On one occasion, after a brutal scene in Boston attending the return of a slave to his master, feeling that the larger part of his congregation were in sympathy with the government, and approved of the act of surrender, the excited minister declined to give the ordinance of communion, thinking it would be a mockery. This action brought the growing disaffection to a head. The feeling of the parish was divided. Bitter words were exchanged. The situation on both sides became uncomfortable, and he accepted an invitation to another city, where he could exercise his independence without check or limit.

The position in regard to slavery which was taken thirty years ago there is no room to regret. It was taken with perfect sincerity, and under an uncontrollable pressure of conviction. The part performed by the abolitionists was predestined. The conduct of their opponents looks now as irrational as it did then. American slavery was so atrocious a system, so hideous a blot, that no terms were to be kept with it. Probably nothing but the surgeon's knife would have availed in dealing with such a cancerous mass. The cord had become so fatally twisted that the knot, too closely drawn to be untied, must be cut with the sword. The abolition of slavery was inevitable; it came about through a great elemental upheaval. The situation had become intolerable and was past reforming. Long before the war, it had become impossible to get along with the slaveholders, except on the most ignoble principles of trade or fashion. All manly acquiescence was out of the question. The Unitarians, as such, were indifferent or lukewarm; the leading classes were opposed to the agitation. Dr. Channing stood almost alone in lending countenance to the reform, though his hesitation between the dictates of natural feeling and Christian charity towards the masters hampered his action, and rendered him obnoxious to both parties,—the radicals finding fault with him for not going further, the conservatives blaming him because he went so far. The transcendentalists were quite universally abolitionists, for their philosophy pointed directly towards the exaltation of every natural power. Wherever they touched the earth—as they did not always, some of them soaring away beyond terrestrial things—flowers of hope sprang up in their path. In France, Germany, and England, they were friends of intellectual and social progress, of the ideal democracy. The spiritual philosophy was in the air; its ideas were unconsciously absorbed by the enthusiastic spirits. They constituted the life of the period; they were a light to such as dwelt in darkness or sat under the shadow of death.

In this country Mr. Emerson led the dance of the hours. He was our poet, our philosopher, our sage, our priest. He was the eternal man. If we could not go where he went, it was because we were weak and unworthy to follow the steps of such an emancipator. His singular genius, his wonderful serenity of disposition inherited from an exceptional ancestry and seldom ruffled by the ordinary passions of men, his curious felicity of speech, his wit, his practical wisdom, raised him above all his contemporaries. His infrequent contact with the world of affairs, his seclusion in the country, his apparitions from time to time on lecture platforms or in convention halls, gave a far-off sound to his voice as if it fell from the clouds. Some among his friends found fault with him for being bloodless and ethereal, but this added to the effect of his presence and his word. The mixture of Theism and Pantheism in his thoughts, of the personal and the impersonal, of the mystical and the practical, fascinated the sentiment of the generation, while the lofty moral strain of his teaching awakened to increased energy the wills of men. His speech and example stimulated every desire for reform, turning all eyes that were opened to the land of promise that seemed fully in sight. How much the anti-slavery conviction of the time, along with every other movement for the purification of society, owed to him we have always been fond of saying with that indefiniteness of specification which communicates so much more than it tells. This must be said, that, in the exhilaration of the period, they that worked hardest felt no exhaustion, and they that sacrificed most were conscious of no self-abnegation, and they that threw their lives into this cause had no sentiment but one of overflowing gratitude and joy. The anti-slavery agitation was felt to be something more than an attempt to apply the Beatitudes and the Parables to a flagrant case of inhumanity—it was regarded as a new interpreter of religion, a fresh declaration of the meaning of the Gospel, a living sign of the purely human character of a divine faith, an education in brotherly love and sacrifice; it was a common saying that now, for the first time in many generations, the essence of belief was made visible and palpable to all men; that Providence was teaching us in a most convincing way, and none but deaf ears could fail to understand the message.

It was, indeed, a most suggestive and inspiring time. Never shall I forget, never shall I cease to be grateful for, the communion with noble minds that was brought about, the moral earnestness that was engendered, the moral insight that was quickened. Then, if ever, we ascended the Mount of Vision. I was brought into close communion with living men, the most living of the time, the most under the influence of stimulating thoughts; and if they were intemperate in their speech, extravagant in their opinions, absolute in their moral judgments, that must be taken as proof of the depth of their conviction. They loved much, and therefore could be forgiven, if forgiveness was necessary. They sacrificed a good deal, too, some of them everything in the shape of worldly honor, and this brought them apparently into line with the confessors and saints. They made real the precepts of the New Testament. Their clients were the poor, the lowly, the disfranchised, the unprivileged, against whom the grandeurs of the world lifted a heavy hand. They were champions of those who sorrowed and prayed, and this was enough to win sympathy and disarm criticism. It was a great experience; not only was religion brought face to face with ethics, but it was identified with ethics. It became a religion of the heart: pity, sympathy, humanity, and brotherhood were its essential principles. At the anti-slavery fairs all sorts and conditions of men met together, without distinction of color or race or sex. There was really an education in the broadest faith, in which dogma, creed, form, and rite were secondary to love; and love was not only universal, but was warm.

Salem was the home of story and legend. There Puritanism showed its best and worst sides, for there Roger Williams preached, and there the witches were persecuted. The house where they were tried and the hill where they were executed were objects of curiosity. There were the wild pastures and the romantic shores, and broad streets shaded by elm trees, and gardens and greenhouses. There were spacious mansions and beautiful country-seats and pleasant walks. There was beauty and grace and accomplishment and wit. There were quaint old buildings, and ways once trodden by pious and heroic feet. On the whole, this was the most idyllic period in my ministry. Thither came Emanuel Vitalis Scherb, the native of Basel, an exile for opinion's sake, a man full of genius, learning, enthusiasm. Young, handsome, hopeful, his lectures on German literature and poetry attracted notice in Boston, whence he came to Salem to talk and be entertained. The best houses were open to him; the best people went to hear him. Alas, poor Scherb! His day of popularity was short. He sank from one stage of poverty to another; he was indebted to friends for aid, among the rest to H. W. Longfellow, who clung to him till the last, and finally died from disease in a military hospital early in our Civil War.

I remember, in connection with Samuel Johnson, collecting an audience for Mr. A. B. Alcott, the most adroit soliloquizer I ever listened to, who delivered in a vestry-room a series of those remarkable "conversations"—versations with the con left out—for which he was celebrated. It was, in many respects, a happy time.

V.
THE CRISIS IN BELIEF.

I was in Salem when this came. It happened in the following way: A woman in my choir, a melancholy, tearful, forlorn woman, asked me one day if I knew Theodore Parker. I said I did not, but then, seeing her disappointment, I asked her why she put that question. She replied that her husband had abandoned her some months before and with another woman had gone to Maine. There he had left the woman and was living in Boston, and was a member of Mr. Parker's Society; and she thought that if I knew Mr. Parker I might find out something about him, and perhaps induce him to come back to Salem. I told her I was going to Boston in a day or two, and would see Mr. Parker.

My visit, again and again repeated, resulted in an intimacy with that extraordinary man which had a lasting effect on my career. His personal sympathy, his profound humanity, his quickness of feeling, his sincerity, his courage, his absolute fidelity of service, even more than his astonishing vigor of intellect and his earnestness in pursuit of truth, made a deep impression on my mind. To be in his society was to be impelled in the direction of all nobleness. He talked with me, lent me books, stimulated the thirst for knowledge, opened new visions of usefulness. As I recall it now, his influence was mainly personal, the power that comes from a great character. He communicated a moral impetus. Faith in man, love of liberty in thought, institution, law, breathed in all his words and works. His theological ideas were somewhat mixed, as was inevitable then. His gift of spiritual vision, especially as shown in his interpretation of the Old-Testament narratives, may have been imperfect; his moral perspective may have been incomplete; his learning was copious, rather than discerning. But his single-mindedness was perfect, and his devotion to his fellow-men was almost superhuman. It was a privilege to know such a man, so simple-hearted and brave. The slight disposition to put himself on his omniscience, to strike an attitude, was not strange considering his enormous force, his consciousness of power, his singular influence over men, and his conviction (in large measure forced on him by his advocates) that he was a religious reformer, a second Luther, the inaugurator of a new Protestantism. His three doctrines, to which he constantly appealed, and in proof of which he adduced the testimony of the human soul,—the existence of a personal God, the immortality of the individual, and the absoluteness of the "moral law" might have been untenable in the presence of modern knowledge under the form in which he stated them. His vast collection of materials in attestation of Theism may have been valuable chiefly as a curiosity; but the man himself was all of one piece, genuine through and through. The mingling of fire and moderation in him was very remarkable, the blending of consuming radicalism with saving conservatism puzzled his more vehement disciples; but his character interested everybody; his firmness was visible from afar, and his warmth of heart was felt through stone walls. There were no two ministers in Boston who did as much for the inmates of hospitals and prisons as he did. His ministry ceased a quarter of a century ago, but the effect is vital yet, and will last for years to come. At this distance the heart leaps up to meet him. His chief work was done, for it consisted mainly in the adoption of a type of character, and length of days is not needed for this, while it is apt to be impaired by the infirmities of age. His long, wearisome illness, full of weakness and pain, tested the strength of his fortitude, patience, hopefulness, and trust, and was interesting as showing the passive, acquiescent side of heroism, all the more impressive in view of his love of life, his desire to finish his course, his sense of accountability (stronger in him than in anybody I ever met), and his wish to serve his kind. It was my happiness, more than ten years after he went away from men, to dwell for months in his atmosphere, while writing his biography, and all my old impressions of him were confirmed. And five years later, reviewing his life in the Index, I was again struck by his greatness. I may be excused for quoting the closing passage from the Index, of July 5, 1877, in which I stated the claims of Theodore Parker to the honor of posterity. The paragraph sums up the qualities that have been ascribed to him—integrity, catholicity, outspokenness; to these might have been added warmth of heart, but this last attribute lay on the surface, and could be easily appreciated by ordinary observers—in fact, was seen and acknowledged by his enemies, and by those who knew him least.

From a shelf in his library, I took Schwegler's "Nachapostolische Zeitalter," a work which threw a flood of light on the problems of New-Testament criticism. This led to a study of the writings of F. C. Baur, the founder of the so-called "Tübingen School." A complete set of the Theologische Jahrbücher, the organ of his ideas, was imported from Germany, and carefully perused. These volumes contained full and minute studies on all the books of the New Testament—Gospels, Epistles, the writing termed "The Acts of the Apostles," with incidental glances at the "Apocalypse." The calm, consistent strength of these expositions commended them to my mind. The author was a university professor, a man of practical piety, a Lutheran preacher of high repute, simple, affectionate, faithful to his duties, quite unconscious that he was undermining anybody's faith, so deeply rooted was the old Lutheran freedom of criticism in regard to the Bible. In the German mind, religion and literature, Christianity and the Scriptures, were entirely distinct things. The scholar could sit in his library in one mood and could enter his pulpit in another, preserving in both the single-mindedness that became a Christian and a student.

Other theories have arisen since, but none that have taken hold of such eminent minds have appeared. Theodore Parker accepted it; James Martineau adopted its main proposition in several remarkable papers written at various times, last in the Unitarian magazine Old and New. In the brilliant lectures delivered in London, during the spring of 1880, on the Hibbert Foundation, Ernest Renan's striking account of early Christianity owed its force to the assumption of the fundamental postulate of the Tübingen School. In the latter years of his life, Baur summed up the results of his criticism in a pamphlet that was designed to meet objections; and in 1875-1877 his son-in-law, the learned Edward Zeller, one of his ablest disciples, an eminent professor of history at Berlin, published an earnest, carefully considered, masterly report of the writings of the now famous teacher, in the course of which he paid a merited tribute to his character, vindicated his views from the charge of haste and partisanship, and predicted for them a triumphant future.[A]

The adoption of these opinions, so opposed to the views current in the community, compelled the adoption of a new basis for religious conviction. Christianity, in so far as it depended on the New Testament or the doctrines of the early Church, was discarded. The cardinal tenets of the Creed—the Deity of the Christ, the atonement, everlasting perdition—had been dismissed already, and I was virtually beyond the limits of the Confession. But Theism remained, and the spiritual nature of man with its craving for religious truth. Without going so far as Theodore Parker did, who maintained that the three primary beliefs of religion—the existence of God, the assurance of individual immortality, the reality of a moral law—were permanent, universal, and definite facts of human nature, found wherever man was found; without going so far as this, I contended that man had a spiritual nature; that this nature, on coming to consciousness of its powers and needs, gave expression to exalted beliefs, clothing them with authority, building them into temples, ordaining them in the form of ceremonies and priesthoods. In support of this opinion, appeal was made to the great religions of the world, to the substantial agreement of all sacred books, to the spontaneous homage paid, in all ages, to saints and prophets; to the essential accord of moral precepts all over the globe, to the example of Jesus, to the Beatitudes and Parables, to the respect given by rude people to the noblest persons, to the credences that inspire multitudes, to the teachings of Schleiermacher, Fichte, Constant, Cousin, Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson, in fact, to every leading writer of the last generation. All this was so beautiful, so consistent and convincing, so full of promise, so broad, plain, and inspiring that, with a fresh but miscalculated enthusiasm, over-sanguine, thoughtless, the young minister undertook to carry his congregation with him, but without success; so he went elsewhere. This action proceeded from the faith that Parker instilled. Parker was pre-eminently, to those who comprehended him, a believer.

In the words of D. A. Wasson, his successor in Music Hall:

To quote my own words, written in 1873 (see "Life." p. 566):

There can be no greater mistake than to call Theodore Parker a Deist; than to class Theodore Parker with the Deists. He was utterly unlike Chubb or Shaftesbury, Herbert of Cherbury or Bolingbroke. Even the most philosophical of them had nothing in common with him. Hume and Voltaire, for instance, were utterly unlike him. They, it is true, believed in a God, the "First Cause," the "Author of Nature," the "Supreme Being," and in a future life. But their belief was merely logical and mechanical, his was vital; he believed in the real, living, immanent Deity. They thought that religion was an imposition, a policy of the priests, who played upon the fears of mankind; he believed that religion was a working power in the world, the origin of the highest achievement, the soul of all aspiration. They had no faith in the direct communication of the "Supreme Mind" with the soul of man; he believed in the infinite genius of man, and in the direct communication of the absolute intelligence. They thought of justice as a contrivance for securing happiness; he thought of it as the law of life. One of Mr. Parker's friends ascribed to him a gorgeous imagination; if he had it, it is a surprise that it should have been so completely suppressed as it was, for his taste in pictures and in poetry was very questionable. His want of speculative talent probably helped him with the people. Whether he formulated his thoughts is uncertain. Such was not his genius. He was a constructive, not a destructive. It was his faith that he criticised the Bible in order that he might release its piety and righteousness; that he tore in pieces the creeds in order to emancipate the secrets of divinity.

It is useless to conjecture what Parker might have been had he lived. That he would have held to his primary convictions is almost certain; it is quite certain that he would have loved mental liberty. He would have been a great power in our Civil War; he would probably have been a leader in the free religious movement. Parker, when I first knew him, was in full life and vigor. He had gone to Boston a short time before my ordination in 1847, and had before him a long future of usefulness. All the exigencies in which he might have been conspicuous were distant. That the effect of such a man on me and my connections was exceedingly great is not strange. It would have been strange had it been otherwise. In sermon, prayer, private conversations my convictions came out. That the people were disappointed may be assumed, but they were kind, generous, and patient. The congregations did not fall off; there was little violence or even vehement expostulation. But the position was not comfortable, and when an invitation came from Jersey City to found a new Society, I accepted it at once. It had been a dream of Dr. Bellows to establish a Society at that place, and, learning that I was in search of another sphere of activity, he asked me to undertake the work. This was seconded by a cordial representation from Jersey City itself, on the part of some who were Dr. Bellows' own parishioners. The uprooting was not easy, for Salem had become endeared to me as the first scene of my ministry, a place where I could be useful in many ways, and which contained a delightful society; an established, well-furnished town, with historic associations; a country centre, an agreeable situation. But the waters were getting still there, and the sentiment of the past was getting to over-weigh the promises of the future.

VI.
JERSEY CITY.

Jersey City, to which I went directly from Salem, was a very different place from what it is now; smaller and perhaps pleasanter. Where now is a large city, a few years ago was but a village. Now it is a manufacturing place, with great establishments, foundries, machine-shops, banks, insurance companies, newspapers, more than forty schools, and more than sixty churches. Then it was a large town, though it was nominally a city (incorporated in 1820), with a population of about twenty thousand, the increase being chiefly due to the annexation of suburbs, not to its own vital growth. It was substantially rural in character, with extensive meadows, broad avenues; a place of residence largely, the gentlemen living there and doing business in New York. There were a few Unitarians, a few Universalists, but there was no organized Unitarian society before I went there. A great many cultivated people resided in this place. There was wealth, culture, and interest in social matters. A meeting-house was built for me and dedicated to a large, rational faith.

The chief peculiarity of my ministry there was the disuse of the communion service. This rite I had thought a great deal about in Salem. There had been, then, a well-meant proposal on the part of the pastor to make an alteration in the form of administering the communion service. The custom had been (quite an incidental one, for the usage was by no means the same in all the churches of the denomination) to thrust the rite in once a month, between the morning worship and dinner time, and to offer it then to none but the church-members, who composed but a small part of the congregation. As a consequence of this arrangement, the observance became formal, dry, short, and tiresome. To the majority of the Society it seemed a mystical ceremony with which they had no concern, while those who stayed to take part in it, wearied already by the preceding exercises, and hungry for their mid-day meal, gave to it but half-hearted attention. The observance was thus worse than thrown away; for, in addition to the loss of an opportunity for spiritual impression, a dangerous kind of self-righteousness was encouraged in the few church-members, who regarded themselves as in some way set apart from their fellow-sinners, either as having made confession of faith or as being subjects of a peculiar experience. To impart freshness to the rite, and at the same time to extend its usefulness as a "means of grace," the minister proposed to celebrate it less frequently (once in two or three months), to substitute it in place of the usual afternoon meeting, to make special preparation for it by the co-operation of the choir, and to throw it open to as many as might choose to come, be they church members or not. The suggestion met with feeble response, and that chiefly from young people who had hitherto stayed away out of a laudable feeling of modesty, not wishing to remain when their elders and betters went out, and not thinking themselves good enough to partake of a special privilege. The "communicants," as a rule, set their faces against the innovation, perhaps because they were secretly persuaded that the change portended the secularizing of Christianity by a removal of the barrier that divided the church from the world, possibly because they wished to retain an exclusive prerogative which had always marked the "elect."

The matter was not pressed; the routine went on as before; the minister did his best to render the service impressive and interesting. But his studies and meditations led him to the conclusion that the observance had no place in the Unitarian system; that it was a mere formality, without an excuse for being; that it contained no idea or sentiment that was not expressed in the ordinary worship; that it was a remnant of an otherwise discarded form of Christianity, where it had a peculiar significance; that it was the last attenuation of the Roman sacrament of transubstantiation; that it ought to be dropped from every scheme of liberal faith as an illogical adjunct, a harmful excrescence, a hindrance, in short. No whisper of these doubts was breathed at the time, but the pastor's silence allowed the scepticism to strike the deeper root in his mind. Mr. Emerson's departure from his parish, on the ground that he could no longer administer the communion rite according to the usage of the sect, had occurred many years before this, but was still remembered in discussion and talk. Theodore Parker had no communion; but he was an established leader of heresy, and did not furnish an example. Many, agreeing with Emerson's reasoning, disapproved of his course in resigning his pulpit rather than continue to administer the bread and wine. He himself advised others to hold on to the observance, if they could, hoping for the time when it might be universally vivified by faith. Some might do it as it was. The congregations would, it is likely, without exception, have decided as his did, to lose their minister sooner than their "Supper." Some years later, on passing through Boston on my way to another scene of labor, I called on a distinguished clergyman who had taken a part in my ordination, and was asked by him what I intended to do in my new parish with regard to the communion. I replied that it was not my purpose to have it, "You cannot give it up," he said; "it is stronger than any of us. I should drop it if I dared, for there is nothing real in it that is not in the general service, but I am afraid to try. I shall watch your experiment with interest, but without expectation of its success." "Very well," I replied, "we shall see." The experiment was tried and succeeded. For four years I had no communion, and not a word was said about it. On leaving for New York, several of my friends, who had been accustomed to the ceremony all their lives, were asked if they did not think it would be wise to reinstate the rite. To my surprise, they with one voice said that there was no need of it, that the Society got along perfectly well without it. It is needless to say that in New York the observance was never celebrated.

The ceremony was justified among Unitarians by various reasons which, in the end, seemed apologies. With the old-fashioned, semi-orthodox members of the congregations it was a precious heirloom, prized for its antiquity; a link that still held them in the bond of fellowship with the universal church; a last relic of the supernaturalism to which they clung without knowing why; the pledge of a mystical union with their Christ. Any change in the administration of it was regarded as a desecration; the suggestion of its complete discontinuance could, they thought, arise in no mind that was not fatally poisoned by infidelity. It was not, in their opinion, a symbol of doctrine, but a channel of divine influence, which no intellectual doubts could touch, which spiritual deadness alone could dispense with. Tenets might be abandoned, forms of belief might be discredited, but this citadel of faith must not be assailed or approached by irreverent feet. Mr. Emerson's example was not followed by his contemporaries. His fellows did not so soon reach his point of conviction. Even radicals, like George Ripley, did not. In my own case it was the growth of time. At the moment there was no disposition to abandon the observance, simply a desire to reanimate it. It was not perceived till much later that the changes proposed implied a virtual abandonment of the rite itself; that the communion is regarded as a sacrament, that as a sacrament it might be presumed to be supernaturally instituted for the communication of the divine life; that, when faith in the supernatural declines, the sacrament no longer has a function as a medium, and must be omitted; that no attempts to revive it as a sentimental practice could be justified to reason; that all endeavors to awaken interest in it by assuming some occult efficacy must be futile because groundless. The "memorial service" can in no proper sense be called a sacrament. It may be a pleasing expression of sentiment, somewhat over-strained and fanciful, but capable of being made attractive. The task of reproducing the emotions of the early disciples as they sat at supper with their Master, nearly two thousand years ago, is too severe for the ordinary imagination, and when persisted in from a sense of duty may become a dull, creaking performance, against which the sensitive rebel and the witty are tempted to launch the shafts of their sarcasm. The only way of saving it from gibes is to ascribe to it some mystical efficacy for which there is no logical excuse. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation had a foundation in the philosophy of the Church. The Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation, which recognized the presence of Christ on the occasion, but not the literal change of the substance of his flesh, was legitimate. But the Sabellian theory, which the Unitarians inherited, was in no respect justified, save as a tradition.

The sole alternative at that time for me, when the Communion service was made a test question between the "conservative" and the "radical," was to drop it. At present the situation is altered. It is no longer a ceremony or a tradition, but a means of spiritual cultivation. It stands for fellowship and aspiration, not for a communion of saints, but of all those who desire to share the saintly mind, of all who aim at perfection. The rite is one in which all may unite who wish, however fitfully, for goodness; all, whether Romanist or Protestant, and Protestant of whatever name; all, in every religion under the sun, Eastern or Western, Northern or Southern, old or new, every dividing line being erased. I once attended the Communion service of a Broad Churchman. The invitation was large and inclusive, comprehending everybody who, though far off, looked towards the light, everybody who had the least glimmer of the divine radiance; and none but an absolute infidel was shut out. There was a recognition of a divine nature in men,—

The idea of spiritual communion is a grand one. It is universal too; it is human in the best sense. The symbols were ancient when Jesus used them, the Bread signifying Truth, the Wine signifying Life. Originally the symbols referred to the wealth of nature, as is evident from an ancient prayer. It was the custom for the master of the Jewish feast to repeat this form of words: "Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, who givest us the fruits of the vine," and then he gave the cup to all.

Leaving out the personal application which is purely incidental, and discarding the sacramental idea which is a corruption, throwing the service open to the whole congregation as an opportunity, a great deal may be accomplished in the way of spiritual advancement. True, the ceremony contains no thought or sentiment that is not expressed in the sermon or the prayer, but it puts these in poetic form, it addresses them directly to the imagination, it associates them with the holier souls in their holiest hours, and brings people face to face with their better selves in the tenderest and most touching manner, teaching charity, love, endeavor after the religious life. The rite is full of beauty when confined within the bounds of Christianity, but when extended to the principles of other faiths, it is rich in meaning, and may be used with effect by those who wish to educate the people in the highest form of idealism, who desire comprehensiveness. A symbol often goes further than an argument, and a symbol so ancient and so consecrated ought to be preserved. A friend of mine included all religious teachers in his commemoration. This was a step in the right direction, but if the people are not ready for this yet, they may welcome an extension of the reign of spiritual love among the disciples whom theological hatred has kept apart. But this was not suspected then.

It will be remarked that my reasons were not those of Emerson. His argument was solid and sound, but his real reason was personal. He said in his sermon: "If I believed it was enjoined by Jesus and his disciples that he even contemplated making permanent this mode of commemoration, every way agreeable to an Eastern mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I should not adopt it.... It is my desire in the office of a Christian minister to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this I have said all.... That is the end of my opposition, that I am not interested in it." My ground was different; I had no objection to the symbol, none to an Oriental symbol, and the mere fact that I was not interested in it seemed to me not pertinent to the case. My objection was that it divided those who ought to be united; that it encouraged a form of self-righteousness; that it implied a "grace" that did not exist. For the rest, my form of religion was of sentiment. It was scarcely Unitarian, not even Christian in a technical sense or in any other but a broad moral signification. It was Theism founded on the Transcendental philosophy, a substitute for the authority of Romanism and of Protestantism. This was an admirable counterfeit of Inspiration, having the fire, the glow, the beauty of it. It most successfully tided over the gulf between Protestantism and Rationalism. Parker used it with great effect. It was the life of Emerson's teaching. It animated Thomas Carlyle. It was the fundamental assumption of the Abolitionists, and of all social reformers.

I had perfect freedom of speech in Jersey City; there was no opposition to the doctrine announced. The Society there was large and flourishing, and its influence in the town was on the increase. But Jersey City was, after all, a suburb only of New York. Some of my most devoted hearers came from New York, and urged me to go there. Dr. Bellows was anxious to found a third Society in the great city, and added his word to their solicitations, so that in the spring of 1859 I went thither. My church in Jersey City was continued for a short time, but I had no settled successor; the congregation did not grow; some of my most earnest supporters had either died or left the town. The war broke out and was fatal to institutions that had not a deep root. The building was sold soon after, for business purposes I think, and the society was never renewed. This may appear singular considering that there are Unitarian churches elsewhere in New Jersey, at Camden, Orange, Plainfield, Vineland, and Woodbury. The changed condition of the town may have had something to do with the failure to revive, after the war, the Unitarian Society. The Catholic, Presbyterian, Orthodox Congregationalist communions were more suited to the new population than the Unitarian was. Possibly, too, the "radical" complexion of the parish had something to do with the disrepute that fell upon it. However this may have been, the cause did not seem to prosper. Mr. Job Male, who died recently at Plainfield, was one of my most zealous supporters and exerted himself to keep the enterprise alive, but in vain. It is understood that the flourishing Unitarian church in Plainfield was largely due to his efforts.

VII.
NEW YORK.

For the first year in New York I lived with Dr. Bellows at his parsonage. Mrs. Bellows and the children were at Eagleswood, New Jersey, the children being at school with Mr. Weld. And this is the place to say something about Henry Whitney Bellows. He was a very remarkable man, most extraordinary in his way; an original man, a peculiar individual; of mercurial temper, various, quick, sympathetic, brave, whole-hearted, generous, but all in his own fashion. More Celtic than Saxon, more French than English, prone to generalize, something of a doctrinaire, indifferent to personalities, but of warm affections where he was interested; loyal, as knights always are, where his honor was concerned, but impatient of dictation, restless, nervous, impetuous, dashing from side to side, always consistent with himself, yet rarely consistent with ordinary rules of conventional society. Such a man is best described in detail.

Dr. Bellows, as we called him, had a singular gift of expression. This was the soul of him, his most prominent feature, the trait that explains every other. His appearance indicated as much. He had a mobile mouth, flexible features, a ringing voice, a cordial manner. He was fond of talking, brilliant in conversation, attractive in social intercourse, a charming companion, full of wit, rapid in repartee, ready with anecdote, illustration, allusion. He was a great favorite at the dinner-table, at friendly gatherings, at the club, where a circle always collected round him and were delighted with the endless versatility of his discourse. In fact, he was a man of society rather than a clergyman, though he occupied a pulpit from the beginning, and was faithful to all the duties of his profession. Still they were not altogether to his taste, and he got away from them whenever he conscientiously could. His best deliverances were half-secular addresses on some theme of immediate popular interest, speeches, orations, ethical talks, ever on a high plane of sentiment, but looking towards the urgent preoccupations of the time. He was not a student in any direction; not a deep, patient, exhaustive thinker; not a scholar in any school, but an immense reader of current literature, of magazines, papers, memoirs, and an eloquent reproducer of thoughts as he found them lying on the surface of the intellectual world. His brain was exceedingly active, and reached forth in all directions; his pen was fluent, facile, and busy; language exuded from all his pores. As a preacher he was conventional, restrained, and, it must be confessed, not engaging as a rule, but as a talker he was delightful, copious, entertaining, kindling, attractive to old and young, and crowds thronged the house when he spoke about what he had seen or felt, while his pulpit discourses did not fill the pews. Like many men of remarkable talents, he imagined his strong points to be those in which he was most deficient, not being gifted with much power of self-knowledge, and perhaps aspiring after accomplishments he did not possess. He prided himself more than he should have done on his insight as a theologian, his depth as a philosopher, his skill as an administrator, his practical success as an organizer; whereas his consummate ability consisted in exposition, not in original discovery. He was not a theologian, not a philosopher, not a builder, but a most persuasive advocate, perhaps the most adroit I ever met with. His range was wide, his exuberance infinite, his sway over his listeners absolute. It is no marvel that such a man was persuaded that he could achieve all things.

He was the only speaker I ever knew who could talk himself into ideas. Many, by dint of talking, can work themselves into an implicit faith in doctrines they were indifferent about at starting; but this man had the dangerous gift of being able, not merely to think on his feet, but to set his faculties in motion by the action of his tongue. Again and again he has gone to a public meeting, at which he was expected to speak, with no preparation at all, or none but a very general one, depending upon some impulse of the moment to set him a-going. A word dropped by a previous speaker, the mere presence of the audience, a suggestion awakened in his mind as he sat awaiting his turn, would excite him sufficiently; and when he stood up one idea started another, an illustration opened a new field of thought, till the torrent, growing deeper and more tumultuous as it flowed, carried the hearers away in ecstasy. One who did not know him found it hard to believe that he had not meditated his address beforehand. He has gone into the pulpit with a written sermon, and being struck by a sentence in the Scripture he was reading, has laid his manuscript aside and delivered an extemporaneous discourse on an entirely different theme.

The reason why he did not preach habitually without notes was that this fatal facility of speech excited him too much, carried him too far, rendered him discursive, led him on to inordinate length, and wearied his congregation. He needed the restraint of the paper, the calm dignity of the closet meditation; he needed also to spread his thoughts over a larger expanse of time, and thus to secure quiet for his brain. At the risk, therefore, of being dull, he spared himself, as well as his parishioners, the stimulating fervor of the extemporaneous address. He may have felt, too, that his was not the quality of mind for this method. It required a less fluent talent, a less ready loquacity, a less mercurial temperament, a more reserved habit. There are those whose constitutional reticence preserves them from aberration; who can see the end from the beginning; can cling closely to the matter in hand; can walk a thin plank; and have too few ready ideas to be in any peril of going astray. Such are the most successful extemporaneous preachers. Dr. Bellows' genius was better adapted to an address, therefore, than to a sermon.

The secular view of things was more attractive to him than the spiritual. His defence of the drama in 1857 (an oration delivered in the Academy of Music, and which was very bold for that time); his vigorous conduct of the Christian Inquirer, a Unitarian paper, which he managed and for which he wrote constantly for four years, advocating an unwonted liberality of sympathy, maintaining, for example, the substantial identity of the Unitarian and the Universalist confessions; his interest in questions of social and philanthropic concern; his lectures before the Lowell Institute in 1857,—all attest his desire to effect a reconciliation between science and religion, between this world and the next. His oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, in 1853, is an admirable specimen of his treatment of similar themes. The subject of the oration was "The Ledger and the Lexicon, or Business and Literature in Account with American Education"; and its purpose was to assert the claims of popular life against those of scholarship,—to state the case of natural instincts and practical intelligence as the controlling force of our destiny. He says, most truly, at the outset, "Speaking purely as a scholar, I should unaffectedly feel that I had nothing to offer worthy this audience or occasion," and then he goes on with a full, earnest, eloquent plea for the intellectual character of our political and commercial activity. Here is an extract: