USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > The First Congregational church (Unitarian) of Cincinnati; a historical sketch with some account of the Church of the Redeemer, and Unity church > Part 3
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The following May of 1850, with the coming of Abiel Abbot Livermore as minister, marked the beginning of more stable pastorates. Born in 1811, graduating from Harvard College in 1833, he had been settled over a New Hampshire church, in Keene, for fourteen years, and therefore possessed the needed maturity of judgment which the parish required for restoring its attention to the main purpose of its existence, which was not social or national reform, howsoever vital issues these might be, but the proclamation of a religion which trusted the enlightened reason for its guidance into the way of spiritual peace. In short it accepted unreservedly its place among so-called Unitarian churches. A scholar, gentle of spirit, an excellent organizer, conciliatory in his attitude towards the other churches, he succeeded in placing the Society upon a healthy footing of service to the city and of development of its own resources for the upbuilding of a strong free church. One of the most important of his many enterprises for unifying the Western churches of the Unitarian faith, was the insti- gation of a Western Unitarian Conference, in 1852. This held its sessions in the church on Fourth and Race Streets, which even then according to Mr. Livermore's account, began to be a dark and smoky region, and drew together representa- tives, mostly ministers, of twelve of the neighboring churches, counting Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis as of the neighbor- hood, with a few delegates from the Eastern states. Com- munications were becoming more easy then; the railroads were multiplying. Nevertheless the cost and difficulty of long journeyings were, as they are even now, prohibitive of large gatherings. Sermons were preached by the Eastern visitors, Drs. Samuel K. Lothrop of Brattle Square, Boston; James Freeman Clarke, who, after a pioneer apprenticeship in the young Louisville society had removed to Boston to estab- lish the Church of the Disciples; George E. Ellis of Charles- town, Massachusetts; Charles Briggs, Secretary of the American Unitarian Association; and Thomas J. Mumford, of Detroit. William Greene presided. The Conference thus set in oper- ation was to continue with increasing efficiency in missionary diffusion of its faith into new communities of the West, for many following years, with no especially agitating problems, until five years later at Alton, Illinois, when some anti-slavery
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resolutions passed by a majority of the delegates caused the secession of a respectable minority of the members. And again in 1858, when the Conference returned to its birth- place in our city, a new subject of vigorous difference of opinion arose over the question, What constitutes a Christian? which was a forerunner of an advance step of theological belief among our churches, beyond the ancient problems of Trinity, Atonement, and Heaven and Hell. The new historical and Biblical criticism of which our later generation has heard much, and the new scientific ideas of evolution had entered into the arena of free debate among the churches, with the inevitable irritating effect which revolutionary ideas produce among people who have long assumed as divine matters of course, the con- ceptions of truth and righteousness handed down from former generations. This fermenting leaven was to have its most explosive influence under a later ministry than that of Mr. Livermore, who although open-minded, was for the most part satisfied with the current religious philosophy, which viewed the world as a field of constant miraculous interference by the Almighty, the Bible and the Christian church being especial and peculiar manifestations of God's activity in human affairs. The issue between law and miracle in nature and life, which has been discussed ardently since Darwin published the Origin of Species, in 1848, was not to be neglected by the Cincinnati church, which was bound to be affected, through its thoughtful men and women, by every fresh current of wisdom which moved the intelligent world in religion and in other fields. An evidence of the improved morale of the church, in getting out of its morbid self-consciousness as to whether it was to live or not to live, into active self-denial for the wel- fare of the denomination and the city, is shown in the list of charitable donations contributed during Mr. Livermore's ministry. These gifts averaged for several years, about twelve hundred dollars, the largest beneficiary at one time being Antioch College, of Yellow Springs, which received, in 1854, eleven hundred and fifty dollars, while in 1855, the Western Conference received three hundred and fifty dollars.
The reconstruction of the basis of church membership engaged the leaders of the congregation under Mr. Liver- more's inspiration, with the result of an elaborate report made
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to the congregation, July 15, 1855, signed by a special com- mittee previously appointed for the purpose, of Robert Hosea, Fayette Smith and the pastor, whose conclusions were ratified by what seems a practically unanimous vote of the adult members, more than two hundred men and women, whose names, as an interesting record of the former generation of Unitarians, will be printed in an appendix to this narrative. The substance of this new bond of union was as follows:
"We, whose names are undersigned, having a firm faith in the Christian Revelation, and being desirous of making it the rule of our faith and practice, and of advancing the cause of pure and undefiled religion, unite together to form a Christian church, with the following Constitution and By-Laws:
CONSTITUTION
1-Agreeably to the title in the charter, this body shall be known as the First Congregational Church of Cincinnati.
2-In addition to those persons who are qualified to be members under the Act of Incorporation, all who sign these articles shall become members, but a person may withdraw by filing a notice to that effect with the Secretary.
3-The officers of the Society shall consist of five Trustees, a majority of whom shall be owners of pews, to be elected by ballot at the annual meeting, and the Trustees shall choose a Chairman, a Secretary and a Treasurer of their board who shall also be the Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer of the Society.
4-It shall be the duty of the members and officers to co-operate together in promoting the objects of the Society by a regular attendance on its meetings and observance of the following By-Laws."
These By-Laws, apart from that one which designates the time of the annual meeting as the first Monday of April, are the customary description of the duties of the officers.
The provision that a majority of the Trustees should be pew owners was retained until changed usage with regard to the ownership of pews necessitated the abolition of this con- dition, in May, 1911.
The literary tradition of the members of the church was maintained by both Mr. Livermore and his wife, the latter
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writing some acceptable poetry and being the author of a novel, "Zoe or the Quadroon's Triumph." Besides numerous contributions to the denominational periodicals, Mr. Livermore was best known in the churches by six volumes of popular commentary upon the New Testament.
This pastorate was ended July 6, 1856, after a little longer than six years of service, the separation being largely due to the ill health of Mrs. Livermore. Mr. Livermore attained many denominational distinctions after his removal. For some years he was the editor of the Christian Inquirer, published in New York, and for twenty-seven years, from 1863 to 1890, was President of the Meadville, Pennsylvania, Theological School. He died in the town of his birth, Wilton, New Hamp- shire, November 28, 1892, at the age of eighty-one.
There was little delay in the settlement of a successor in the pulpit. Moncure Daniel Conway, born in Virginia of a slave-holding family, trained in the Methodist church in which he began to preach at the age of nineteen, in Maryland churches, he came into contact with the Unitarian people of Baltimore, and by that touch of rationalism was persuaded that his spiritual home was no longer in the church of his ancestors but in some association where the mind could move with entire freedom to work out its problems of faith. He therefore entered the Divinity School of Harvard College in the Spring of 1853, graduating from there in the class of 1854.
Mr. Conway has told the story of that momentous period in his development in the first volume of his Autobiography. Cambridge and Boston seemed to the young man whose mental experiences had been wholly in a rural community of plantations, to be the intellectual centre of the universe. Among the Unitarian ministers of the vicinity there were many notable scholars, who had studied abroad, an uncommon experience in the early part of the nineteenth century; and had brought home some strange and disturbing ideas of religion and science; which occasionally they were setting forth in their pulpits, although oftener confining their heresies to the limited readers of learned Reviews. The best known of these Boston preachers was Theodore Parker whose forum was the Music Hall, to which a free congregation of lovers of fair play had invited him from an obscure rural church in order that he
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might freely discourse upon certain novel conceptions of faith which seemed to him most wholesome for the spiritual education of his time and country. The young divinity student soon made Parker's acquaintance first as a listener to his sermons, then as a visitor to his home. Although at first a little repelled by what seemed to him a hard intellectual quality, lacking the right infusion of emotion, in his preaching, that first judg- ment was soon softened as he obtained glimpses of the genuine reverences ยท of Parker's discourses and prayers. His most ardent affections were directed towards Emerson, then living at Concord from which he wrote essays to a slowly appreciative world, or journeyed in lecture tours even into the Central West, wherever lyceum audiences dared to welcome a messenger of doctrines of the soul which some of his contemporaries called infidelity and some words without meaning.
Parker introduced Conway to the anti-slavery sentiment of New England with its fervid hatred of human bondage any- where under the sun, but especially in the republic founded upon freedom and equality of human rights. He also gave him some acquaintance with a recently imported philosophy of the soul's relation to spiritual realities then known as trans- cendentalism of which philosophy Emerson was a disciple, without needing to import it from Europe; its purport being that the enlightened soul may have direct knowledge of things of God and of the highest human duty without the intervention of any miraculous book or church. Conway made frequent pilgrimages to Emerson's home from whence he carried away, besides his reverence for the wisdom and personal charm of that sage, an enthusiasm for the ideas of transcendentalism which he was to submit with all the confidence of a youthful convert to the Cincinnati congregation.
The lay mind, as a rule is slower to adjust itself to changes of base in religion, than the clerical mind schooled to tolerable familiarity with different viewpoints of the generations, and Conway's daring novelties of opinion, discourses in disparage- ment of miracles and of the especial inspiration of the Bible, presented, it may be easily believed, with some impatience at the aversion of his hearers to ideas which seemed destructive of the foundations of the church, soon sowed the seeds of rebel- lion in the congregation. Combining with these his advanced
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doctrines of the nature and sanctions of religion and his zealous hostility to slavery he afforded abundant matter for irritation among the mere conservative people of the community. Never- theless he was a popular speaker before a great variety of societies, Jews, German Turners, actors, Methodists, free think- ers; and maintained with unabated fertility the early traditions of the Unitarian ministers and laymen of appearing often in print. The most noteworthy of his publications was the "Monthly Dial," a journal of literature, philosophy and religion, issued in January, 1860, whose contents for the single year of its existence were mainly the work of the editor, although it was distinguished, in the eyes of a later generation, by original contributions from Emerson and from William Dean Howells, then first rising upon the horizon of American literature.
On the first day of June, 1858, the young minister was married in his church to Ellen Davis Dana, a kinswoman of William Greene, Rev. Dr. Furness journeying from Philadelphia to perform the ceremony.
The period of his pastorate, from December 21, 1856, to November, 1862, was an exceedingly trying time for the leaders of any church, but particularly for the Unitarians; for in the region of politics the evident approach of a tremendous national crisis over slavery, which eventuated in the great war for the Union, from 1861 to 1865, made it impossible for conscientious preachers to refrain from speaking with intense feeling upon the patriotic duties of the hour. And whichsoever side they might justify, whether urging moderation and conciliation of the slave party or demanding that the encroachments of the South upon the rights of the North must cease at whatsoever cost, there was sure to be a division among the hearers of those who were in harmony with the speaker and those who were angry with him. Upon the theological side the new issue between old school and new with regard to the supernatural sanctions of Christianity caused sharp divisions of the Unitarian churches all over the country, seldom resulting in schisms in the individual churches, other than the withdrawal of attendants upon the Sunday services, but begetting a good deal of animosity between the supporters of the radical and the conservative preachers, the holdfasts and the innovators. The Cincinnati newspapers of the Spring of 1859 contain full
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accounts of meetings in the church to discuss the basis of a division of the church property, between those who supported Mr. Conway and those who had determined to secede from the society and form a new church, to be called the Church of the Redeemer.
The partisans upon both sides were influential and high minded men, although it was declared at some of the meetings that the spirit of politics had been introduced to bring in voters upon the disputed questions who had long since ceased to have any interest in the church or who had never been known as Unitarians till they had become followers of Mr. Conway. Among those who supported Mr. Conway, as reported in the daily newspapers, were Alphonzo Taft, George Hoadly, William Greene, William S. Sampson, William Goodman, Charles Stetson, Caleb Allen, Stephen L. Wilder, William Wiswell, S. C. Boyden, Timothy Kirby, L. B. Harrison; while his critics included Manning F. Force, Robert Hosea, John Kebler, and Luther F. Potter. The proposed peaceful division of property which seemed at first likely to be made in a reasonably amicable temper, did not prevail because some member of the older church made an appeal to the Courts against the division, and it was only after Mr. Conway's removal that the injunction was raised and the division carried into effect. The Church of the Redeemer was established in the Winter of 1862 in a dis- used Universalist building upon the southwest corner of Mound and Sixth streets, and in January of 1863, Amory D. Mayo became its pastor, a post which he held for more than nine years, retiring in 1872.
Mr. Conway left in November, 1862, so that the services of the First Church were conducted for the next four or five years by supplies from the East. A goodly number of bright men came for this purpose, among them Charles Gordon Ames, later known as the beloved minister of the Church of the Disciples in Boston, who occupied the pulpit for some months, and also found a wife among the public school teachers of the city.
In February of 1864, the house of worship upon Fourth and Race Streets, which had sheltered the congregation since its formation, was sold; and for the time the proceeds were retained by the Trustees, to be disposed of as later events might deter- mine. Meanwhile, services were held in halls, the room of
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most frequent use being Hopkins' Hall on the corner of Elm and Fourth Streets. The Church of the Redeemer had thus the advantage of being worthily housed and of having a settled pastor; while the First Church depended upon pulpit supplies, until January 6, 1867, when Thomas Vickers became its minister. The congregation erected a new church edifice on the northeast corner of Plum and Eighth Streets, of brick, at a cost of some $36,000. This was dedicated, with a sermon by Robert Collyer, of Chicago, Novem- ber 6, 1870; the pastorate being held by Mr. Vickers until April 5, 1874, when he was appointed to the charge of the Public Library.
If this congregation pos- sessed the title and the property of the Cincinnati Unitarian church, the new organization, the Church of the Redeemer, had the more enthusiasm and the larger share of the church workers. LINC The minister, Mr. Mayo, took Plum and Eighth Streets-1870 an active interest in the public welfare, especially in the efficiency of the common schools. He was a preacher of a superior order of ability, of the conservative school; and worthily maintained the intellectual and moral standards of the previous ministries of the church. But his attitude of mind in theology, of holding to the ideas of a miraculous Christianity upon which, chiefly, the congregation had split into two churches, while Mr. Vickers was entirely imbued with the free critical spirit of his predecessor, Mr. Conway, showed itself in the part which he assumed in a controversy which greatly agitated the city upon the question of Bible reading in the public schools. Mr. Mayo advocated the retention of the old custom while Mr. Vickers upheld the action
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which had been taken in the Board of Education of pro- hibiting religious instruction and the reading of religious books in the schools. The discussion with its attendant account of the proceedings of the Board of Education and the decision of the Superior Court, to whose jurisdiction that matter was carried upon an appeal of some citizens, was fully printed in one or two volumes which shows Mr. Vickers to be not only the better representative of prevalent public sentiment but the more brilliant and effective disputant. His arguments are witty, learned, and thorough. Mr. Mayo chiefly employed the appeal to fear of the Catholic Church whose opposition not only to Protestant teaching in the common schools but to all secular instruction was the moving force of the action of the School Board in eliminating the Bible reading. The Supe- rior Court consisted of Judges Hagans, Storer and Taft, the latter being Alphonzo Taft, a member of the First Congre- gational Church. The two judges who were of Orthodox church affiliations, voted to issue an injunction against the repeal of the Bible reading provision; and Judge Taft dissented from this decision. The Cincinnati municipal election which soon followed this judgment, on April 3, 1870, appeared to have chosen by a small margin, a majority of Bible men upon the new School Board; but when that body came to act it decided to ratify the action of its predecessors; and prohibit the religious instruction; and so the liberals won the day.
An equally notable controversy which was published by the church in a volume of some 150 pages, in 1868, arose from a discourse given by Mr. Vickers at the laying of the corner- stone of St. John's German Protestant Church, September 29, 1867. In the course of this address Mr. Vickers spoke of the place of the early Christian church as a sanctuary and refuge of the common people from the violence of rulers and as a nursery of the classical scholarship of the ancient world; "for centuries she was the only representative of science and culture." "But it was never possible for the mind to develop itself under her dominion; freedom of thought and investigation then as always since, have been treated by organized Christianity, especially in the Church of Rome, as heresies to be crushed. And for her hostility to the free activity of enlightened reason that church today is forsaken of all thinkers. It is
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therefore the mission of a living church to become the sanctuary of free thought and to reconcile to religion, from which they have been long divorced, modern science and the modern intelligence." This discourse which was printed in the daily newspapers, was deemed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop, Purcell, to be an attack upon the foundations of his faith, and he made a violent retort upon the occasion of a dedication of one of his own churches. These swelled into lengthy corre- spondence in the Cincinnati Commercial, Gazette and Catholic Telegraph, with other sermons from Mr. Vickers in his own church, in all of which Mr. Vickers displayed much learning while avoiding the discreditable manifestations of bad temper which were shown by his critic. Mr. Vickers resigned his pastorate April 5, 1874, and became the City Public Librarian, a post which he held for several years, becoming later a superintendent of schools in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Mr. Mayo's ministry ended in 1872. His successor was Charles Noyes, a graduate of Harvard College in 1856, and previous to his Cincinnati call, minister for seven years at Northfield, Massachusetts. He was a man of high character and good ability, and did much to conciliate the two parties, but the difficulties of the church in financial respects made his pastorate somewhat ineffective so that after a little more than two years of service, from January 5, 1873, to June 1, 1875, he resigned to the regret of a goodly number of his people. He has recently died at the age of 83, in Norwich, Connecticut.
With both churches without ministerial guidance and both deeply in debt, so that the new church on Plum and Eighth Streets was closed, the good sense of the active persons of the two congregations recognized that the part of wisdom lay in adjusting the old differences which had faded into unim- portance and unite in one church. This action was hastened by the influence of Charles William Wendte, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, of 1869, and for six years minister of a Chicago church in which he had shown great organizing ability. Mr. Wendte was invited by the Church of the Redeemer to become its minister, but he declined to con- sider any proposal for a settlement which did not involve a cordial union of the two societies. Such a union was soon
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effected by the co-operation, on the one hand of the Trustees of the Church of the Redeemer, John Kebler, Manning F. Force, Robert Hosea, Seth Evans and John W. Harper; and on the other hand of Alphonzo Taft, Thomas Vickers, William Wis- well, John D. Caldwell and John F. Dair, representing the older organization. The united church accepted the old corporate title of the First Congregational Church and six Trustees were chosen, taken in equal number from each society, being Alphonzo Taft, Robert Hosea, William Wiswell, John Kebler, John D. Caldwell, Fayette Smith; Mr. Smith being the Church Treasurer; Theodore Stanwood and Frank R. Ellis were made a special committee, among many other com- mittees, for the arrangement of suitable music for the Sunday worship.
Mr. Wendte's ministry was from January 19, 1876, to April 16, 1882. He worked during this period with unwearied energy, helping to relieve the church from its heavy debts, organizing young and old into manifold societies for the wel- fare of the church, and frequently bringing to the pulpit and to a lecture platform which continued to be a distinguished force for the city's education long after he had left Cincinnati, many notable personages.
The united Congregation worshipped in the building of the Church of the Redeemer, on Sixth and Mound Streets, until the sale of that edifice in 1879, when the long-vacant church on Plum and Eighth Streets was put into order and occupied April 13.
The old debt continued to be so onerous that Mr. Wendte announced that he could not continue his ministry unless some vigorous measures were immediately undertaken for the dis- charge of the indebtedness which amounted to more than $29,000. This effort was at once set on foot. The proceeds of sale of the Mound Street Church were $12,000, and more than $7,000 was raised by subscription. The reduction left conditions more tolerable, but the load was still heavy and therefore, two years later, a strenuous movement for the final disposition of the debt was so far successful as to obtain pledges for immediate or future payment of the remaining $11,705. To this sum a new organization of the younger people of the church, reinforced by some outsiders, known as
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