I. The best work for liberty has been done by men who loved her too wisely to vituperate anyone for differing from them, or to forestall the final verdict of public opinion by appealing to an ordeal by battle. Such were the men who took the lead in establishing freedom of thought in America. Very little individual independence of opinion was found there by Tocqueville in 1831; and the flood of new ideas which had already burst forth in England was not as yet feeding the growth of originality in American literature. This sterility was largely due to preoccupation with business and politics; but even the best educated men in the United States were repressed by the dead weight of the popular theology; and Channing complained that the orthodox churches were "arrayed against intellect." The silence of the pulpit about slavery is only one instance of the general indifference of the clergy to new ideas. We shall see that at least one other reform was opposed much more zealously. The circulation of new books and magazines from Europe was retarded by warnings against infidelity; and colleges were carefully guarded against the invasion of new truth.
Intercourse with Europe was fortunately close enough for the brightness of her literature and art to attract many longing eyes from New England. Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Jean Paul, Mme. de Stâel, and Rousseau won readers in the original, as well as in translations; and the influence of Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle increased rapidly. Plato and Kant found many worshippers, and a few students. The plain incapacity of orthodoxy to solve the pressing moral and intellectual problems of the day permitted young people who knew nothing about science to welcome the idea that the highest truth is revealed by intuitions which transcend experience and should supersede logic. This system is peculiarly that of Schelling, who was then expounding it in Germany; but the credit for it in America was given to his disciples, and especially to Coleridge. A few admirers of these authors formed the Transcendental Club in Boston, in September, 1836; and the new philosophy made converts rapidly. Severity of climate and lack of social amusements favoured introspection. Thinkers welcomed release from the tyranny of books. Lovers of art were glad of the prospect of a broader culture than was possible in the shadow of Puritanism. Reformers seized the opportunity of appealing from pro-slavery texts and constitutions to a higher law. Friends of religion hoped that the gloom of the popular theology would be dispelled by a new revelation coming direct from God into their souls.
II. A mighty declaration of religious independence was made on July 15, 1838, when Emerson said to the Unitarian ministers: "The need was never greater of new revelation than now." "It cannot be received at second hand." There has been "noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus." "Cast aside all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity." "The old is for slaves." Much controversy was called out by the publication of this address. It was preceded by another in which educated men were told that they must believe themselves "inspired by the Divine Soul which inspires all men." "There can be no scholar without the heroic mind." "Each age must write its own books." Emerson had also sent out in 1836 a pamphlet entitled Nature; and one of its first readers has called it "an 'open sesame' to all thought, and the first we had ever had." Still more important were the essays on "Heroism" and "Self-Reliance," which were part of a volume published in 1841. Then Emerson's readers were awakened from the torpor of submission to popular clergymen and politicians by the stern words: "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." "Insist on yourself: never imitate." "The soul looketh steadily forwards." "It is no follower: it never appeals from itself." The Russian Government was so well aware of the value of these essays as to imprison a student for borrowing them. A Lord Mayor in England acknowledged that their influence had raised him out of poverty and obscurity. Bradlaugh's first impulse to do battle for freedom in religion came from Emerson's exhortation to self-reliance.
The author's influence was all the greater, because he was already an impressive lecturer. There was much more demand, both in England and in America, between 1830 and 1860, for literary culture and useful knowledge than was supplied by the magazines and public libraries. The Americans were peculiarly destitute of public amusements. Dancing, playing cards, and going to the theatre were still under the ban; and there was not yet culture enough for concerts to be popular. There was at the same time much more interest, especially in New England, in the anti-slavery movement than has been called out for later reforms; for these have been much less picturesque. The power with which Phillips and Parker pleaded for the slave was enough to make lectures popular; but I have known courses attended, even in 1855, by young people who went merely because there was nowhere else to go, and who came away in blissful ignorance of the subjects. Deeper than all other needs lay that of a live religion. Emerson was among the first to satisfy this demand. His earliest lecture, in 1833, took a scientific subject, as was then customary; but he soon found that he had the best possible opportunity for declaring that "From within, or from behind, a light shines through upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." Invitations were frequent as early as 1844, though the audience was usually small; and his genius became generally recognised after his return, in 1848, from a visit to England. There scholarship was high enough to give him, as early as 1844, thousands of readers for that little book on Nature, of which only a few hundred copies had been sold in America. Invitations to lecture came from all parts of Great Britain, and in such numbers that many had to be declined. The aristocracy of rank as well as of intellect helped to crowd the halls in Manchester, Edinburgh, and London. Once at least, he had more than two thousand hearers. The newspapers reported his lectures at such length that much of his time was spent in writing new ones. He had not intended to be anyone's guest; but invitations were so numerous and cordial, that he could seldom escape into solitude. He wrote to his wife, "My reception here is really a premium on authorship."
Success in England increased his opportunities, as well as his courage, to speak in America. Invitations grew more and more frequent, and compensation more liberal. His thrilling voice was often heard, thenceforth, in the towns and cities of New England. In 1850, he went to lecture at St. Louis, and met audience after audience on the way. During the next twenty years he spent at least two months of discomfort, every winter, lecturing in city after city throughout the free States. Everywhere he gave his best thought, and as much as possible of it, in every lecture. Logical order seemed less important; and he spent much more time in condensing than in arranging the sentences selected from his note-books. Strikingly original ideas, which had flashed upon him at various times, were presented one after another as if each were complete in itself. The intermixture of quotations and anecdotes did not save the general character from becoming often chaotic; but the chaos was always full of power and light. Star after star rose rapidly upon his astonished and delighted hearers. They sometimes could not understand him; but they always felt lifted up. Parker described him in 1839 as pouring forth "a stream of golden atoms of thought"; and Lowell called him some twenty years later "the most steadily attractive lecturer in America." These young men and others of like aspirations walked long distances to visit him or hear him speak in public. The influence of his lectures increased that of the books into which they finally crystallised. In 1860, he had made his way of thinking so common that his Conduct of Life had a sale of 2500 copies in two days. His readers were nowhere numerous, outside of Boston; but they were, and are, to be found everywhere.
Lovers of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic were brought into closer fellowship by books singularly free from anti-British prejudice; but he was so thoroughly American that he declared, even in London, that the true aristocracy must be founded on merit, for "Birth has been tried and failed." This lecture was often repeated, and was finally given in 1881 as his last word in public. Introspective and retiring habits kept him for some time from engaging actively in the reforms which were in full blast about 1840; but Lowell said he was "the sleeping partner who has supplied a great part of their capital." His words about slavery were few and cold before the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed in 1850. Indignation at this command to kidnap made him publicly advise his neighbours to break the wicked law. He spoke in support of a Free Soil candidate in 1852, and for the Republican party in 1854; but John Brown called out much more of his praise than any other abolitionist. The attempt of the Garrisonians to persuade the North to suffer the seceders to depart in peace won his active aid; but the speech which he tried to deliver on their platform, early in 1861, was made inaudible by a mob of enthusiasts for maintaining the Union by war. He rejoiced in emancipation; but it was not achieved until he had lost much of his mental vigour. This, in fact, was at its height between 1840 and 1850. His last volumes were in great part made up of his earliest writings. There was no change in his opinions; and his address in 1838 was fully approved by him when he re-read it shortly before his death.
His most useful contribution to the cause of reform was the characteristic theory which underlies all he wrote. In the essays published in 1841, he states it thus: "Every man knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due."... "We know truth when we see it." From first to last he held that "Books are for the scholar's idle hours."... "A sound mind will derive its principles from insight."... "Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles." This was a doctrine much more revolutionary than Luther's. Emerson proclaimed independence of the Bible as well as of the Church. His innate reverence was expressed in such sayings as "The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to interpose helps." Love of spontaneity made him declare that "Creeds are a disease of the intellect." It was in his indignation at the Fugitive-Slave Law that he said, "We should not forgive the clergy for taking on every issue the immoral side." His treatment of religious institutions was not perfectly consistent; but the aim of all his writings was to encourage heroic thought. He wrote the Gospel of Nonconformity. Personal knowledge of his influence justified Bishop Huntington in saying that he has "done more to unsettle the faith of the educated young men of our age and country in the Christianity of the Bible than any other twenty men combined."
How desirous Emerson was to have the inner light obeyed promptly and fully may be judged from his describing his own habit of writing as follows: "I would not degrade myself by casting about for a thought, nor by waiting for it."... "If it come not spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all." Much of the peculiar charm of his books is due to his having composed them thus. Again and again he says: "It is really of little importance what blunders in statement we make, so only that we make no wilful departure from the truth."... "Why should I give up my thought, because I cannot answer an objection to it?"... "With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do."... "Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day."... "I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be"... "ridiculous henceforward." This is not meant for mere theory. We are told often that "Virtue is the spontaneity of the will."... "Our spontaneous action is always the best."... "The only right is what is after my own constitution, the only wrong what is against it."
III. The passages quoted in the last paragraph are of great importance; for they did more than any others to abolish slavery. Its defenders appealed to the Bible as confidently as to the national Constitution; but the Garrisonians declared with Emerson, that "The highest virtue is always against the law." They were confident that they knew the truth as soon as they saw it, and had no need to answer objections. The same faith in spontaneous impressions inspired the suffragists, of whom the next chapter will give some account. Agitations against established institutions sprang up thickly under the first step of Transcendentalism. Church, State, family ties, and business relations seemed all likely to be broken up. Lowell says that "Everybody had a mission (with a capital M) to attend to everybody else's business."... "Conventions were held for every hitherto inconceivable purpose." "Communities were established where everything was to be in common but common sense." The popular authors about 1840 were mostly Transcendentalists; and nearly every Transcendentalist was a Socialist. Some forty communities were started almost simultaneously; but not one-half lasted through the second year. One of the first failures was led by a man who had been working actively against slavery, but who had come to think that the only way to attack it was to try to do away with all private property whatever. Brook Farm lasted half a dozen years, with a success due partly to the high culture of the inmates, and partly to some recognition of the right of private ownership. The general experience, however, was that a Transcendentalist was much more willing to make plans for other people, than to conform in his own daily life to regulations proposed by anyone else. The very multiplicity of the reforms, started in the light of the new philosophy, did much to prevent most of them from attaining success. We have seen how slavery was abolished; but no one should regret the failure of most of the Transcendentalist schemes.
The subsidence of Socialism was especially fortunate on account of the frankness with which matrimony was repudiated by the system most in vogue, that of Fourier. He had followed the spontaneous and instinctive impulses of man with the utmost consistency. Other Socialists have been more cautious; but the problem of reconciling family ties with communal life has not been solved. Some of the English Transcendentalists published a pamphlet recommending systematic encouragement of licentiousness; and an American philosopher, who turned Roman Catholic in 1844, declared that free love was "Transcendentalism in full bloom." The term "higher law" was used to support the pretence of some obligation more binding than marriage. A free-love convention was held in New York about 1857; and very lax ideas had been already announced by active apostles of spontaneity known as Spiritualists.
No writer has done more to encourage purity of thought than Emerson. His life was stainless; but perhaps the best proof of this is his saying, "Our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our will"; and again, "If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him." No man ever wrote thus who was not either notoriously corrupt or singularly innocent. Policemen and jailers exist largely for the purpose of preventing people from planting themselves on their instincts—for instance, those which lead to theft, drunkenness, and murder. Socialism would perhaps be practicable if industry were as natural as laziness. Almost all moralists have thought it necessary to insist on constant interference with the instincts. So earnest and able a Transcendentalist as Miss Cobbe gives these definitions in her elaborate treatise on Intuitive Morals: "Happiness is the gratification of all the desires of our nature." "Virtue is the renunciation of such of them as are forbidden by the moral law." Theodore Parker insisted on the duty of subordinating "the low qualities to the higher," but Emerson held, as already mentioned, that "Virtue is the spontaneity of the will."
Such language was largely due to his perception that all activity, however innocent, of thought and feeling had been too much repressed by the Puritanical churches, in whose shadow he was brought up. The same mistake was made in the Dark Ages; and the reaction from that asceticism was notorious during the Renaissance. The early Unitarians overrated human nature in their hostility to the Trinitarians, who underrated it; and Emerson went beyond his original associates in the Unitarian ministry because he was more Transcendental. The elevation of his own character encouraged him to hope that our higher qualities are so strong as to need only freedom to be enabled to keep all impure desire in subjection. It was a marked change of tone when in 1876 he allowed these words to be printed in one of his books: "Self-control is the rule. You have in you there a noisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, and turn all his strength to beauty." Similar passages, especially a censure of the pruriency of Fourierism, occur in essays which were probably written some years earlier, but were not published until after his death. Most of the Transcendentalists have fortunately acknowledged the duty of self-control much more plainly and readily. It is a fair question whether they were more consistent. How does anyone know which of his instincts and impulses to control and which to cultivate? What better light has he than is given either by his own experience or by that of his parents and other teachers? I acknowledge the power of conscience; but its dictates differ so much in different individuals as to be plainly due to early education. Thus even a Transcendentalist has to submit himself to experience; as he would not do if it were really transcended by his philosophy.
Emerson himself was singularly fortunate in his "involuntary perceptions." Those of most men are dark with superstition and prejudice. It is what we have heard earliest and oftenest that recurs most spontaneously. If all mankind had continued satisfied to "trust the instinct to the end though it can render no reason," we should still believe in the divine right of kings, and the supremacy of evil spirits. There would have been very little persecution if men could have known truth when they saw it. Parker believed devoutly in the intuitions, but he said that Emerson exaggerated their accuracy to such an extent that he "discourages hard and continuous thought." "Some of his followers will be more faithful than he to the false principles which he lays down, and will think themselves wise because they do not study, and inspired because they say what outrages common sense." The danger of following instinctive impressions in regard to the currency has been shown in recent American politics. Anyone who is familiar with scientific methods will see where Emerson's failed. It is true that he prized highly many of the results of science, especially the theory of evolution as it was taught by Lamarck and other forerunners of Darwin. His inability to see the value of investigation and verification is disclosed plainly; and he preferred to have people try to "build science on ideas." He acknowledged that too much time was given to Latin and Greek in college; but his wishes in regard to study of the sciences were so old-fashioned as to call out a remonstrance from Agassiz.
IV. How little scientific culture there was before 1860 may be judged from the rapid growth of Spiritualism. Transcendentalism had shown tremendous strength in helping people escape from the old churches; but it was of little use in building new ones. Churches exist for the express purpose of enabling believers in a common faith to unite in public worship. No society could be so holy as solitude to a sincere Transcendentalist; and the beliefs of his neighbours seemed much less sacred than his own peculiar intuitions. Exceptional eloquence might make him pastor of a large society; but it began to decline when he ceased to speak. Transcendentalism was excellent material for weathercocks, but it had to be toughened by adulteration with baser metal before it supplied any solid foundation for a new temple.
Most of the people who had lost faith in the old churches were longing after some better way of receiving knowledge about the heavenly world. Millions of Americans and Europeans rejoiced to hear that spirits had begun to communicate by mysterious raps at Rochester, N. Y., on the last day of March, 1848. Messages from the departed were soon received in many places; but the one thing needful was that the room be filled with believers; and a crowded hall was peculiarly likely to be favoured with strange sounds and sights. Here was the social element necessary for founding a new religion. It appealed as confidently as its rivals to miracles and prophecies, while it had the peculiar attraction of being preached mainly by young women. Instinctive impulses were regarded as revelations from the spirit-land, but not considered infallible except by the very superstitious. The highest authority of an intelligent Spiritualist has usually been his own individual intuition. Some of the earliest lectures on that platform had little faith in anything but science, and put their main strength into announcing those revelations of geology which have dethroned Genesis. One of the first teachers of evolution in America was a Spiritualist named Denton, who held a public debate in Ohio, in 1858, when he defended the theory of man's gradual development from lower animals against a preacher named Garfield, who became President of the United States. Some eminent scientists have become converts to Spiritualism; but its general literature has shown little influence from scientific methods of thought.
The advocates of the new religion have owed much of their success to impassioned eloquence. Opposition to Christianity has been expressed boldly and frequently. Girls of seventeen have declared, before large audiences, that all the creeds and ceremonies of the churches are mere idolatry. Among the earliest communications which were published as dictated by angels in the new dispensation were denials of the miracles of Jesus, and denunciations of the clergy as "the deadliest foes of progress." An eminent Unitarian divine declared in 1856, that "the doctrines professedly revealed by a majority of the spirits, whose words we have seen quoted, are at open war with the New Testament." Some moderate Spiritualists have kept in friendly relations with liberal churches; but many others have been in active co-operation with the most aggressive of unbelievers in religion. The speakers at the Spiritualist anniversary in 1897 said to one another, "You and I are Christs, just as Jesus was," and claimed plainly that "our religion" was distinct from every "Christian denomination." Spiritualists have all, I think, been in favour of woman suffrage; and the majority were abolitionists. Some of Garrison's companions, however, deserted in the heat of the battle, saying that there was nothing more to do, for the spirits would free the slaves. Anti-slavery lecturers in the North-west found themselves crowded out of halls and school-houses by trance-speakers and mediums. One of the most eminent of converts made by the latter, Judge Edmonds, was prominent among the defenders of slavery in the free States.
Freedom from any definite creed or rigid code of morality joined with the constant supply of ever-varying miracles in attracting converts. Those in the United States were soon estimated in millions. Spiritualism swept over Great Britain so rapidly that it was declared by the Westminster Review to give quite as much promise as Christianity had done, at the same age, of becoming a universal religion. No impartial observer expects that now. Believers are still to be found in all parts of Europe and South America, and they are especially numerous in the United States. Proselytes do not seem to be coming in anywhere very thickly; and the number of intelligent men and women who have renounced Spiritualism, after a brief trial, is known to be large. The new religion has followed the old ones into the policy of standing on the defensive.
One instance of this is the opposition to investigation. A Mediums' National Defence Association was in open operation before 1890. A leading Spiritualist paper suggested in 1876, that the would-be inquirer should be "tied securely hand and foot, and placed in a strong iron cage, with a rope or small chain put tightly about his neck, and fastened to an iron ring in the wall." Early in 1897, some young men who claimed to have exposed an impostor, before a large audience in the Spiritualist Temple in Boston, were prosecuted by his admirers on the charge of having disturbed public worship.
V. During the last quarter of the century, free love has been much less prominent than before in Spiritualistic teachings; but the only Americans who were able to proclaim liberty without encouraging self-indulgence, prior to 1870, were the logical and scholarly Transcendentalists. Theodore Parker, for instance, is to be reckoned among the followers of Hegel rather than of Schelling; for he tried by hard study and deep thought to build up a consistent system of religion and morality by making deductions from a few central principles which he revered as great primary intuitions, held always and everywhere sacred. His faith in his ideas of God, duty, and immortality was very firm; and he did his best to live and think accordingly. He began to preach in 1836, the year of the publication of Emerson's first book, but soon found his work hindered by an idolatry of the Bible, then prevalent even among Unitarians. Familiarity with German scholarship enabled him to teach his people to think rationally.
His brethren in the Unitarian ministry were alarmed; and a sermon which he preached in Boston against the mediatorship of Jesus made it impossible for him to occupy an influential pulpit. The lectures which he delivered that year in a hall in the city, and published in 1842, won the support of many seekers for a new religion. They voted that he should "have a chance to be heard in Boston"; and on February 16, 1845, he preached in a large hall to what soon became a permanent and famous congregation.
Thither, as Parker said, he "came to build up piety and morality; to pull down only what cumbered the ground." His main purpose to the last was to teach "the naturalness of religion," "the adequacy of man for his functions" without priestly aid, and, most important of all, that superiority of the real Deity to the pictures drawn in the orthodox creeds, which Parker called "the infinite perfection of God." He was singularly successful in awakening the spirit of religion in men who were living without it, but the plainness with which he stated his faith, in sermons which had a large circulation, called out many attacks. Prayers were publicly offered up in Boston, asking that the Lord would "put a hook in this man's jaws, so that he may not be able to preach, or else remove him out of the way and let his influence die with him." No controversy hindered his labouring systematically for the moral improvement of his hearers, who sometimes amounted to three thousand. His sermons are full of definite appeals for self-control and self-culture; and his personal interest in every individual who could be helped was so active that he soon had seven thousand names on his pastoral visiting list. Appeals for advice came from strangers at a distance, and were never neglected.
Not one of the great national sins, however popular, escaped his severe rebuke; and he became prominent as early as 1845 among the preachers against slavery. He was active in many ways as an abolitionist, but was not a disunionist. He seldom quitted his pulpit without speaking for the slave; and every phase of the anti-slavery movement is illustrated in his published works. Pro-slavery politicians were as bitter as orthodox clergymen against him; and he describes himself as "continually fired upon for many years from the barroom and pulpit." His resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law caused him to be arrested and prosecuted, in company with Wendell Phillips, by the officials of the national Government.
Desire to awaken the people to the danger that lay in the growth of the national sin made him begin to lecture in 1844. Invitations flowed in freely; and he said, after he had broken down under the joint burden of overwork and of exposure in travelling: "Since 1848, I have lectured eighty or a hundred times each year, in every Northern State east of the Mississippi,—once also in a slave State and on slavery itself." This was his favourite subject, but he never missed an opportunity of encouraging intellectual independence; and he found he could say what he pleased. The total number of hearers exceeded half a million; among them were the most influential men in the North; and he never failed to make himself understood. No one else did so much to develop that love of the people for Union and Liberty which secured emancipation. His works have no such brilliancy as Emerson's; but they burned at the time of need with a much more warm and steady light. No words did more to melt the chains of millions of slaves. No excess of individualism made him shrink back, like Emerson, from joining the abolitionists; or discredit them, as Thoreau did, by publicly renouncing his allegiance to Massachusetts in 1854, when that State stood foremost on the side of freedom.
The account of a solitary life in the woods, which Thoreau published that year, has done much to encourage independence of public opinion; and Americans of that generation needed sadly to be told that they took too little amusement, especially out of doors, and made too great haste to get rich. Their history, however, like that of the Swiss, Scotch, and ancient Athenians, proves that it is the industrious, enterprising, money-making nations that are best fitted for maintaining free institutions. As for individual independence of thought and action, the average man will enjoy much more of it, while he keeps himself in comfortable circumstances by regular but not excessive work, than he could if he were to follow the advice of an author who prided himself on not working more than "about six weeks in a year," and on enduring privations which apparently shortened his days.
Thoreau's self-denial was heroic; but he sometimes failed to see the right of his neighbours to indulge more expensive tastes than his own. The necessary conditions of health and comfort for different individuals vary much more than he realised. Many a would-be reformer still complains of the "luxury" of people who find physical rest or mental culture in innocent ways, not particularly to his own fancy. Such censures are really intolerant. They are survivals of that meddlesome disposition which has sadly restricted freedom of trade, amusement, and worship.
We have had only one Emerson; but many scholarly Transcendentalists have laboured to construct the new morality needed in the nineteenth century. Parker's work has peculiar interest, because done in a terrible emergency; but others have toiled as profitably though less famously. The search after fundamental intuitions has led to a curious variety of statements which agree only in the assumption of infallibility; but the result has been the general agreement of liberal preachers in teaching a system of ethics at once free from superstition, bigotry, or asceticism, and at the same time vigorous enough to repress impure desire and encourage active philanthropy. Theology has improved in liberality, as well as in claiming less prominence. Thus the clergy have come into much more friendly relations with the philosophers than in the middle of the century. Our popular preachers quote Emerson; but really they follow, though often unconsciously, the methods of Hegel and Kant. This increases their sympathy with Parker, who has the advantage over Emerson of having believed strongly in personal immortality. His works are circulated by the very denomination which cast him out. The most popular preachers in many sects openly accept him and Emerson among their highest authorities. Transcendentalism has become the foundation of liberal Christianity.
This agreement is not, however, necessary and may not be permanent. Hegel's great success was in bringing forward the old dogmas with new claims to infallibility. When some of his disciples showed that his methods were equally well adapted for the destruction of orthodoxy, Schelling gave his last lectures in its defence. The singular fitness of traditions for acceptance as intuitions has been proved, late in the century, by the Rev. Joseph Cook in Boston as well as by many speakers at the Concord School of Philosophy. The reactionary tendency is already so strong that it may yet become predominant. We must not forget that Shelley called himself an atheist, or that among Hegel's most famous followers were Strauss and Renan. Who can say whether unbelief, orthodoxy, or liberal Christianity is the legitimate outcome of this ubiquitous philosophy?
Transcendentalism has been the inspiration of the century. Its influence has been mighty in behalf of political liberty and social progress. But there was no inconsistency in Hegel's opposing the education of women, and denying the possibility of a great republic, or in Carlyle's defending absolute monarchy and chattel slavery, or in Parker's successor in Boston trying to justify the Russian despotism. Transcendentalism is a swivel-gun, which can be fired easily in any direction. Perhaps it can be used most easily against science. The difference in methods, of course, is irreconcilable, as is seen in Emerson; and the brilliant results attained by Herbert Spencer have been sadly disparaged by leading Transcendentalists in the conventions of the Free Religious Association, as well as in sessions of the Concord School of Philosophy.
VI. The necessary tendency of Transcendentalism may be seen in the agitation against vivisection, which was begun in 1863 by Miss Cobbe. She was aided by Carlyle, Browning, Ruskin, Lecky, Mar-tineau, and other Transcendentalists, one of whom, Rev. W. H. Channing, had been prominent in America about 1850. Most of the active anti-vivisectionists, however, belong to the sex which has been peculiarly ready to adopt unscientific methods of thought. It is largely due to women with a taste for metaphysics or theology that the agitation still goes on in Great Britain and the United States.
Attempts ought certainly to be made to prevent torture of animals by inexperienced students, or by teachers who merely wish to illustrate the working of well-known laws. There ought to be little difficulty in securing the universal adoption of such statutes as were passed by Parliament in 1876. Vivisection was then forbidden, except when carried out for the purpose of important discoveries, by competent investigators duly licensed, and in regular laboratories. It was further required that complete protection against suffering pain be given by anaesthetics, though these last could be dispensed with in exceptional cases covered by a special license.
The animal must at all events be killed as soon as the experiment was over. This law actually put a stop to attempts to find some antidote to the poison of the cobra, which slays thousands of Hindoos annually. Professor Ferrier, who was discovering the real functions of various parts of the brain, was prosecuted in 1881 by the Anti-Vivisection Society for operating without a license upon monkeys; but the charge turned out to be false.
The real question since 1876 has been as to whether vivisection should be tolerated as an aid to scientific and medical discovery. Darwin's opinion on this point is all the more valuable, because he hated all cruelty to animals. In April, 1881, he wrote to The Times as follows:
"I know that physiology cannot possibly progress except by means of experiments on living animals; and I feel the deepest conviction that he who retards the progress of physiology commits a crime against mankind.... No one, unless he is grossly ignorant of what science has done for mankind, can entertain any doubt of the incalculable benefits which will hereafter be derived from physiology, not only by man but by the lower animals. Look, for instance, at Pasteur's results in modifying the germs of the most malignant diseases, from which, as it so happens, animals will in the first place receive more relief than man. Let it be remembered how many lives, and what a fearful amount of suffering, have been saved by the knowledge gained of parasitic worms, through the experiments of Virchow and others upon living animals."
Another high authority, Carpenter, says that vivisection has greatly aided physicians in curing heart disease, as well as in preventing blood-poisoning by taking antiseptic precautions. Much has been learned as to the value of hypodermic injections, and also of bromide of potassium, chloral, salicylic acid, cocaine, amyl, digitalis, and strychnia. Some of these drugs are so poisonous that they would never have been administered to human beings if they could not have been tried previously on the lower animals. The experiments in question have recently assisted in curing yellow fever, sunstroke, diabetes, epilepsy, erysipelas, cholera, consumption, and trichinosis. The German professors of medicine testified in a body that vivisection has regenerated the healing art. Similar testimony was given in 1881 by the three thousand members of the International Medical Congress; and the British Medical Association has taken the same position.
The facts are so plain that an English judge, who was a vice-president of Miss Cobbe's society, admitted that "vivisection enlarges knowledge"; but he condemned it as ''displeasing to Almighty God.'' It was said to go "hand in hand with atheism"; and several of the Episcopalian bishops, together with Cardinal Manning, opposed it as irreligious.
Transcendentalists are compelled by their philosophy to decide on the morality of all actions solely by the inner light, and not permitted to pay any attention to consequences. Many of them in England and America agreed to demand the total suppression of vivisection, "even should it chance to prove useful." This ground was taken in 1877 by Miss Cobbe's society; and she declared, five years later, in The Fortnightly, that she was determined "to stop the torture of animals, a grave moral offence, with the consequences of which—be they fortunate or the reverse—we are no more concerned than with those of any other evil deed." Later she said: "Into controversies concerning the utility of vivisection, I for one refuse to enter"; and she published a leaflet advising her sisters to follow her example. Ruskin took the same ground. These hasty enthusiasts were equally indifferent to another fact, which ought not to have been overlooked, namely, that suffering was usually prevented by the use of anaesthetics, which are indispensable for the success of many experiments. The bill for prohibiting any vivisection was brought into the House of Lords in 1879; But was opposed by a nobleman who presided over the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and it was lost by 16 votes against 97. The House of Commons refused even to take action on the subject, despite four years of agitation. Thus the right of scientific research was finally secured.
Miss Cobbe was one of the noblest of women; but even she was made blind by her philosophy to the right of people who prefer scientific methods to act up to their convictions. Garrison, too, was notoriously unable to do justice to anyone, even an abolitionist, who did not agree with him. There is nothing in Transcendentalism to prevent intolerance. This philosophy has done immense service to the philanthropy as well as the poetry of the nineteenth century; but human liberty will gain by the discovery that no such system of metaphysics can be anything better than a temporary bridge for passing out of the swamps of superstition, across the deep and furious torrent of scepticism, into a land of healthy happiness and clear, steady light.
DURING the nineteenth century the authority of preachers and pastors has diminished plainly; and this is largely due to a fact of which Emerson spoke thus: "We should not forgive the clergy for taking on every issue the immoral side." This was true in England, where the great reforms were achieved for the benefit of the masses, and against the interest of the class to which most clergymen belonged. The American pastor seldom differed from his parishioners, unless he was more philanthropic. He was usually in favour of the agitation against drunkenness; and he had a right to say that the disunionism of Phillips and Garrison, together with their systematically repelling sympathy in the South, went far to offset their claim for his support. It was difficult, during many years, to see what ought to be done in the North. When a practical issue was made by the attack on Kansas, the clergy took the side of freedom almost unanimously in New England, and quite generally in rural districts throughout the free States. The indifference of the ministers to abolitionism, before 1854, was partly due, however, to their almost universal opposition to a kindred reform, which they might easily have helped.
I. It was before Garrison began his agitation that Frances Wright denounced the clergy for hindering the intellectual emancipation of her sex; and her first ally was not The Liberator, but The Investigatory though both began almost simultaneously. She pleaded powerfully for the rights of slaves, as well as of married women, before large audiences in the middle States as early as 1836, when these reforms were also advocated by Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, a liberal Jewess. These ladies spoke to men as well as women; and so next summer did Miss Angelina Grimké, whose zeal against slavery had lost her her home in South Carolina. Her first public lecture was in Massachusetts; and the Congregationalist ministers of that State promptly issued a declaration that they had a right to say who should speak to their parishioners, and that the New Testament forbade any woman to become a "public reformer." Their action called out the spirited poem in which Whittier said:
Garrison now came out in favour of "the rights of women," and thus lost much of the support which he was receiving from the country clergy generally in New England. The final breach was in May, 1840, at the meeting of the National Association of Abolitionists in New York City. There came Garrison with more than five hundred followers from New England. They gained by a close vote a place on the business committee for that noble woman, Abby Kelley. Ministers and church members seceded and started a new anti-slavery society, which carried away most of the members and even the officers of the old one. The quarrel was embittered by the vote of censure, passed at this meeting upon those abolitionists who had dared to nominate a candidate of their own for the presidency without leave from Mr. Garrison; but the chief trouble came from the prejudice which, that same summer, caused most of the members of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, to refuse places to Harriet Martineau and other ladies as delegates. This exclusion was favoured by all the eight clergymen who spoke, and by no other speakers so earnestly. Among the rejected delegates were Mrs. Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and they resolved, that night, to hold a convention for the benefit of their sex in America.
The volume of essays which Emerson published in 1844 praised "the new chivalry in behalf of woman's rights"; and the other Transcendentalists in America came, one after another, to the same position. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott called their convention in that year of revolutions, 1848, on July 19th. The place was the Methodist church at Seneca Falls, in central New York. The reformers found the door locked against them; and a little boy had to climb in at the window. The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, furnished a model for a protest against the exclusion of girls from high schools and colleges, the closing of almost every remunerative employment against the sex, and the laws forbidding a married woman to own any property, whether earned or inherited by her, even her own clothing. This declaration was adopted unanimously; but a demand for the suffrage had only a small majority. Not a single minister is known to have been present; but there were two at a second convention, that August, in Rochester, where the Unitarian church was full of men and women.
There were more than twenty-five thousand ministers in the United States; but only three are mentioned among the members of the national convention, held at Worcester, Massachusetts, in October, 1850, by delegates from eleven States. As Phillips was returning from this meeting, Theodore Parker said to him, "Wendell, why do you make a fool of yourself?" The great preacher came out a few years later in behalf of the rights of women; but it was long before a single religious newspaper caught up with The Investigator.
How the clergy generally felt was shown in 1851, at Akron, in northern Ohio. There Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Universalist ministers appealed to the Bible in justification of the subjugation of women. There was no reply until they began to boast of the intellectual superiority of their own sex. Then an illiterate old woman who had been a slave arose and said: "What 's dat got to do with women's rights, or niggers' rights either? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, would n't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" The convention was with her; but the Bible argument was not to be disposed of easily. The general tone of both Testaments is in harmony with the familiar texts attributed to Paul and Peter. These latter passages were written, in all probability, when the position of women was changing for the better throughout the Roman Empire: and the original words, asserting the authority of husbands, are the same as are used in regard to the power of masters over slaves. Such language had all the more weight, because the ministers had been brought up as members of the ruling sex. They may have also been biassed by the fact that their profession depends, more than any other, for success upon the unpaid services in many ways of devoted women. Emancipation was by no means likely to promote work for the Church. There was an audience of two thousand at Syracuse, in 1852, when what was called the "Bloomer Convention," on account of the short dresses worn by some members, took up a resolution, declaring that the Bible recognises the rights of women. Mrs. Rose said that the reform had merits enough of its own, and needed no justification by any book. A letter was read from Mrs. Stanton, saying that "among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position." The accuracy of this statement was readily admitted, after a reverend gentleman had denounced the infidelity of the movement, in a speech described as "indecent" and "coarsely offensive" in the New York Herald; and the resolution was lost.
The lady who offered it was ordained soon after for the Congregationalist ministry; but she was obliged to confess, at the Woman's Rights' Convention, in 1853, that "the Church has so far cast me off, that to a great extent I have been obliged to go to just such infidels as those around me for aid to preach my Christian views." It was at this meeting that a doctor of divinity, and pastor of a prominent society, denounced the reform so violently that Mr. Garrison called him a blackguard and a rowdy, with the result of having his nose pulled by the champion of the Church militant. There were many such unseemly manifestations of clerical wrath. The History of Woman Suffrage, which was edited by Mrs. Stanton and other leading reformers, said, in 1881: "The deadliest opponents to the recognition of the equal rights of women have ever been among the orthodox clergy." The Unitarians were more friendly; but I do not think that the reform was openly favoured, even as late as 1860, by one clergyman in a thousand out of the whole number in the United States. The proportion was even smaller in Europe.
Even as late as 1878, it was resolved by the Woman Suffrage Convention at Rochester, N. Y., "that as the first duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught woman by the Christian Church have been fatal, not only to her own vital interests but through her to those of the race." Influences were already at work, however, which have made the relations of platform and pulpit comparatively friendly in this respect.
The women of the North showed their patriotism, during the great war, by establishing and managing the Sanitary Commission, the Freedman's Bureau, and the Woman's Loyal National League. Important elections were carried in 1862 by the eloquence of Anna E. Dickinson, for the Republican party; and it has often since had similar help. The success of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and other partly philanthropic and partly religious organisations, has proved the ability of women to think and act independently. Many of their demands have been granted, one by one; and public opinion has changed so much in their favour, that they ceased long ago to encounter any general hostility from the clergy in the Northern States.
Even there, however, women still find it much too difficult for them to enter a peculiarly easy, honourable, and lucrative profession. Their elocutionary powers are shown on the stage as well as the platform. Their capacity for writing sermons is plain to every one familiar with recent literature. Their ability to preach is recognised cordially in the Salvation Army, as well as by Spiritualists, Quakers, Unitarians, and Universalists. Much of the pastoral work is done by women, in actual fact; and more ought to be. The Sunday-school, choir, social gathering, and other important auxiliaries to the pulpit are almost entirely in female hands. Women enjoy practically the monopoly of those kinds of church work for which there is no pay; and their exclusion from the kind which is paid highly, in the largest and wealthiest denominations, looks too much like a preference of clergymen to look after the interest of their own sex. The most orthodox churches are the most exclusive; and the same forces which are driving bigotry out of the pulpits are bringing women in.
This reform is one of many in which a much more advanced position has been taken by New England and the far West than by the South; and the American Transcendentalists led public opinion in the section where most of them lived. In Great Britain the struggle has been carried on in the interest of the middle and lower classes, and under much opposition from the class to which most admirers of philosophy belonged. No wonder that one of the keenest critics of Transcendentalism was prominent among the champions in England of the oppressed sex. John Stuart Mill declared, in his widely circulated book on The Subjection of Women, that "nobody ever arrived at a general rule of duty by intuition." He held that the legal subjection of wives to husbands bore more resemblance, as far as the laws were concerned, to slavery, than did any other relationship existing in Great Britain in 1869. He did not argue from any theory of natural rights, but pointed out the advantage to society of women's developing their capacities freely. He also insisted on the duty of government not to restrict the liberty of any woman, except when necessary to prevent her diminishing that of her neighbours. This last proposition will be examined in the next chapter. The fact that Mill's great work for freedom was done through the press, and not on the platform, makes it unnecessary to say more about him in this place.
II. Clergymen, like Transcendentalists, in England were generally conservative, or reactionary; and the friends of reform were much more irreligious than in America. Their appeal against the authority of Church and Bible was not to intuition but to science; and they were aided by Lyell's demonstration, in 1830, that geology had superseded Genesis. Working-men were warned in lectures, tracts, and newspapers against immorality in the Old Testament; and even the New was said to discourage resistance to oppression and efforts to promote health, comfort, and knowledge.
The most popular of these champions against superstition and tyranny was Bradlaugh. He began to lecture in 1850, when only seventeen, and continued for forty years to speak and write diligently. His atheism obliged him to undergo poverty for many years, and much hardship. He charged no fee for lecturing, went willingly to the smallest and poorest places, and was satisfied with whatever was brought in by selling tickets, often for only twopence each. He once travelled six hundred miles in forty-eight hours, to deliver four lectures which did not repay his expenses. Many a hall which he had engaged was closed against him; and he was thus obliged to speak in the open air one rainy Sunday, when he had two thousand hearers. At such times his voice pealed out like a trumpet; his information was always accurate; opposition quickened the flow of ideas; and he had perfect command of the people's English. His great physical strength was often needed to defend him against violence, sometimes instigated by the clergy. He had much to say against the Old Testament; but no struggle for political liberty, whether at home or abroad, failed to receive his support; and he was especially active for that great extension of suffrage which took place in 1867. His knowledge that women would vote against him did not prevent his advocating their right to the ballot; but it was in the name of "the great mass of the English people" that he was an early supporter of the cause of Union and Liberty against the slave-holders who seceded.
In 1866 he became president of the National Society of Secularists, who believe only in "the religion of the present life." Most of the members were agnostics; and one of Bradlaugh's many debates was with Holyoake, the founder of secularism, on the question whether that term ought to be used instead of atheism. The society was so well organised that only a telegram from the managers was needed to call out a public meeting anywhere in England. Among Bradlaugh's hearers in America in 1873 were Emerson, Sumner, Garrison, Phillips, and O. B. Frothingham. He won soon after a powerful ally in a clergyman's wife, who had been driven from her home by her husband because she would not partake of the communion. Mrs. Besant began to lecture in 1874, and with views like Bradlaugh's; but her chief interest was in woman suffrage. Both held strict views about the obligation of marriage; and their relations were blameless.
Bradlaugh's place in history is mainly as a champion of the right of atheists to sit in Parliament. He was elected by the shoemakers of Northampton in 1880, when oaths of allegiance were exacted in the House of Commons. Quakers, however, could affirm; and he asked the same privilege. As this was refused, he offered to take the oath, and declared that the essential part would be "binding upon my honour and conscience." This, too, was forbidden; but there was much discussion, not only in Parliament but throughout England, as to his right to affirm. His friends held two hundred public meetings in a single week, and sent in petitions with two hundred thousand signatures during twelve months. The liberal newspapers were on his side; but the Methodist and Episcopalian pulpits resounded with denials of the right of atheists to enter Parliament on any terms. Among the expounders of this view in leading periodicals were Cardinal Manning and other prominent ecclesiastics. They had the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as of many petitions from Sunday-schools. Public opinion showed itself so plainly that Brad-laugh was finally allowed by a close vote to make affirmation and take his seat. He was soon forced to leave it by an adverse decision of the judges, but was promptly re-elected.
Again he offered in vain to take the oath. After several months of litigation, and many appeals to audiences which he made almost unanimous, he gave notice that he should try to take his seat on August 3, 1881, unless prevented by force. It took fourteen men to keep him out; and he was dragged down-stairs with such violence that he fainted away. His clothes were badly torn; and the struggle brought on an alarming attack of erysipelas. A great multitude had followed him to Westminster Hall, and there would have been a dangerous riot, if it had not been for the entreaties of Mrs. Besant, who spoke at Bradlaugh's request. His next move was to take the oath without having it properly administered. He was expelled in consequence, but re-elected at once. Thus the contest went on, until the Speaker decided that every member had a right to take the oath which could not be set aside. Bradlaugh was admitted accordingly, on January 13, 1886; and two years later he brought about the passage of a bill by which unbelievers were enabled to enter Parliament by making affirmation. The Irish members had tried to keep him out; but this did not prevent his advocating home rule for Ireland, and also for India. From first to last he fought fearlessly and steadily for freedom of speech and of the press. His beauty of character increased his influence. Mrs. Besant is right in saying: "That men and women are now able to speak as openly as they do, that a broader spirit is visible in the churches, that heresy is no longer regarded as morally disgraceful—these things are very largely due to the active and militant propaganda carried on under the leadership of Charles Bradlaugh."
III. Similar ideas to his have been presented ever since 1870 to immense audiences, composed mostly of young men, in Chicago, New York, Boston, and other American cities, by Robert G. Ingersoll. Burning hatred of all tyranny and cruelty often makes him denounce the Bible with a pathos like Rousseau's or a brilliancy like Voltaire's. He was decidedly original when he asked why Jesus, if he knew how Christianity would develop, did not say that his followers ought not to persecute one another. In protesting against subordinating reason to faith, Ingersoll says: "Ought the sailor to throw away his compass and depend entirely on the fog?" Among other characteristic passages are these: "Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the tree of knowledge!"... "Religion has not civilised man: man has civilised religion."... "Miracles are told simply to be believed, not to be understood."
Ingersoll is not merely a destroyer but an earnest pleader for what he calls the gospel of cheerfulness and good health, "the gospel of water and soap," the gospels of education, liberty, justice, and humanity. He regards "marriage as the holiest institution among men"; but holds that "the woman is the equal of the man. She has all the rights I have and one more; and that is the right to be protected." He believes fully "in the democracy of the family," and "in allowing the children to think for themselves." He is not so much interested as Bradlaugh was in political reform and social progress, but has often taken the conservative side; and his speaking in public has been more like an occasional recreation than a life-work. Some of his lectures have had an immense circulation as pamphlets; and his Biblical articles in the North American Review attracted much notice. He is never at his best, however, without an audience before him; and he sometimes writes too rapidly to be strictly accurate.
IV. A better parallel to Bradlaugh is furnished by Mr. B. F. Underwood, who was only eighteen when he began to lecture in Rhode Island. The great revival of 1857 was in full blast; and he showed its evils with an energy which called down much denunciation from the pulpit. He spoke from the first as an evolutionist, though Darwin had not yet demonstrated the fact. To and fro through the Connecticut valley went the young iconoclast, speaking wherever he could find hearers, asking only for repayment of expenses, and sometimes failing to receive even that. His work was interrupted by the war, in which he took an active and honourable part. When peace was restored, he studied thoroughly the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man; and he began in 1868 to give course after course of lectures on Darwinism in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. The new view had been nine years before the public, but had received little or no support from any clergyman in the United States, or any journal except The Investigator.
For thirty years Mr. Underwood has been busily propagating evolutionism on the platform, as well as in print. No other American has done so much to make the system popular, or has reproduced Herbert Spencer's statements with such fidelity. He has taken especial pains to prove that "evolution disposes of the theory that the idea of God is innate," as well as of the once mighty argument from design. He has said a great deal about the Bible and Christianity, but in a more constructive spirit than either Bradlaugh or Ingersoll. He has discredited old books by unfolding new truth. Among his favourite subjects have been: "What Free Thought Gives us in Place of the Creeds," "The Positive Side of Modern Liberal Thought," "If you Take away Religion, what will you Give in its Place?" "The Influence of Civilisation on Christianity." He has always shown himself in favour of the interests of working-men, and also of women's rights and other branches of political reform. During the twelve years ending in 1881, he lectured five or six times a week for at least nine months out of twelve, often travelling from Canada to Arkansas and Oregon. Occasionally he spoke every night for a month; but he has seldom lectured in summer, except when on the Pacific coast.
His lectures in Oregon in 1871 on evolution awoke much opposition in the pulpits. Two years afterwards he held a debate in that State against a clergyman who was president of a college, and who denounced evolution as in conflict with "the Word of God." Such views were then prevalent in that city; but in 1888 it was found by Mr. Underwood to have become the seat of the State University, where the new system was taught regularly. Underwood, like Bradlaugh, has always challenged discussion, and he has held over a hundred public debates. The first was in 1867; and some have occupied twenty evenings. Most of his opponents have been clergymen; and a hundred and fifty of the profession were in the audience at one contest in Illinois in 1870. How much public opinion differs in various States of the Union is shown by the fact that nine years later the doors of a hall which had been engaged for him in Pennsylvania were closed against him, merely because he was "an infidel." His friends broke in without his consent; and he was fined $70. The first lecture which he tried to give in Canada was prevented by similar dishonesty. Another hall was hired for the next night at great expense; but much interruption was made by clergymen; and when suit was brought for damages through breach of contract, the courts decided that bargains with unbelievers were not binding in Canada.
Both Bradlaugh and Underwood have usually spoken extempore, but both have been busy journalists. The American agitator wrote as early as 1856 for both The Liberator and The Investigator. His connection with the latter paper lasted until the time when a serious difference of opinion arose between those aggressive unbelievers who called themselves "freethinkers," or even "infidels," and those moderate liberals who belong to the Free Religious Association, and formerly supported The Index. This journal came in 1881 under the management of Mr. Underwood. His colleague, Rev. W. J. Potter, was nominally his equal in authority; but I know, from personal acquaintance with both gentlemen, that the real editor from first to last was Mr. Underwood. It was mainly due to him that much attention was given, both in the columns of the journal and in the meetings of the association, to efforts for secularising the State. He was in charge of The Index until it stopped at the end of 1886. In 1882 he held a discussion in Boston with the president of Williams College, and Professor Gray, the great botanist, on the relations between evolution and "evangelical religion." About four hundred orthodox clergymen were present. In 1897 Mr. Underwood was still in his original occupation. Early that year he lectured in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Canada. He now believes, like Emerson, in "a higher origin for events than the will I call mine."
V. The difference of opinion among liberals, just referred to, grew out of the agitation for a free Sunday, which had been begun by Frances Wright in 1828. A call for "an anti-Sabbath convention" in Boston was issued by some Transcendentalists in 1848, when men had recently been imprisoned in Massachusetts for getting in hay, and in Pennsylvania for selling anti-slavery books. Churches were closed on Sunday against lecturers for any reform, however popular; and even the most innocent amusement was prohibited by public opinion. Only a moderate protest had any chance of a hearing; but Garrison and the other managers insisted in the call that "the first day of the week is no holier than any other," and refused to allow anyone who did not believe this to speak. Very little was said about what the Sunday laws really were; but most of the time was occupied with arguments that the Sabbath was only for the Jews, and that keeping Sunday is not a religious duty. This last assertion called out an earnest remonstrance from Theodore Parker; but his resolutions were voted down. The Garrisonians insisted, as usual, that the big end of the wedge ought to go in first; and their convention was a failure. Twenty-eight years went by without any protest of importance against Sunday laws in America.
Meantime the Free Religious Association was organised in Boston by Unitarian clergymen who were indignant at the recent introduction into their denomination of a doctrinal condition of fellowship. The first public meeting, on May 30, 1867, called out an immense audience. Emerson was one of the speakers; and he held his place among the vice-presidents as long as he lived. A similar position was offered to Lucretia Mott, but she declined on the platform. Her reason was that practical work was subordinated to theological speculation by the announcement in the constitution that the association was organised "to promote the interests of pure religion, to encourage the scientific study of theology, and to increase fellowship in the Spirit." These phrases were altered afterwards; but the association has always been, in the words of one of its leading members "a voice without a hand." Free religious conventions have regularly increased the confusion of tongues in that yearly Boston Babel called "Anniversary Week"; and there have been many similar gatherings in various cities; but not one in four of these meetings has given much attention to any practical subject, like the use of the Bible in the public schools. A vigorous discussion of the Sunday laws of Massachusetts took place in 1876, under peculiar circumstances to be described in the next section; but there was no other until 1887. The Index started in 1870; but it was largely occupied with vague speculations about theology; and its discontinuance in 1886 left the association without any organ of frequent communication among its members, or even an office for business. Dr. Adler, who became president in 1878, tried to awaken an interest in unsectarian education, and especially in ethical culture; but he resigned on account of lack of support; and the Ethical Culture societies were started outside of the association. Comparatively few of its members took any interest in the petitions presented by its direction to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1884 and 1885, asking for taxation of churches, protection of witnesses from molestation on account of unbelief, and rescue of the Sunday law from giving sanctuary to fraud. The president acknowledged in 1892 that there had been a "general debility for practical work." There seems to have been a lack of energy among the managers; and some of the members were too anxious to preserve their individuality, while others had too much regard for ecclesiastical interests. The Parliament of Religions next year, however, showed what good the association had done by insisting continually on fellowship in religion, and keeping its platform open to Jews, Hindoos, and unbelievers, as well as to Christians of every sect.
VI. Prominent among the founders of the Free Religious Association was Francis E. Abbot, who lost his place soon after as pastor of an independent society, because the Supreme Court of New Hampshire decided, on the request of some Unitarians for an injunction against him, that his opinions were "subversive of the fundamental principles of Christianity. He was the first editor of The Index; and there appeared in April, 1872, his statement of what are generally recognised as
"THE DEMANDS OF LIBERALISM
"1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempt from just taxation.
"2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.
"3. We demand that all public appropriations for educational and charitable institutions of a sectarian character shall cease.
"4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the Government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.
"5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United States, or by the Governors of the various States, of all religious festivals and fasts shall wholly cease.