the service of the sanctuary in the hymnal which held for many years deservedly the foremost place in the Unitarian churches; Alexander Young, D.D., a sound theologian, assiduous in the duties of his calling, and devoting his leisure to the fruitful study of literary antiquities and of Amcr- ican history; and Ezra S. Gannett, D.D., whose body, early crippled by paralysis, sustained for many years an unsurpassed amount of exhausting professional labor, and whose eloquent discourse, beneficent activity, and burning zeal, equally in behalf of his own views of truth and of every cause of human well-being, were as fresh and vigorous at three-score and ten as in the flush of youth.
Meanwhile, a change, which yet was hardly a change, had taken place in the creed of these younger Unitarians. Dr. Channing was an Arian (so- called), certainly during his active ministry, probably through life; so was Dr. Francis Parkman. But the pre-existence of Christ ceased to be gener- ally maintained. Yet the Boston clergy of that day were not humanitarians in the common acceptation of that word. Christ held in their reverence a place far above humanity. He was a being so inspired and empowered by God, that the highest titles and attributes, not essentially divine, were his of right. He was sinless, infallible, ever present with his Church, the dispenser of all spiritual gifts, the judge of men. In fine, he was the central object of religious trust, love, and aspiration ; and this, not by virtue of aught apper
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.